Criminal Law

Austin Police Monitor proposed rule changes to discourage officer discourtesy

Posted on November 04, 2020
When one digs into the details of complaints at most police departments, the category that stands out by volume isn't "use of force" but "rudeness," or some variant thereon. But most police-oversight discussions focus on beatings, shootings, etc., not the nasty, personal interactions that generate the greatest volume of grassroots antipathy...

San Antonio to #txlege: Fix the 180-day rule, stop arbitrators from overturning police firings, and make police-disciplinary records public

Posted on November 03, 2020
The San Antonio City Council added some police-reform-oriented items to the Alamo City's 2021 legislative agenda, reported the Express News' Joshua Fechter. Here are some of the items approved by the mayor and council:Change the 180 day rule to prohibit discipline 180 days after it's been discovered rather than when it occurred...

Presumptive Travis DA Jose Garza on death penalty, women's jail, and membership in TX state prosecutors association

Posted on November 02, 2020
The Marshall Project's prolific Keri Blakinger generates more copy than her employers will publish, so she's been sending Grits an occasional email featuring unpublished odds and ends. Today, we have a few tidbits from a recent interview Keri conducted with Jose Garza, Travis County's presumptive Democratic District Attorney pending tomorrow's election (he has an opponent, but the Democratic primary is the real race in Austin)...

House committee considering Class C misdemeanor debt, arrests

Posted on November 02, 2020
In lieu of a public hearing (with the capitol still closed off from COVID), the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee announced it would accept written testimony regarding its Interim Charge #2 regarding Class C misdemeanor arrests, debt, and the use of citations in lieu of arrest for certain low-level Class Bs...

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Hemp law radically reduced pot prosecutions in Texas: Don't go back

Posted on October 29, 2020
Readers will recall that the Texas Legislature last year legalized "hemp" without a way for prosecutors to distinguish between legal hemp and illegal marijuana, which come from the same plant. To successfully prosecute, police would need to test the plant's THC levels, but few jurisdictions have the equipment to perform the task, much less staff to handle the extra work...

A chance to expand police oversight: Why Texas should begin charging cops and jailers licensure fees

Posted on October 26, 2020
Readers will recall Grits recommended over the summer that the agency licensing Texas peace officers, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE), begin charging licensing fees to Texas cops and jailers. The idea was that they could use the "extra" money to expand their oversight role...

Police Monitor: Austin police commanders ignore misconduct when they disagree with department policy

Posted on October 26, 2020
In public, previously un-reported recommendations, Austin's Office of Police Oversight earlier this month found it necessary to remind APD commanders that, "When presented with incontrovertible evidence of a policy violation, an accused employee?s chain of command should sustain the allegation related to that policy violation...

Four stories let public peer into soul of Houston justice system

Posted on October 22, 2020
The justice system can be difficult to understand for experts and darn near impossible for laypeople. Grits believes that's in part because the public best understands issues of crime, punishment and justice through storytelling, but there are too many stories emerging from the system which often seem to produce contradictory moral conclusions...

"I wonder why black folks don't want to join Waco PD?," cops telling on themselves in social media, SWAT excesses in Nacogdoches, and other stories

Posted on October 19, 2020
Here are a few odds and ends that merit Grits readers' attention:Talk is cheap when it comes to police accountability: Joe Gonzales, the DA in Bexar County, Texas, seems like a nice enough fellow. But it's time for more than promises that his office will scrutinize officer-involved shootings more closely in the future...

Texas prison pop reaches 21st-century lows, but jail populations rising again

Posted on October 16, 2020
Keri Blakinger brings word that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice a) has shuttered three additional prison units and b) has witnessed the prison population dip to 120,709, which is the lowest it's been since before the turn of the century. That's mainly because county jails for several months stopped sending new inmates to TDCJ, says Blakinger, but they started taking them again in June...

Rangers rule police shooting 'murder,' searches at traffic stops mostly fruitless, Sheriffs behaving badly, and other stories

Posted on October 08, 2020
Here are a few odds and ends that merit Grits readers' attention:I'm not sure I've ever heard of the Texas Rangers announcing a shooting by a police officer constituted "murder," as they did in the case of Wolfe City Police Officer Shaun Lucas' killing of Jonathan Price...

Pernicious housing rule would worsen homelessness, make Texas less safe

Posted on October 08, 2020
We keep hearing how concerned Governor Greg Abbott has been over homelessness, but a rule proposed at the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) would make matters worse.TDHCA has suggested forbidding access to supportive housing for two years for anyone convicted of a nonviolent felony, for three years for certain offenses involving guns, retaliation, or obstruction, and imposing lifetime bans for people convicted of sex offenses, any "murder-related offense," sexual assault, or arson...

Report from Houston Policing Task Force should launch broader conversation

Posted on October 05, 2020
The Houston Mayor's Task Force on Policing Reform covered a lot of ground in its 150-page report, considering a large variety of changes, big and small. The sprawling report was so dense and byzantine, Grits decided to distill it into a 3-part blog summary/commentary (linked below) that itself came in at more than 5,000 words...

With one, unanswered question, Chris Wallace debunked weeks of Texas media coverage on Austin, Fort Worth, crime trends, and partisanship

Posted on October 05, 2020
Grits can hardly convey my delight that, during the mostly unwatchable Presidential debate, Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price found herself hoisted on her own petard, with moderator Chris Wallace questioning whether rising murder rates in cities with Republican mayors like Fort Worth and Tulsa show that crime isn't a partisan issue...

Houston Mayor's Policing Task Force Recap, Part 3: Mental-health first response, What counts as diversion?, the 'all-purpose panacea promoted by people who oppose policy change,' and other stories

Posted on October 03, 2020
Here's Part 3 of Grits' tripartite, annotated analysis of the new report from the Houston Mayor's Task Force on Policing Reform. See Part 1 and Part 2.Mental-Health First ResponseIn Austin, Dallas, and elsewhere across the country, one of the approaches to displacing police from non-law-enforcement tasks has been mental-health first response, where many clients do not ask for a law-enforcement presence and end up in involuntary detention, more often than not, because police don't know what else to do with them...

Houston Mayor's Policing Task Force Recap, Part 2: "Let the 'good cops' speak!," toward a functional police-oversight system, changes to use of force and bodycam policies needed, and building trust through transparency

Posted on October 02, 2020
Here's Part 2 of Grits' tripartite, annotated analysis of the new report from the Houston Mayor's Task Force on Policing Reform. See Part 1 here.Improving Complaint Process: Allow anonymous complaints to let 'good cops' speak upThe Task Force recommended several important improvements to the complaint process, including allowing complaints online...

Task Force on reforming Houston police: Empower oversight board, remove civil-service barriers to accountability at #txlege, and have someone besides the DA prosecute police misconduct (Grits has a suggestion)

Posted on October 01, 2020
"The loss of public trust and credibility makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the police to forge partnerships in local communities, let alone expect community cooperation in criminal investigations," declared the Houston Mayor's Task Force on Policing Reform (TFPR), which issued its recommendations this week...

Want to improve police oversight? Settle in for the long haul

Posted on September 29, 2020
The "Independent Police Oversight Board" for the Houston Police Department arguably represents a worst-case scenario when it comes to reform efforts: It took years for advocates to install and, by providing a veneer of meaningless oversight, probably does more to obscure episodes of police misconduct than illuminate problems...

From the archives: Primer on police-union politics and contracts

Posted on September 28, 2020
In 2017, Just Liberty's former Policy Coordinator, Sukyi McMahon, who now works for the Columbia University Justice Lab, created three, short videos based on Reasonably Suspicious podcast segments that constitute a primer for reformers on police-union politics and debates surrounding their labor contracts...

Debtors Prison Blues: Homeless rack up tens of thousands of tickets and warrants that everyone knows they can't pay

Posted on September 28, 2020
In a fine story last month on the history of homelessness policy in Texas, the Texas Observer's Gus Bova included some data on local, Class C homeless citations from Texas big cities that I wanted to record for future use. For starters, here in the state capital:Records obtained by the Observer show that between January 2000 and May 2020, nearly 53,000 citations were issued under [Austin's] ordinances?75 percent of which turned into warrants...

Massive police response over anti-cop bumper stickers, public opinion and #BlackLivesMatter, deep policing history, and other stories

Posted on September 27, 2020
Let's clear a few browser tabs and run down a few links Grits wanted to record and other items that may interest Grits readers.2-hour standoff  in middle of Austin after driver pulled over for anti-cop bumper stickers: Some 80 cops and 40 DPS vehicles swarmed the Congress Ave...

Slave patrols as apartheid enforcers in addition to chasing runaways

Posted on September 25, 2020
When your correspondent began researching the history of Texas slave patrols, I considered them mainly a way the government collaborated with slave owners to control black people and punish them for violating rules. But it turns out, slave patrols were as much about enforcing apartheid as protecting property rights, and they were empowered to arrest white folks for various co-mingling considered inappropriate...

Governor hopes pro-police push will distract from COVID failures

Posted on September 24, 2020
The Governor today held a press conference calling for a half-dozen new laws aimed at increasing penalties for protester violence and people who harm cops. Thing is, Texas already did this in 2015 after the Ferguson protests, boosting penalties for assaulting police officers and requiring high school students to watch a video teaching them how not to make police angry (I kid you not: they did that because it would offend cops to tell them not to shoot the kids - Democrat Royce West carried the legislation)...

Taking the easy way out: When they choose, Austin cops take the lowest risk assignments and spend lots of time on them

Posted on September 22, 2020
Looking at the 911 call center data discussed in the last post, a notable data point jumps out: When Austin police officers self assign themselves to an activity, they appear to choose the most low-risk, anodyne tasks and spend longer at those than they do ones they're assigned by 911 dispatchers...

Justice data poorly calibrated to researchers' needs

Posted on September 22, 2020
At a Austin City Council's Public Safety Committee meeting yesterday discussing 911 call data, the Police Department's Chief Data Officer, Jonathan Kringen, reiterated an observation that Grits has made several times over the years: "this data system is built to try to manage an activity...

COVID deadlier in Texas prisons than jails

Posted on September 22, 2020
Grits must give credit where it's due: County jails in Texas have done an impressive job, relatively speaking, of containing the coronavirus in their facilities. As of yesterday, there had been eight confirmed deaths and five more suspected deaths linked to COVID-19...

Can police patrol function be separated from racist slaver legacy? Maybe not

Posted on September 20, 2020
Did early policing begin with slave patrols?In Texas, slave patrols were established (just) after the creation of more traditional law enforcement offices like Sheriffs, Constables, and City Marshals (the early Texan name for what would become municipal police chiefs)...

A Texan Huck Finn, Proletarian Slaves, Dreaming of Mexico, and the Habeas Revelation: Lessons from runaway slave stories

Posted on September 19, 2020
One of the items on my research checklist regarding slave patrols and early Texas policing was to examine newspaper items on runaway slaves from Guadalupe County (and perhaps others going forward) in order to identify anecdotes that a) humanize the history I'm reading in old commissioners court records and b) clarify the role and functions of slave patrols in Texas vis a vis the more traditional law enforcement apparatus, like Sheriffs or City Marshals (Texas' precursors to modern police departments)...

Slave Patrol Research Update and Request for Research Advice

Posted on September 18, 2020
Just a quick update on my Guadalupe County slave-patrol research. Many thanks to Kyle Ainsworth of the Runaway Slave Project at Stephen F. Austin University for the tip. This is the first time I've been able to see primary source material regarding IRL slave patrols in Texas...

Texas 'poor farm' history

Posted on September 14, 2020
Just compiling this in one place so I can find it all again. The Portal to Texas History has a copy of records from a "Poor Farm" in Travis County from 1890-1900; see 2015 Statesman coverage here. Also, this index of early Travis County Commissioner Court records includes numerous references to the county poor farm...

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