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)

"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. Even if your correspondent might have gone further, or may quibble with their suggestions (as indeed, I will, below), they're more significant than Grits had anticipated. Good for them!

The Houston Chronicle reported that the Mayor asked for "a few days" to digest the report and meet with the task force chairman, sub-committee chairs, and council members before formulating a response.

Grits, however, has no need to wait. Let's dig into this report and see what's there. Obviously at 104 recommendations, we don't have time to discuss all of them. And some of them are rather small-time, anyway. But let's run through the big stuff, describing their recommendations with Grits' own annotations. This is Part One of what I anticipate will be a three-part analysis: I read the 150-page report so you won't have to! :)

Community Policing (yawn)

So-called "community policing" has always been a hustle. No one can define it and in practice departments interpret it as officers spending time hanging out with whomever instead of responding to calls or performing police work. As fear of crime has declined as the go-to driver of more police spending, "community policing" offers departments a new metric -- percent of time available -- to demonstrate that we always need more officers no matter what is happening with local crime stats. At HPD, Chief Art Acevedo uses the term "relational policing," but, "The Task Force believes it is similar, if not mostly the same." In other words, it's a buzzword intended to confuse with results that can't be measured. None of the recommendations here seem destined to reinvigorate this tired and fruitless approach, from giving cadets community tours, making them sit through more lectures, or having officers document "out of car engagements with civilians and/or businesses."

Updating promotion matrices to give points for community policing might be helpful, once there is a consensus on what exactly officers should be doing, but the report failed to discuss taking points away for officers with misconduct records. That might help, too. In 2017 legislation, Houston state Rep. Senfronia Thompson recommended deducting points for officers found to have engaged in misconduct. Perhaps it's an idea worth reviving?

I liked the "mobile storefront" idea, which was the final recommendation (#16) in the community policing segment. Most of the rest in this section seemed pretty lightweight.

Independent Police Oversight Board

Grits has never been a great fan of civilian-review boards because most of them are as worthless as the one in Houston. Austin's oversight board, along with the Office of Police Oversight (essentially a Police Monitor-Board model), at least has become a window into policing problems we've never had before. (Local press don't cover the complaints, but they're out there from a credible source, and advocates discuss them.)

The Task Force agreed with city council members who recently said they have "no confidence in the current format" of the IPOB. Its powers are truncated and it fails to perform even the duties it's been assigned, they concluded. (These recall the complaints of an IPOB member who recently resigned over the group's inefficacy.) The Task Force laid out three broad models of police oversight:

• Auditor/Monitor Model
• Investigative Model
• Review Focused Model

They recommended IPOB expand to 31 members and adopt an "investigative model," but Grits wonders, "to what end?" Their investigation results would not be part of the department's decision making process when it comes to disciplinary decisions. They have their own investigators for that in the Internal Affairs division. How will these investigations affect real-world outcomes, including policies and practices, much less in the individual cases they investigate?

Since it's been empowered to a) review previously confidential documents and b) publish sometimes de-identified results, Grits has found Austin's fusion of Monitor/Review models (to use the Task Force's nomenclature) gives advocates more empowering information than we had before. The oversight board here reviews cases with an eye toward recommending policy improvements, and the record they create was been a valuable tool for documenting problems in a way that city officials are able to hear. Requiring the Chief to respond in writing to civilian oversight recommendations has also helped.

The Task Force does recommend hiring dedicated, paid staff to support the civilian review board, including investigators who it hopes will have "subpoena power." (FWIW, I'm not sure what more they think they'll get with a subpoena beyond what they get by mandating access to the department's full file.) Regardless, having staff led by a dedicated Police Monitor's position, as Austin did, has the added benefit of creating a counterweight to the chief in the city bureaucracy on police-misconduct questions, where officials might not listen to part-time civilian volunteers. That's a big practical benefit and has been welcome change.

Legislative changes needed to civil service

The portion of the report which made your correspondent jump out of his chair and whoop with sheer delight addressed legal changes needed at the state or city level, but with particular focus on the state.

They want to change the much-derided 180-day rule in two ways - one significant, one not. For the uninitiated, state law and many union contracts say officers in civil service cities can't be punished more than 180 days after they commit a misconduct violation. The Task Force recommended changing this in two ways: 1) have the clock launch on the "date of discovery" of the misconduct instead of the date it occurred, and 2) change 180 days to 210.

The first change is significant; the second much less so, though the first change magnifies its impact. Together, they'd be an important reform. That said, make Grits Philosopher King and I'd say for police the rule should be a full year from the date of discovery.

The Task Force wants to fix another civil-service practice your correspondent has railed against for years: "Require officers involved in incidents in which their conduct is under scrutiny to make statements at the beginning of the investigation." As the Task Force noted on p. 34, "Current practice allows officers to defer making statements until after the investigation is complete and they can read the entire file," as well as review any body camera footage.

Imagine if in a regular murder investigation they waited to interrogate the suspect until s/he reviewed the investigation file with their lawyer: Unthinkable!

Who should prosecute police misconduct?

The Task Force believes the District Attorney has a "symbiotic relationship" with the police department, which results in an "inherent pro-police bias." Thus they think "an independent agency," unnamed in the report, should prosecute those cases instead.

This has been suggested many times before. Some iterations see special prosecutors appointed each time, though that gets expensive.

Speaking of which, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said he'd take the job, but I don't think anybody would trust him.

Grits has a suggestion I believe would be popular with everyone but Alex Bunin, the Harris County Public Defender: I think the Harris County Public Defender Office should take over prosecuting cops instead of the District Attorney.

I've given this a lot of thought: Bunin and his shop are respected, and they already have an oppositional relationship with the Houston PD. I can't think of another outfit that would care less about pissing off the union. They've got the talent in the office to do the job. Plus the commissioners court just expanded their budget.

Now, they may not want to do it. Many of those folks are life-long defense lawyers who chose not to go into prosecution for a reason. But sometimes, the person who doesn't want the job is exactly the right person to handle it responsibly. (They know what's required; that's why they didn't want it!) It wouldn't be that many cases by comparison to their usual docket and I believe they're the right crew to handle the job.

Next time: Improving the complaint process, body-cam policies, use of force, and "rebuilding trust through transparency."

Litigation challenges Abbott's executive order on COVID-19 jail releases

The Texas Fair Defense Project, ACLU of Texas, and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law sued Governor Greg Abbott over his executive order (GA-13) related to pretrial jail releases in response  to the coronavirus, as well as Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has vowed to aggressively enforce it. The Harris County Attorney's office has also signed onto the litigation, and 16 Harris County Criminal Court at Law judges number among the plaintiffs. It was filed in a Travis County district court.

In an email announcing the lawsuit, TFDP's Amanda Woog wrote that:

Public health experts have been warning for weeks of the dangers of COVID-19 in jails: tight quarters, a particularly vulnerable population, and a revolving door of staff and detained people, make a jail a "hotspot" for a COVID-19 outbreak which would devastate the people within and outside the jail walls. The order sought to disrupt the incredible movement we've been seeing across Texas of local stakeholders working together to reduce their jail populations. 

The executive order threatens public and community health, undermining efforts to reduce jail populations and avoid outbreak in jails and surrounding communities. Further, under the order, only the poor would stay in jail; people who can afford to pay cash bail are released, to the privilege of social distancing and other precautions we on the outside can take to avoid infection. 

It disrupts the work of local communities in determining how to respond to this unprecedented crisis, and unconstitutionally usurps the authority of the legislature and the judiciary.

The petition filed this morning can be found here, and the ACLU-TX press release here.

The lawsuit alleges Gov. Abbott's order spawned "turmoil and confusion in the courts by purporting to strip judges and magistrates of their authority to decide individual cases." As a result, "The judges are now caught between fulfilling their obligations to decide bail in individual cases as prescribed by the Constitution and Legislature, or obeying an Executive Order."

The petition argues that "The Disaster Act does not empower the Governor to modify or suspend the targeted sections of the Code of Criminal Procedure. This renders GA-13 unlawful in its entirety, and the Court should invalidate its provisions as ultra vires [ed. note: acting beyond one's legal authority] on this basis alone.

Also, "GA-13 violates Article I, Section 28 of the state Constitution, which prohibits non-legislative suspension of the laws of the State, and Article II, Section 1, which mandates separation of powers between co-equal branches of government. GA-13 is therefore unconstitutional on its face."

Both stances to me appear inarguable. The governor has the power to suspend administrative regulations, but not the friggin' Code of Criminal Procedure! Grits wrote the other day that Abbott had exceeded his authority, and this is precisely why.

Conservatives should be just as unhappy at this attempted gubernatorial coup vs. local judicial power as are the judges, criminal defense lawyers and civil-rights groups who are plaintiffs in the suit. After all, if in a few years Democrats find themselves in control of statewide offices, will conservatives really want some liberal governor to have the authority to suspend criminal-law statutes and override local judges every time a disaster is declared?

Observed the plaintiffs, "The Disaster Act has never been interpreted to empower the Governor to interfere with the power of the Judiciary. Until now, no Texas Governor has invoked the Disaster Act to purport to suspend provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure and effect sweeping changes to criminal law." Indeed, "The Texas Constitution provides that 'No power of suspending the laws of this state shall be exercised, except by the Legislature.' Tex. Const. Art. I, § 28."

Grits is very glad to see this and hopes the courts act quickly to thwart the governor's attempted power grab. I don't think he and Paxton have a leg to stand on.

See initial coverage of the lawsuit from the Austin Statesman and the Texas Tribune.

UPDATE (4/10): Just before a hearing began on Friday considering the request for a temporary restraining order, attorneys for the Governor and Attorney General filed their response brief. For those interested, here's a copy. Here's the first media coverage on the topic from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and another article from the Austin Statesman. I'm listening to an audio file of the hearing now. Judge Lora Livingston sounds unconvinced by the Governor's lawyers' arguments.

Podcast: Adversaries over Austin police-union contract sit down; when is it okay for courts to electrocute mentally ill defendants?; pythons as stocking stuffers?; and other stories

When is it okay for a judge to electrocute a mentally ill defendant?

What leverage did a Texas civil rights activist say enabled Austin advocates to force reforms into the city's police-union contract?

How many pet pythons are too many, and are they appropriate to give at Christmas as stocking stuffers?

These and other questions are answered on this month's episode of the Reasonably Suspicious podcast. As always, you can subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, or listen to it here:


Here's what's in this month's episode:

Opening: Pythons as stocking stuffers?

Top Story

• Principles for progressive prosecutors

Interview
Police-union negotiators Ron DeLord and Chris Perkins sit down with a now-familiar adversary, Chas Moore of the Austin Justice Coalition, to discuss the aftermath of the year-long fight over the capital city's police-union contract.

Home Court Advantage

• When is it okay to electrocute a mentally ill defendant in court? Discussion of James Calvert oral arguments
• Ken-Paxton prosecutors de-funded, but at what cost to indigent defense?

The Last Hurrah

• Dallas PD officer indicted for murder
• Lawsuit challenges driver surcharges
• Ray Hill, R.I.P.

Find a transcript of the show below the jump.

Checking in at the CCA: TX high criminal court hasn't posted oral-argument videos in nearly six months, and other stories

Since your correspondent left the Innocence Project of Texas, I haven't tracked the Court of Criminal Appeals hand-down lists nearly as closely as at times in the past. But here are a few recent items that merit Grits readers attention.

Hiccup in publishing CCA arguments video
Last year, the Legislature mandated that oral argument videos from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals should be recorded and posted online. But the last ones available as of this writing are from June, and court staff don't know when they will resume posting them.

I'd noticed the discrepancy because my podcast co-host, Mandy Marzullo, and I had hoped to do a segment on the use of "shock belts" in court following oral arguments in the James Calvert case, which was argued Sept. 19. But the recording is still not available.

Grits was told by court staff that the failure to post after June is because of "trouble with the audio." The Office of Court Administration, I'm told, is working on the problem. But it's now almost six months since they stopped posting oral arguments. Surely that should have been enough time to implement some sort of Plan B to begin recording again.

Shoplifter acting alone can't commit organized crime
Judge Elsa Alcala recently prevailed on the rest of the court to declare that a single episode of solo shoplifting, in which the defendant acted by herself and not in concert with others, did not qualify for enhancement for punishment as "organized retail theft." Here's her opinion, and Judge Keller concurred. Judge Yeary alone dissented, attempting to stretch the bounds of the statute far beyond reason, good judgment, or the well-documented legislative intent behind the statute. (Upon reading his opinion, I could not understand why he would choose to die alone on that hill.)

We're really going to lament Judge Alcala's departure from the CCA once she's gone. She's become an intellectual leader on the court who will be sorely missed.

Five-member CCA majority bucks GAW faction, trial court to declare defense counsel ineffective
An unpublished, per curiam opinion garnered four dissenters (the entire Government Always Wins faction) but no dissenting opinion earlier this month. The defendant alleged his trial counsel was ineffective because of his "failure to note that the foreman of the grand jury was also empaneled and served as the foreman of the trial jury, failure to file pre-trial motions to suppress, failure to object to the introduction of Sheriff’s Department offense reports into evidence, failure to present alibi witness testimony, and failure to advise Applicant that the decision of whether or not to testify was his to make."

The trial court in Newton County recommended denying relief. But five members of the Court of Criminal Appeals decided to overturn the conviction, granting the defendant a new trial. And whatever reasons Judges Keller, Hervey, Keasler, and Yeary had for dissenting, they chose not to share them.

5-4 is close, and the story line about the grand jury and petit jury having the same foreman is a twist I've never heard before. Nor is it typical for an unsigned, per curiam opinion to have four dissenters, much less for none of them to articulate the reasons for their dissent. The dynamics surrounding this case imply a lot of backroom drama, even if there's not much paperwork to document it.

Paxton prosecutor legal-fee decision may impact indigent-defense cases
The case over legal fees for special prosecutors in the Ken Paxton indictments perhaps predictably was decided based on political rather than legal considerations, with significant unintended consequences potentially resulting. The court's majority was under pressure from Republicans to shut down the prosecution of the state Attorney General, siding with pols in Paxton's home county to refuse to pay special prosecutors their legal fees. See coverage from the Texas Tribune.

Judge Mary Lou Keel seemed fed up with her colleagues in the majority, accusing them of re-ordering and re-wording statutes and case law to "mask" their real meaning and "disregard" the clear intent of the statute. I thought she made mincemeat of the central argument in Judge Bert Richardson's concurrence.

Both she and Judge Alcala made the case that the majority opinion would impact indigent defense payments. Alcala declared the opinion was "effectively a decision to deny paying a reasonable fee to defense attorneys appointed to represent indigent defendants, and that will likely result in more cases of ineffective assistance of counsel."

Not only was the court majority legislating from the bench, Alcala observed, but it was doing so badly. "It is improper for a decision granting mandamus relief to create new law, but it is an even more dire situation when the new law, as here, results in manifest injustice due to its newly created policy."

The majority botched the issue so badly it could even require legislative intervention. It's possible counties won't be able to find lawyers to take on complex cases if they may be limited to low, flat fee based on standardized schedules, no matter how many hours they put in on a case.

Judges rubber stamping capital writs, warrants now required for cell-phone location data, managed-assigned-counsel systems still suck, and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends that merit readers' attention:

Austin admits police oversight system didn't do much
Grits has said for years that Austin's civilian review panel for police was more or less worthless as oversight. They make fine recommendations, but none of them are ever implemented, as the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition demonstrated in a report last year. Now, a city auditor's report has agreed, finding that none of the civilian review panel's recommendations under the old system were ever implemented. See coverage from the Austin Monitor.

Lawsuit: Austin PD failed to properly investigate sexual assault cases
See coverage from the Daily Beast. Putting a pin in this one to look at later. Given that Austin PD's DNA lab has already been shut down because they were performing the tests wrong, it's not hard to imagine some cases aren't aggressively pursued when they should be.

Bexar should reject calls for managed-assigned-counsel
The SA Express News editorial board argued that Bexar County needs to a) spend more on indigent defense but also b) spend more on oversight to make sure it's getting quality defense for the money it's spending. They should stop promoting the Managed Assigned Counsel program, which has been a disaster in Austin. What Bexar County needs is a full-blown public defender office, and not just for mental-health cases.

Harris County judges rubber stamp DA findings in capital writs
In 96 percent of state capital habeas cases since 1995, judges in Harris County simply adopted proposed findings of fact written by the prosecution, according to this analysis from the Houston Law Review. See this summary of the analysis compiled by The Open File.

Paxton sides against local GOP judges in bail litigation
Positioning himself opposite the Republican judges who've spent more than $6 million fighting bail reform in Harris County, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is seeking to have lawsuits dismissed which were filed by Harris County magistrates against the State Commission on Judicial Conduct after that agency had sanctioned them. The judges in Houston fighting bail reform are becoming increasingly isolated. The bail bond industry is nearly their only remaining ally, given that statewide elected officials like the Attorney General and the Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice haven't backed their play.

Settlement in pool party police assault
The girl who was famously slammed down by police at a McKinney pool party has entered into a settlement with the city, reported The Root. " According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, under the terms of the settlement, ... plaintiffs in the case, were awarded a total of $184,850 last month, with $148,850 of that amount going to" the principle victim. ALSO: The Statesman has the story of another high-profile civil rights suit against a police officer out of Mesquite who tazed a teenager in the groin in a situation where the boy ultimately died.

SCOTUS: Protect cell-phone location data with warrant requirement
I haven't had time yet to read the new Carpenter decision from the US Supreme Court on when law enforcement must get a warrant to access cell-phone location data and when they don't need one. But the fact that Orin Kerr is grumpy means I'm likely to like it. Regular readers may recall that Grits had previewed the case around Christmastime with a poetic homage.

Texas AG: Carrying a gun doesn't justify 'Terry' frisks

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has signed onto an amicus brief aimed at the US Supreme Court to argue that carrying a firearm in a state where that's legal does not justify a "Terry frisk" based on officer safety. Here's the full text of his press release:

Attorney General Ken Paxton yesterday joined West Virginia’s amicus brief in Robinson v. United States along with Indiana, Michigan and Utah in the United States Supreme Court to protect against unjustified frisk searches occurring on the suspicion that a citizen is armed. The basis for this search places a burden on the Second Amendment right to carry a firearm. 

In 1968, Terry v. Ohio determined that a law enforcement officer may both stop and frisk an individual when “specific and articulable facts” lead an officer to reasonably believe criminal activity is occurring. This search is justifiable when the officer believes the detained individual “is armed and presently dangerous to the officer or others.” However, an en banc Fourth Circuit recently interpreted Terry to require only a reasonable suspicion that the individual is armed. This interpretation allows officers to justify a frisk search solely on the suspicion of possessing a weapon during a lawful stop, regardless whether there is a reasonable belief that the individual is dangerous. 

“The Fourth Circuit interpretation places an unlawful burden on Second Amendment rights. The Constitution plainly guarantees law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms, whether through open or concealed carry,” said Attorney General Paxton. “We must ensure the Court continues to protect the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.”

The issue to be decided in this case:

Whether, in a State that permits residents to legally carry firearms while in public, a law
enforcement officer’s belief that an individual stopped during a lawful Terry stop has a firearm on his or her person provides a sufficient basis — standing alone — for the officer to conclude that the armed individual is “presently dangerous” and thus allow the officer to lawfully engage in a warrantless “frisk” of that individual.

The implications are significant: Possibly carrying a gun is the main justification for Terry frisks, so if that's no longer sufficient, it could virtually end the practice.

Ken Paxton may be the most unlikely Fourth Amendment advocate imaginable, which may explain why he only reached these questions when a Second Amendment right was at stake.

The police accountability bill that might still become law

A short-term defeat: Wednesday's record vote

As the Austin American-Statesman and others have noted, the slew of police accountability bills originally thought to have a chance have largely stalled in the sausage-making that is the Texas legislative process.

The House is on track to eek out one bill, though, which seeks to enforce a law already on the books. Thursday morning - 14 hours after HB 245 lost by one vote - lawmakers preliminarily passed the bill, which now faces a "third reading" vote on Friday.

The proposal would give notice to law enforcement agencies that fail to file the one-page reports with Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office within 30 days of a shooting, and fine them $1,000 per day if the reports aren’t filed within seven days of getting notice. The bill’s author, Rep. Eric Johnson, D-Dallas, said he believes he has the votes to pass it.

“I’m proud that my House colleagues have once again shown their commitment to this important issue,” Johnson said.

Late Wednesday, the legislation was voted down by a lethargic, chaotic body on the heels of a lengthy and tedious discussion about trucking regulations. Johnson said when it came time for his bill, lawmakers “didn’t know what the bill did or that it was agreed upon, and it just got caught up in the wash.”

Some may still oppose the bill because it fines departments – penalties owed to the Crime Victim’s Compensation Fund increase to $10,000 the day after receiving notice a second time in five years and $1,000 each day following. But Johnson was hopeful, since law enforcement and those who scrutinize law enforcement’s behavior are in favor of the legislation.

Texas Municipal Police Association Executive Director Kevin Lawrence said they were “absolutely supportive. Everybody should be required to play by the rules.”

The required reports collect demographic information about the people involved in the shooting; factual information like the address, date and time, severity of the shooting, and whether the person was armed; and a description of the original call.

An analysis of the reports has shown that in the 20 months from Sept. 2015 to May 2017, 302 individuals were shot – 141 fatally and 161 causing injuries – by Texas law enforcement. Fifty-three people who were shot were unarmed. Meanwhile, 50 law enforcement officers were shot while on-duty, 10 fatally and 40 causing injuries, based on the reports.

But the database is incomplete, as the series, Point of Impact, revealed earlier this year, and violators currently do not face punishments. 

In February, I reported that 12 fatal shootings of both officers and civilians were improperly reported. The Attorney General’s office confirmed that all 12 reports should have been filed, and they were within weeks, albeit too late to be included in the annual reports released in 2016 and 2017.

In committee, one person – San Antonio police Sgt. James Johnson – signed up in opposition but did not speak. Nor did he comment for a story.

Kevin Buckler, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Houston, was one of two people who testified in support of the bill at the March 14 hearing. Noting that the 2015 requirement was applauded for its push for transparency in police shootings, he called Johnson’s bill “simply the next step in progression to transparency reform.”

RELATED: From the Texas Tribune.

UPDATE: This bill passed on to the senate with a third-reading record vote of 112-21. See here for the vote tally.

About that custodial death report database...

Without being asked to do so – not counting the frequent requests for information – the Texas Attorney General’s office spent $150,000 to index and display reports of deaths in law enforcement custody.

According to records released in response to this scribe's request, the state paid Neos Consulting Group $157,031 to create the database last June. The site, featuring a searchable index of PDF reports on the deaths of Texans, went live in December, the Houston Chronicle reported.

When asked why the office voluntarily set up the database, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Ken Paxton cited “transparency and easier access to the information by the public.”

The reports on deaths of people who die while in the custody of Texas law enforcement have been required for years. Before the new database went live, the office posted online a list of reports that were available, but one would need to file an open records request to obtain the report.

“These reports play a vital role in providing transparency between law enforcement and the public by requiring custodial deaths to be properly reported, investigated, and filed with the OAG for public access,” said Kayleigh Lovvorn, a spokeswoman for Paxton.

While the database is limited to custodial death reports, one could surmise that a similar database for officer-involved shooting reports – also required by state statute – may carry a similar price tag.

In 2015, Rep. Eric Johnson, D-Dallas, authored a bill requiring the reports that then became law. Initially, the proposal called for the reports to be posted online in a searchable database, but that requirement was cut in negotiations because of a hefty cost, Johnson said.

This year, Johnson’s at it again. Aside from two other bills that would tie compliance with the police shooting reports requirement to state funding, he’s also proposing requiring the Attorney General’s office to establish a portal for all state-required law enforcement reports.

That would undoubtedly cost precious cash in a tight budget year, but would also increase transparency and enhance public access - or at least the appearance of those things. Texas State University professors last year determined that hundreds of custodial deaths from 2005 to 2015 were missing from the database. Our own Amanda Woog confirmed that about 200 deaths - about one-quarter of those that have occurred in the past decade - were unreported, and the Class B misdemeanor punishment reserved for agencies that don't report their deaths had never been used.

No word from the AG's office on what - if any - role the new index will play in ensuring that agencies comply with the law.

Podcast: New Texas death-in-custody data online

Grits contributing writer Amanda Woog, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the UT-Austin Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis, has made a curated version of Texas' death-in-custody database available for the first time online. See her fancy new website, somewhat blandly dubbed the Texas Justice Initiative. There's nothing dull about its contents, however.

Last year, the Texas Legislature mandated that police departments report all police shootings to the Attorney General, whether or not the victim dies. But for years, police, jails and prisons in Texas already had to report deaths in custody, though scarce few people were aware of it and the information wasn't widely available. The AG publishes a master list of names, but nearly all of the voluminous detail until now was kept offline, available only to those who knew enough to file an open records request. Since just a few reporters even knew the database existed (besides Grits, Brandi Grissom of the Dallas News, Tanya Eiserer at WFAA, and John Tedesco at the SA Express-News are the only writers I've seen use it in years), most of the detail here is being revealed publicly for the first time, including on cases from up to a decade ago.

See the press release announcing the new site launch and a 22-page report detailing her initial findings from eleven years of data.  And congratulations, Amanda! This has long been needed; it was a tremendous accomplishment. (MORE: See coverage from The Atlantic and the Texas Tribune.)

To give a better sense of the project, Grits sat down last week with Ms. Woog for a recorded interview. You can listen to it below, or find a transcript of our conversation below the jump.

Attorney General makes scant improvements to officer-involved shooting law

Last Thursday, the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) published in the Texas Registry its final rule and reporting form for administering the officer-involved shooting law passed last legislative session. The rule was unchanged from the rule proposed in December, but the form the rule incorporates had slight changes, as did the layout of the website where the incident reports are posted. Ultimately, the OAG missed an opportunity to meaningfully improve data collection under the new law.

After the rule and form were proposed in the Texas Registry back in December, Representative Eric Johnson (author of the bill), the Austin Justice Coalition, and I (Amanda Woog) submitted public comment with recommendations on how to amend the rules and reporting forms to better administer the law. We identified problems with the way the reporting forms were drafted, being used, and posted online, and recommended solutions within the bounds of the statute and the administrative authority of the OAG.  While the OAG did address some of the identified problems, most of the recommendations were not incorporated.

To address the problem that there is no way to monitor when the form was submitted to the OAG and when the OAG posted the form to its website (events that are governed by specific time periods in the statute), the OAG added a space on the reporting form for when the report was received by the OAG, and is now tracking on its website when the report was posted to the OAG website.

To address the problem that law enforcement agencies are submitting multiple forms to reflect single incidents in which multiple officers fired their weapons, creating the appearance of duplicate reporting, the OAG added a space to report the time of the incident.  The idea is that a person looking at the reports will know multiple reports refer to the same incident if the date, time, location, and decedent/injured characteristics are all the same.  But this does not actually solve the problem - it just creates one more field for a person to check if they're trying to make an educated guess as to whether two (or more) reports refer to the same incident.  It's still a guess.  And there's still the possibility that two different people of the same age, race/ethnicity and gender were shot in the same location at the same time.  I'm recalling incidents in Houston where multiple young black men in their 20s were shot by HPD in the same incident.  Those reports are hardly distinguishable, and it takes judgment and research to parse them.

The OAG's own annual report demonstrated the risk of filing multiple reports to reflect single incidents. The report overstated the number of people killed by police in Texas – the OAG recorded 29, while the correct number is 24. The mistake was in all likelihood due to multiple reports having been filed when multiple officers (frequently from different agencies) fired their weapons and injured or killed a single person.

Further, that the OAG made no changes to the proposed rule but did change the form it incorporates demonstrates another problem - that the OAG could change the form without going through the rulemaking process.  The rule does not create the form or lay out its substantive requirements; it merely incorporates forms hosted outside of the rules, which could be changed at any time.

In any event, the next round of improvements to the new law will likely have to come from the Legislature.  Looking ahead to next session and how we can better administer the law and improve data collection, legislators should consider the following amendments:

• Require the OAG to create a supplemental form to be used in incidents where more than one officer was involved.
• Require the OAG to create an online searchable database of officer-involved shooting incidents (right now, the reports are only available in PDF form on the OAG website).
• Require the OAG to include in their annual report information on incidents that were reported late to the OAG.
• Amend the form to include a space for a deadly weapon description.

This post has been edited to reflect the changes in the reporting form and the OAG's website that have been implemented.

Cause and effect: Veto of Public Integrity Unit funding costing Collin County taxpayers

Grits finds complaints by the Collin County Commissioners Court about paying legal bills for AG Ken Paxton's special prosecutors ironic. A judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging the fees and ordered them to pay the legal tab, which has topped a quarter million dollars. According to the Dallas News:

Collin County commissioners have been vocal about their opposition to the costly Paxton prosecution, saying they have no choice but to pay the amounts ordered by the court. In a blog post on Sunday, County Judge Keith Self called again for the special prosecutors to resign so that another district attorney from the region could be assigned to the case.

“Our taxpayers deserve better,” Self wrote.

Perhaps, if this is such a great concern, Judge Self and the commissioners court should lobby the Legislature next year to reinstate funding for the Public Integrity Unit at the Travis County DA. Former Gov. Rick Perry's veto of their budget is the reason they're stuck with these bills. Before 2013, state taxpayers would have picked up the tab.

AG overstated number of Texas police shootings, failed to promptly post reports; most black folks shot by police were in Houston

Grits contributor and UT-Austin postdoc Amanda Woog last week issued a new analysis of police shootings reported to the Texas Attorney General in the first four months after a new law, HB 1036 by Rep. Eric Johnson, caused agencies to begin reporting in September. Among her findings:

Of the 65 people shot by peace officers, 10 were reportedly unarmed and 55 were armed. Of the 24 people killed, two were reportedly unarmed and 22 were armed. Officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety (“DPS”) were involved in both deaths of reportedly unarmed people. DPS also saw disproportionately more deaths than other law enforcement agencies. Sixty-seven percent (four out of six) of the incidents that involved DPS officers resulted in death, compared to 33% (20 out of 61) of the incidents not involving DPS officers.

So overall, 44 percent of people shot by law enforcement during this period were killed, and 15 percent of people shot were unarmed. Here's a bit more detail regarding the circumstances surrounding police shootings:

Twenty-seven incidents occurred as a result of an emergency call or request for assistance; five as a result of a traffic stop; four as a result of a hostage, barricade or other emergency situation; two as a result of the execution of a warrant; and 27 were as a result of an “other” type of call. Four of the incidents listed as “other” were described as accidents, such as an accidental discharge or ricochet fragments from a training exercise resulting in injury.

Law enforcement interests should appreciate Woog's work to disaggregate and analyze this new data, since, in its statutorily mandated report,  the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) overstated the number of people killed by Texas cops by more than 20 percent.  From Ms. Woog:

Under HB 1036, the OAG is required to publish an annual report by February 1 summarizing the prior year’s data and appending the reports that were submitted that year. On February 1, 2016, the OAG released the 2015 report, which was posted on the OAG website and submitted to the governor and the standing legislative committees with relevant jurisdiction.

The OAG reported, “there were seventy (70) separate incidents statewide involving peace officer shootings. … Those incidents resulted in twenty-nine deaths and forty-one injuries to individuals; additionally, four (4) peace officers were injured, none were killed.” The OAG reported five more incidents of officer-involved shootings than this report but both reports are based on the same 90 reports that were submitted to the OAG.

This discrepancy is likely due in large part to redundancy in current reporting procedures, which require that law enforcement agencies file separate reports for each peace officer or civilian involved in a shooting incident. On the face of the reports, it is not always clear whether similar reports concern the same or separate incidents, or the number of individuals involved in a given shooting. For example, on October 30, 2015, a 29-year-old man was shot and killed by police outside of Mesquite. 

Three reports were submitted documenting the incident: two were filed by the Mesquite Police Department on November 2; and one by DPS on November 6. The DPS report was filed on a different date and reports a different incident location. The Mesquite Police Department recorded the location as “18600 IH 635,” while DPS recorded it as “18400 LBJ Fwy.”

Although the inconsistencies across these reports appear to indicate that they concern separate incidents, further examination reveals that they likely refer to the same event. A lieutenant with the Mesquite Police Department told media that two Mesquite Police Department officers and a DPS officer fired their weapons. In addition, the area of the road where the Mesquite Police Department reported the incident took place is known locally as the “Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway.” It is possible that the OAG report counted these reports as two or even three separate incidents, while they likely refer to the same event. In this study, these reports were counted as a single incident.

There were three incidents in 2015 in which multiple reports were filed by different agencies on different dates, but the reports likely refer to the same incident. One incident saw five separate reports filed by four separate agencies and the other two incidents were each reported by two different agencies. The OAG reported 29 deaths, but this report found 24; the difference may be explained by these incidents having been counted multiple times.

This could be fixed easily. For example, the form the OAG produced for agencies to fill out does not include the name of the victim, which would easily allow them to tell when they're counting multiple reports for the same shooting.

On the flip side, there were at least two police shootings resulting in death which were not reported by local agencies to the OAG:

the Washington Post database of people who have been shot and killed by police identifies two officer-involved deaths in 2015 that should have been, but were not reported to the OAG under HB 1036. The first incident was in West Odessa, where, according to news reports, a man was shot and killed by three officers after he allegedly charged at them with a knife. The second unreported incident was in Houston, where according to news reports, a man was shot and killed by a Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputy after the man allegedly lunged at the deputy with a knife.

Also, it appears the OAG is not always posting shooting reports online within five days of receiving them as required by HB 1036. From a footnote: "There are eight reports in the OAG annual report that are not posted on the OAG website as of the date of this report. The reports document incidents in September in Freeport, Plano, Houston, Alvin, Balch Springs, El Paso, and Dallas." They clearly had the reports, why not post them online?

Notably, people shot by the Houston Police Department were younger and more likely to be black than those shot in other jurisdictions:

Officers with the Houston Police Department (“HPD”) shot a significantly higher percentage of black people than officers in the rest of Texas. Of the 12 people reportedly shot by HPD officers, 75% (9) were black, compared to 12% of people shot by officers in the rest of Texas. Further, HPD officers were involved in all three reported deaths of black men. People shot by HPD officers were also younger when compared with the rest of Texas; the median age of people shot by HPD was 22, compared with 32 in the rest of the state.

Granted, this dataset is still relatively small (though far larger than one would wish). If those disparities continue throughout 2016, they may require more serious explanation.

While the popular assumption may be that most people shot by police are black, during these four months, 45 percent of people shot by Texas law enforcement were white, 23 percent were black (with most of those shot in Houston), and 31 percent were Latino.

Finally, readers may recall Ms. Woog had suggested revisions to the Attorney General's rules governing this data collection to fix some of the problems which produced these errors and to document whether reports are turned in within the legal timelines. (See her column from the Dallas News discussing the proposed amendments.) In this latest report, she offered this update:

During the public comment period, three individuals/organizations submitted comment on the proposed rules. Suggestions for improvement included creating supplemental forms to be used when multiple officers have fired their weapons or multiple people have been shot; including an entry on the forms for a deadly weapon description if one was reportedly used; providing guidance on how an “incident” is defined; and creating a single publicly-available source aggregating the information in the reports.

Thank heavens Amanda took on this project or, despite HB 1036, we STILL wouldn't have an accurate picture of the number of people shot and killed by law enforcement in Texas.

Woog: AG, Lege must improve police shootings data collection

Texas' new reporting requirements on police shootings should be tweaked during the Attorney General's rule making process and upgraded in the next legislative session "to penalize noncompliance, expand reporting and improve the public availability of the information," said Grits contributing writer Amanda Woog in a Dallas News opinion column today. She called on the AG to:

• Revise the reporting forms so that law enforcement has clear guidance on how to report incidents in which multiple officers have fired shots.
• Publish when the reports are received and posted so that compliance with the law’s time requirements can be monitored.
• Require law enforcement to clarify what is considered a deadly weapon in an officer-involved shooting.
• Report to the Legislature if law enforcement agencies have submitted reports late.
• Create a public source that aggregates the information reported.

Other fixes will require legislative action in 2017:

To begin, HB 1036 needs some teeth. There is no agency tasked with enforcing the law, and even if one were, there is no punishment for noncompliance. In contrast, the Texas law that requires that a death in custody is reported provides a criminal penalty for failure to comply.

Further, legislators should expand the information being collected and reported. This month, the FBI announced that it would start collecting information on any incident in which a police officer causes serious injury or death to a civilian. Though the original version of Texas’ new law included mandatory reporting of any serious injury or death, the enacted version was stripped to limit reporting only to officer-involved shootings. All violent encounters should be reported so that the public and policymakers can understand the extent of police violence and develop evidence-based solutions to prevent it.

Legislators should also require that law enforcement report the badge numbers of officers involved in these incidents. Law enforcement’s response to recent deaths by police violence – in particular, the deaths of unarmed black men and children – has largely been blamed on “a few bad apples.” If true, those bad apples should be identified and held accountable.

Finally, Texas should make the information reported available in an online database. The reports are currently posted as PDFs on the attorney general’s website. I have been gathering them into an Excel spreadsheet, which I post online. This solution is only a Band-Aid and does not create the kind of accessibility and transparency that would come from having the database available through a governmental agency.

Excellent work, Amanda. On behalf of everybody who cares about police shootings but didn't have time, knowledge or expertise to participate in rule making, thank you.

The AG should adopt the Woog amendments and Texas legislators should begin planning to improve the statute when they come back to town a year from now.

See related Grits posts:

• Compiling new data on Texas police shootings
• DPS fails to report shooting of unarmed man
• Press pick up on police shooting discrepancies
• Three Texas counties made list of America's deadliest for police killings
• Wooginator police shootings database recognized

Press pick up on police shooting discrepancies

Nice to see the mainstream media pick up on the work of one of Grits' fabulous new contributing writers, Amanda Woog, whose new Database of Officer Involved Shooting Incidents at the UT Austin Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis documented lapses in reporting by the Texas Department of Public Safety and other agencies. Last week, she broke the news on Grits, and the Houston Chronicle followed up Nov. 6 with an item titled, "DPS, other police agencies failing to report officer-involved shootings." Reported John Barned-Smith:

House Bill 1036 requires agencies provide certain details such as the ages, gender and races of officers and suspects involved, as well as whether the suspect was armed, injured or killed. It also requires law enforcement agencies to report incidents where suspects shoot officers. Agencies must report shootings within 30 days, and the AG's office has five days to post reports online.

The creation of the database comes after almost a year of nationwide scrutiny of law enforcement's use of force, following a series of lethal incidents between peace officers and civilians that led to riots and protests in many cities. News organizations also discovered that federal data collection did not count many incidents across the country, spurring some outlets to create their own databases.

Databases maintained by The Washington Post and The Guardian count 13 fatal shootings in Texas by police since September 1 - six in that month alone. Those databases do not count officer-involved shootings which are not fatal.

According to the data from the AG's office - which does - there have been 24 officer-involved shootings that have occurred since September 1 and one incident where an officer was shot.

However, criminal justice watchdogs noticed that just half of September's fatal shootings listed on the Post and Guardian databases appeared in the AG's database.

Three shootings - in Ponder, McKinney and Paris - were not listed. In two of the incidents, police said civilians were killed after firing at law enforcement officers.

The Chron also checked in with John Whitmire for his reaction:

Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire said he would be calling DPS to find out why the Paris shooting was not on the list, but also chalked it up to the newness of the law.

"They want to comply," he said. "If there's missing information, it'll get corrected real quick."

Whitmire also said legislators might revisit the legislation if problems about reporting shootings persist.

"There's not piece of legislation that can't be improved," he said. "This is a pretty bold concept. We'll monitor it, and if we need to put some teeth in it, or greater enforcement [mechanisms], we will."

It's gratifying to see others recognize the value of this important work. So congratulations, Amanda! Great job, I'm proud of you.

Perhaps predictably, DPS and McKinney posted their missing reports soon after the press picked up Ms. Woog's blog post.

To be clear, despite the reference in the Chronicle story, the Attorney General doesn't exactly have a "database," at least not yet. They just post scanned pdfs online. Amanda Woog, though, compiled the information into a spreadsheet and cross-referenced it to the national newspaper databases and the AG's death-in-custody database, adding significant value to the minimalist state reporting. Check out a Grits podcast interviewing Ms. Woog about this work and the strengths and limitations of Texas' new reporting regimen.

Bottom line: As soon as Texas required police shootings to be reported, it turned out there were significantly more than we knew about. Ms. Woog's work on her new Database of Officer Involved Shooting Incidents  is the only reason we know about these discrepancies.

DPS Fails to Report Shooting of Unarmed Man: Month One of the New Officer-Involved Shooting Reporting Requirement

Now that we are outside of the 30-day reporting + 5-day posting window for police-involved shootings in the month of September, I took a look at the Guardian and Washington Post databases of police-involved deaths to see if Texas law enforcement agencies have been complying with the new law.

Unfortunately, the compliance rate for deaths* in September is only 50%: three of the six deaths by police-involved shooting captured by the Washington Post and the Guardian have not been posted to the Attorney General’s website.  On September 27, a man in Ponder was shot and killed after police responded to gunshots in the neighborhood. The man allegedly fired at a police officer. This incident is not listed on the Attorney General’s website.

On September 23, a man in McKinney was shot and killed after police responded to a call about a woman and child being held against their will. The man allegedly fired at officers. This incident is not listed on the Attorney General’s website.

On September 21, a man in Paris was shot and killed after a DPS highway trooper approached the man, who was sitting on a highway barrier, and an altercation allegedly ensued. This incident is not listed on the Attorney General’s website.

The September 21 incident is particularly troublesome because it appears to be the one September death from a police-involved shooting in Texas where the person killed was unarmed. And the officer involved was a DPS officer; while I can see how some small agencies without in-house lawyers could be unaware of the new reporting requirement (although, as any law enforcement officer will tell you, ignorance of the law is no excuse), DPS has an Office of General Counsel, which should know of the new law.

While bumps are expected when a new law comes into effect, the early compliance issues point to underlying problems that I have previously identified: no person or office is charged with enforcement, and there are no penalties for noncompliance. Further, the Attorney General’s office has not issued guidance on the new law, which may account for some of the compliance issues and confusion around how to report and where to post. Even if the AG is not interested in enforcing the law (as it has indicated with respect to a similar law), revised forms and guidance could improve roll-out.

It’s great that Texas is ahead of the game in requiring this reporting, but if the law is not enforced, or at least monitored, incomplete data will undermine the value of the information. I hope these problems simply reflect hiccups in the early stages of implementation and that the Attorney General will take a more active role in ensuring the spirit of the law is preserved.

* The Washington Post and Guardian websites only track deaths and I do not know of a database tracking injuries from police shootings to which the Attorney General reports can be compared.

Compiling new data on Texas police shootings

This year, Texas became among the only states to systematically track peace officer-involved shootings, with agencies filling out a one-page report about each one and sending them to the state Attorney General for publication on the web. (See prior Grits coverage.)

Now, that information has been made available via a new online spreadsheet compiled by Amanda Woog, a super-smart young attorney who clerked for Judge Cheryl Johnson at the Court of Criminal Appeals before working as a policy analyst for the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, where Grits first met her this spring. This fall, she took a post as a postdoctoral fellow at the UT-Austin Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis; this database represents her first project in that new role.

Ms. Woog graciously agreed to sit down for a podcast to discuss in detail what information is included in these new reports and the other source she's drawn upon for the database, as well as how this information might influence public discussions surrounding police shootings. (See a brief analysis she prepared regarding the new law and its implementation.)

Some of the incidents Woog catalogs have never been publicly reported in the media. And even though the new statute doesn't require departments to report either the name of the officer of the person he or she shot, in many cases she has been able to find that information from other sources. So she's adding a lot of value here for journalists and other researchers. You can listen to our conversation here:

Or else find a transcript of our discussion appended below the jump.

Seven in September: First look at officer-involved shooting reports reveals incidents which escaped media attention

A new law requiring Texas law enforcement agencies to report officer-involved shootings to the Attorney General went into effect September 1st. There have been a couple of news reports about the publication of this data, but Grits thought it worthwhile to see what the new reports look like. So far, documentation related to seven different shootings has been posted online.

UPDATE: There were at least four more Texas police shootings in September than were reported to the AG.

Even with just a few reports in, it's clear the law is already starting to do what its authors presumably intended - giving a fuller picture of the statewide frequency (too frequent) and severity (all over the map) of police shootings, which sometimes aren't even publicized in the local media. While most shootings do get local press coverage, few ever rise to state or national attention. But like the tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it, media silence doesn't mean the victims were less shot.

There are not enough cases yet to draw any conclusions about broad trends (right now, it's "anecdote" not data). And the reports don't list names for officers or victims. But the early cases are interesting. Here are summaries of the seven posted so far, two of which, interestingly enough, came from Freeport, TX:

Freeport: Officer mistook phone for gun
The very first report under the new law sounds like so many others: an unarmed black man was shot while sitting in his car after being stopped by police after what they say was a tip that the man had crack cocaine. The injured driver was eventually charged with evading arrest and his passenger with public intoxication, but no drug charges. A local news report filled in the story:

A Freeport officer spotted the vehicle and tried to pull the driver over. At first, the driver, identified as Mayberry, stopped, but then took off, leading police on a short chase.

The fleeing vehicle stopped in the parking lot of an apartment complex at 1010 Magnolia. The officer ordered the occupants to show their hands. As the officer approached, the driver reportedly turned his body towards him while holding a dark colored object. Fearing for his life, the officer fired, hitting the suspect in the shoulder.

A later news report provides this salient detail: "No gun was immediately found at the scene, but a dark-colored cell phone was on the ground outside the driver's door of Mayberry's car after the shooting."

Plano: Practice makes perfect
The next day, in Plano, it looks like a cop accidentally shot someone at the shooting range. Grits could find no press coverage of the incident.

Houston: A tragic 'change of heart'
Two days later in Houston, a 21-year old black male was seriously injured after police responded to an emergency call. This incident didn't get much local coverage but according to one report, the man was standing in the middle of the road shooting a gun. After initially complying with officer's commands, the HPD spokesperson said that the man "had a change of heart," reached into his waistband, and the officer shot him three times (in the back, groin and leg).

Freeport: A mysterious death
After that flurry of police shootings, Texas took a short breather, but the next incident report for September 13th raises more questions than it answers. Two officers from the Alvin, Texas police department apparently shot a 29 year old white male to death down in Freeport, nearly 40 miles away, while executing a warrant. According to the document filed with the Attorney General the man was armed. There appears to be no press coverage of the incident at all. There's also nothing over in the AG's "death in custody" database to match the incident.

Balch Springs: At least they didn't shoot the dog
On September 16th, in another unreported incident, a Balch Springs officer responding to a vicious dog complaint shot an unarmed white woman at a single family home on Marriott Avenue. She was not killed.

Dallas: Suicide by cop?
Then finally, Monday September 21 saw shootings in El Paso and Dallas. The Dallas incident garnered significant press coverage as bystander video shows a half undressed, drug addled Gerardo Ramirez running through an apartment complex parking lot shooting a gun. He was killed after shooting at officers on the scene. There has been speculation this was a case of suicide by cop.

El Paso: To prevent an escape
In El Paso on the same day, a 24-year old female officer shot a 21-year old burglary-of-a-vehicle suspect while the man allegedly was trying to escape in a car. According to the AG report, the man had a deadly weapon, but it may have been the vehicle. The El Paso robbery suspect was injured but not killed.

* * *

Perhaps Grits will make this a monthly feature. For now, journalists should be aware of this new resource; clearly there are untold stories about shootings by Texas police waiting to be unearthed which heretofore have not been reported.

Should the AG or special prosecutors litigate police misconduct instead of local DAs?

On Thursday, your correspondent testified before the House Select Committee on Emerging Texas Law Enforcement Issues on behalf of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition for a pair of bills which suggested alternatives to having local District Attorneys prosecute cases of serious police misconduct.

HB 1369 by Harold Dutton would create a special unit at the Attorney General's office to prosecute police misconduct cases, taking them away from local District Attorneys who must worry about the consequences of indicting officers who are witnesses in their cases, not to mention political backlash from police unions or other elected officials. HB 1840 by Ron Reynolds would address the same issue by appointing a special prosecutor, or as envisioned in the committee substitute, appointing a prosecutor from a neighboring county. See video from the hearing here. The bills come up at the 23:40 and 1:58:10 marks, respectively.

Rep. Dan Flynn offered up an alternative idea that garnered some interest: Having a panel of judges appoint special prosecutors in police misconduct cases instead of having the AG or another DA's office do it. He compared the situation to Republicans wanting the Travis County Public Integrity Unit taken away from Rosemary Lehmberg because of a lack of public confidence, emphasizing that a perception of fairness can be as important in politics as reality.

Hearings on both bills were punctuated with emotional testimony from people whose family members had been shot by police. Grits thought it was a good discussion and appreciated Chairman Allen Fletcher giving the bills and the families a hearing. He let the witnesses pro and con have their say and I thought the issues were fleshed out quite well, particularly given that this was the first time the topic has been seriously raised at the Texas Legislature.

At the hearing, I offered an anecdote from my own experience advocating on this topic to illustrate the difficult position prosecutors face when confronting allegations of crimes by police. I wrote up a few notes beforehand to refresh my memory but at the hearing spoke off the cuff, referencing them as an outline. Find my notes discussing the discouraging and unhappy example of of Samuel Ramirez below the jump: