Roundup: Rogue cops and DWI news

Here are a few items that merit Grits readers' attention but haven't made it into independent posts this week:

Dallas settles another six-figure police lawsuit
This time for a no-knock raid resulting in excessive force. DPD thought the plaintiff was trafficking cocaine for a Mexican drug cartel, but all they found was .1 grams of cocaine and a sawed off shotgun; the defendant was never charged with a crime. This makes eleven six-figure lawsuits settled by DPD since 2011 totaling more than $6 million.

Ex-trooper, sheriff's deputy, constable candidate worked more than a decade as drug courier
In McAllen, "A former Texas state trooper and [Hidalgo County] sheriff's deputy pleaded guilty to money laundering Monday, two years after a traffic stop revealed more than $1 million in the trunk of his car." According to AP, "Robert "Bobby" Maldonado, who was running for constable in Hidalgo County at the time of his February 2012 arrest in Victoria County, spent about 12 years working as a courier bringing drug proceeds back to the Texas-Mexico border from the U.S. interior, according to prosecutors."

Man paralyzed after alleged excessive force by Round Rock PD
Reported the Killeen Daily Herald, "On March 21, a Florence resident was sitting in his car charging his phone when six Round Rock police officers tried to arrest him, according to court documents. Intoxicated and outside of Rick’s Cabaret in Round Rock, William Slade Sullivan, 44, now is a quadriplegic after the officers’ “extremely aggressive use of force,” one of his lawyers said."

'Fracking and the flow of drugs'
National Journal reports that the South Texas fracking boom has created new opportunities for drug smugglers thanks to massive, increased truck traffic north-bound from Mexico.

DWI dominates Harris County probation rolls
Reported the Houston Chronicle (May 11), "In 2013, about 13,000 people - half of all Harris County probationers - were on supervision for a misdemeanor driving-while-intoxicated conviction. Thousands more crowd county jails." Despite that, "A 2009 report found that 60 percent of traffic deaths in Harris County were alcohol related - twice the national average." Further, "Harris County has the highest rate of alcohol-related traffic fatalities among large counties in Texas and, some years, the nation." Grits believes that's because they're focused on an enforcement-only approach and have utterly failed to confront potential structural solutions to DWI that would get more bang for the buck.

The Fourth Amendment and mandatory blood draws
After the US Supreme Court imposed Fourth Amendment warrant requirements on mandatory blood draws in McNeely v. Missouri, writes Houston attorney Paul Kennedy, Texas' implied consent laws related to mandatory blood draws were called into question "when the Supreme Court overturned a conviction in Aviles v. State and sent the case back down to Texas for a new trial in line with the holding in McNeely." The San Antonio Court of Appeals "held that neither the implied consent law, the mandatory blood draw provision of the Transportation Code nor the dissipation of alcohol justified a warrantless blood draw without a showing that an established exception to the warrant requirement existed."

In April, Texas' Seventh Court of Appeals, agreed in a case called Sutherland v. State, which according to the prosecutors' association held that, "By vacating and remanding a case from the San Antonio court of appeals, Aviles v. State, 385 S.W.3d 110, the United States Supreme Court has rejected any position that would treat Transportation Code §724.012(b)(3)(B) as an exception to the Fourth Amendment. To the extent that §724.012(b)(3)(B) can be read to permit a warrantless seizure of a suspect’s blood without exigent circumstances or consent, it violates the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement." Though TDCAA notes that the legal status of Texas' mandatory blood draws remains in doubt and "the State may ultimately lose the implied-consent argument under application or extension of Missouri v. McNeely," they advised prosecutors, "Do not spend too much time worrying about this decision. The dispute will be decided soon enough by a higher court (probably the Court of Criminal Appeals), and that court will take longer than one paragraph to analyze the issue."

'Putting cameras on police officers is an idea whose time has come'
A Washington Post editorial with the same title as this subhed lays out the central conundrum facing policymakers who want to install bodycams as a standard part of police officer gear: "Some thorny details need to be clarified before D.C. police go ahead with a pilot project. Chief among them is how and when the cameras are activated. If individual officers are allowed complete discretion, the cameras will be of little use; but if the cameras are rolling for an officer’s entire shift, problems will arise involving privacy and good policing. (Some informants will get cold feet if they know they’re being filmed, and victims of some crimes may be inhibited from providing testimony.)"