DPS: Surge will take four years to staff, apprehension rate abysmal on border crossings

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has suggested hiring and sending 500 additional state troopers to the border. But Col. Steve McCraw of the Department of Public Safety told the House Committee on Emerging Law Enforcement Issues yesterday that it would take four years - two biennia - to deploy 500 troopers to the border. And before that happens, the agency presently has 243 vacant positions it needs to fill in addition to the 500. That number is expected to drop to 187 after the next cadet class graduates in June.

McCraw said he believes the agency can fill the 187 (though he was unable to fill budgeted trooper positions in the last several budgets), but the 500 troopers for the border would take "two biennia" to fill, he estimated. He hoped the agency could achieve 250-300 more troopers at the border by the end of the coming biennium (2017), but it would take until the end of the next (2019) to fully staff out 500 troopers at the border.

None of our politicians are saying publicly that the 500 troopers won't happen for four years. I wonder if the border surge will still be a thing by then? Will anyone really care after Barack Obama leaves office and isn't around to accept blame? Does this mean the National Guard will remain deployed until the rollout of 500 new troopers at the border is complete? ¿Quien sabe?

To achieve these lofty employment goals, the agency has implemented a "lateral hire" program that has some members of the Sheriff's Association unhappy, the committee was told. Cops with TCLEOSE certification can be hired on at DPS with only an 8-week stint at the academy instead of the 20 weeks required of regular cadets. The Sheriffs worry this will "decimate" their staffs because DPS pays more than most counties and their best officers are tempted to shift allegiances, particularly along the border where officers wouldn't have to move. McCraw was unapologetic, declaring that while it's "not our goal to decimate or irritate ... the Sheriff's Association in any way," it was his responsibility to quickly hire as many qualified individuals as he could and this was the quickest way to do it (read: "screw you local departments, we're taking your best guys").

McCraw also gave a metric I hadn't heard on the (in)effectiveness of DPS border cameras, estimating they'd generated about 113,000 "detections" of illegal crossings along the border and 53 "apprehensions" which generated 110 tons of drugs seized. That's a trivial rate given DPS' touting of its border mission as an unmitigated success. McCraw thinks the apprehension rate will improve if the Legislature would pay for "aviation assets" (read: drones) which would automatically deploy to the scene when cameras identified a border incursion. But of course, people still must be apprehended on the ground, so there's a functional limit to how effective "aviation assets" can be.

Coupled with downward reassessments of the amount of drugs seized and the extent to which DPS' surge reduced illegal border crossings, these paltry metrics on apprehensions attributable to border cameras contribute to a picture of ineffectiveness and overstated achievement from DPS' much ballyhooed surge. Who really thinks these activities are worth doubling down on with an additional $815 million in the next biennium?

One other interesting moment from McCraw's testimony piqued my attention: He said DPS existed since 1823, which would date it from 13 years before Texas' independence from Mexico! Usually one hears DPS' history dated to 1935; the Texas Rangers ostensibly date to Texas' pre-revolution Mexican era (their supposed predecessors, whose direct connection to the modern force is IMO tenuous at best, were mercenaries dubbed the milicia nacional by Stephen F. Austin, with the name Texas Rangers coined in 1874), so that's probably the reference. The lengthening of the organization's historical legacy in many ways typified all the agency's recent pronouncements, with every statement exaggerated at the margins and falling apart in the face of any serious, independent fact checking.

If this border surge policy were truly valid, they wouldn't have to spin the facts so hard to try to justify it.