Beto bitter over El Paso police-union fight: Here's why that's okay

Grits must admit, I thought a bit more highly of Beto O'Rourke after reading this feature from The Intercept detailing his fraught relationship with the police union in El Paso when he was on the City Council.

Police unions have increasingly found themselves in conflict with progressive Democrats in cities across the country, and are notorious for defending even the worst officers on the force against charges of assault or murder. Chris Evans, O’Rourke’s spokesperson, said that when he relayed The Intercept’s inquiry to O’Rourke, O’Rourke’s first memory of the fight was that police were demanding a provision that would give officers a 48-hour window after a police shooting before they would have to answer an investigator’s questions. That provision is indeed in the contract; O’Rourke’s remarks at the time, however, were focused on officer compensation and El Paso’s strapped budget.

I'm glad O'Rourke is aware of the 48-hour-interview issue. But it sounds like he wants to divert attention from his earlier focus on opposing police-wage hikes, perhaps because the theme might resonate negatively with the broader union movement. That's understandable.

Given that O'Rourke was on the city council at the time, however, it was his job to worry about budgets at the height of the Great Recession, which is when this debate took place in 2010. And for many reasons, both having to do with competing ideologies of the moment and century-old union history, picking a fight with police unions isn't the same as picking one with the broader union movement.

The politics of justice advocacy and police unions are fraught, as the Intercept article does a good job of conveying. It's a longstanding tension, which extends not just toward progressives but the broader labor movement.

As Ron DeLord, founder of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, recounted in an interview with Grits last year, police unions split from what was then the American Federation of Labor (the CIO didn't exist yet) after the AFL refused to back the Boston police union when they struck in 1919. The cops' history as indifferent strikebreakers earned their entreaties a lukewarm if not hostile reception, and police unions have existed outside the mainstream union movement ever since.

To this day, there's little solidarity between police and the traditional labor movement. When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker decided to bust public-employee unions, for example, police and fire were exempted. Same here in Texas.

Beto's campaign might have pointed out that, in Austin, progressive activists recently engaged in a bitter, year-and-a-half fight over the capital city's police contract, and the terms of debate were as much about economics as social justice debates. Indeed, according to movement leaders, focusing on limiting officer wage growth earned advocates a seat at tables to which they otherwise wouldn't have been invited. The final contract that replaced one voted down by Council freed up about $10 million per year for the city to spend on other stuff.

In the December episode of Just Liberty's Reasonably Suspicious podcast, I sat down with the two lead union negotiators for Austin's police contract, Ron DeLord and Chris Perkins, and Chas Moore, the leader of the Austin Justice Coalition, who led the reform campaign. Here's the audio from our full conversation.

Campaign Zero co-founder Sam Sinyangwe with
Austin Justice Coalition co-founder Chas Moore

Moore, who is one of a new crop of impressive, young Texas civil-rights leaders, was quite open about how AJC used the economic issues that concerned O'Rourke as a city council member to garner support for justice reforms about which city officials wouldn't otherwise have cared. He told me:

I don't think a lot of activists or organizers would like this, but I think ... So what we wanted to do was win, right? We didn't care if you cared about our issue or our cause, we wanted to win. And we knew in order to win, the best way was to talk about money. Right? I agree 110 percent with Ron on that. All but ... one, maybe two council members cared about the transparency and accountability. But for the most part, out of that 11-0, vote, most of those people probably cared about money. 

Instead of talking about, "stop killing unarmed black people and stop mistreating people," we just had to talk about the money, and that's how we get the strange bed fellows of Sierra Club and Save Our Springs and ... All these things that really didn't make sense when you talk about it. 

We had the Parks people come out and talk about, "don't pay the cops." ... For us, it was like "what's the road to win," right? That was a huge part of it. Something we agree with. But that's not the most important thing for, at least my organization. We do care more about the transparency and accountability.

The money factor, which is equally important, was the most important to the people that ultimately made that decision.

Police unions and Movement for Black Lives activists like Moore are natural enemies, even if in Austin they were able to communicate well enough to negotiate, and even sit in Grits dining room for a post-mortem after the fight is over.

Similarly, the police union playbook for how to react when wage demands are refused or their members engage in misconduct can make them natural enemies of city councils as well. Their approach is to wrap themselves in the flag, find someone to blame, then aggressively attack, all the time. It usually works. But it's not a make-friends-and-influence-people kind of approach. It's a power-concedes-nothing-without-a-demand approach, as DeLord remarked, quoting Frederick Douglass.

DeLord's not joking when he quotes Douglass. He was a rabble-rousing police-union innovator in his youth, adopting confrontation tactics first developed to empower the poorest of the poor, but using them on behalf of the armed agents of the state. Today, his books are treated as textbooks among the English-speaking police-union movement globally, exporting those approaches to great effect.

O'Rourke appears to have received the full-blown, Saul-Alinsky-inspired police-union bullying experience, and it left him questioning how much value exists in having cops as the only strong labor interest among public employees in a right-to-work-for-less state like Texas. I don't blame him for that. Spend much time on these issues on any side but theirs, and those questions naturally present themselves.

Grits doesn't begrudge police-union leaders trying to get the most for their members. But as evidenced by the lingering bitterness of a potential Presidential contender at the uber-hostile, Alinskyite tactics he was subjected to, their approach can make enemies. That can come back to haunt you. When you're a bully, payback's a bee-yach.

Finally, fwiw, Grits considers Beto O'Rourke a more attractive U.S. Senate candidate in 2020 than a presidential contender. That's in part because I've wondered about his ability to manage complex institutions of government, and in part because, as a senate candidate, I think he'd help make the whole Democratic ticket competitive in Texas. (Our Texas pols seem to behave more responsibly when they're worried about general elections instead of primaries.)

On the first part - managing institutions - though only a small glimpse at his record, this episode reported by The Intercept does give me some small confidence that he would embrace his responsibilities as a manager of government, separate and apart from political and ideological positions, and fight for the public interest zealously, even when it's hard. That's what those city-council-police-union fights are about.

Roundup: Expensive jails, paid-for pols, broken grand juries, and flawed forensics

Here are a few odds and ends that haven't made it into full, individual posts since my return from Mexico City but which still deserve Grits readers attention:

This week in Cow Town: Hair microscopy and other forensic conundrums
The Forensic Science Commission will hold meetings of its hair and fiber microscopy panel (2 p.m.) and the Complaint Screening Committee (4:30 p.m.) in Fort Worth this afternoon, with its main, full committee meeting tomorrow morning. Go here for the agendas and a livestream of each event.

Contract jail scheme failed to turn profit because of high jailer pay
El Paso county commissioners say they have the most expensive jail in the state because of high jailers salaries that start at $37K and rise to $60K after eleven years, which is certainly the highest I've heard of in Texas. The county takes in $10-11 million per year in revenue for federal prisoners they house but can't turn a profit (I know Grits readers are surprised) because of high overhead costs.

John Wiley Price: Federal defendant
So much to say ... so little of it fit for polite company. In Dallas, county commissioner John Wiley Price has been arrested on federal corruption charges and hauled away in irons. He has been "indicted on 11 bribery- and conspiracy-related charges that allege that he took things of value to influence his vote on business matters," reported Texas Lawyer. Price for years acted as a self-appointed czar of the Dallas County Jail as well as the county bail bond board, so there's a particular irony in his present situation. I don't know much about the specifics of the feds' case against Price beyond published newspaper reports, but it'd be hard for any allegation to surprise me. The feds and Price have been dancing around the issue for years, so I'd be surprised if the US Attorney failed to come loaded for bear. If this fiasco ends with Price rising from the political grave, vampire-like - or worse, Messiah-like, stronger than before - it will balkanize and poison Dallas politics for years. So if they've got him, I hope it's dead to rights.

'Is the grand jury system broken?'

At Texas Monthly, Dan Solomon followed up on Lisa Falkenberg's reporting about grand jury misconduct with a short essay titled, "Is the grand jury system broken?" Good question. IMO the answer is, "There's no way to tell." Last session, state Rep. Bryan Hughes filed an unsuccessful bill to require recording of witness testimony in addition to suspects. That'd be a start, and even better would be for those proceedings to be recorded and turned over to the defense prior to trial, just like Brady material. At a minimum, the information should become public after conviction, like other materials in police and prosecutors' possession that becomes public under Sec. 552.108 of the Government Code when a conviction is final.

Rising law enforcement costs in Montgomery County
The Sheriff's office accounted for the bulk of a recent budget increase in Montgomery County.

Make death-in-custody reports more easily available
I wish the Attorney General would link copies of death in custody reports to the names on their macro list published on their website. It's all public record and doing so would make them a lot easier to use without wasting everyone's time with pointless bureaucracy. According to the list, there have 1,736 deaths in custody at TDCJ between 2005 and so far in 2014.

Consensus on privacy of cell-phone location records?
I agree we are approaching a national consensus that cell-phone location records should be private, but unlike this author I'm not sure all the evidence so far blows that direction. If the Texas and California Legislatures pass warrant requirements, it would be hard for SCOTUS to deny there's a significant national trend. The array of less populous states whose legislatures have so far acted may not yet count as a consensus, particularly when federal circuit courts are split on the question and mine in particular (the 5th) is on the wrong side of history.

A big advocate for bail reform
Times have changed when New Jersey Gov. and presidential hopeful Chris Christie feels politically comfortable getting out in front of bail reform. He wants to give judges discretion to deny bail based on dangerousness and to have most release decisions governed by risk assessments instead of the ability to pay a bondsman.

El Paso Sheriff still seeking rapist deputy, fugitive, ten years after flight

The El Paso County Sheriff has PR campaign dubbed "Manhunt Mondays" in which it seeks the public's help locating fugitives. This week the target is a former sheriff's deputy who's been on the lam for more than a decade. Reported the El Paso Times:

Peter Calzada

Peter Calzada, 54, has been missing since 2003 when he skipped out on his sentencing in a federal case.

Calzada and another former sheriff's deputy, Michael Duran, pled guilty to kidnapping a woman who was stranded and raping her while they were on duty in 1997.

Deputies have received numerous tips on Calzada's location since he went missing, but have been unable to catch him.

In 2009 it was reported that Calzada gained weight, grew his hair long and was teaching English deep in Mexico.

In 2012, a person called a tip that Calzada was in a Arizona airport, but quickly left after the person saw him.

There have even been sightings of Calzada in the Borderland area, but he has eluded capture despite being featured on Manhunt Monday every year.

Daniel Villegas granted habeas relief, but not home for Christmas

After a year and a half delay since a trial court recommended he be freed and declared actually innocent, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to grant habeas corpus relief to Daniel Villegas last week (see earlier Grits coverage). But they denied his actual innocence claim with only the barest of explanations in a terse ruling, instead basing relief on ineffective assistance of his trial counsel. The El Paso Times reported that the trial court won't have jurisdiction over the case until January 13, for reasons I don't completely understand, at which time he's expected to be released on bond until the DA decides whether to re-try the case. (Most observers consider that unlikely; a recanted, apparently coerced confession contradicted by other witnesses was the only evidence against him.) Until then, Villegas, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1995, is waiting in the county jail while he, his family and supporters await a belated Christmas present in January.

There were a handful of other interesting habeas corpus writs granted on the same hand down list.

Serena Staglin of Dallas County had a capital murder conviction overturned and reduced to a second degree felony, for which she will now face re-sentencing. See the court's ruling. Staglin pled guilty to a second degree felony to avoid the capital murder charge, but at sentencing continued to insist on her innocence, causing the court to throw out her plea deal and order the capital murder trial to go forward. She was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, but in her habeas writ argued that "she would have withdrawn her problematic testimony" if her lawyer had advised her of the consequences. The CCA reinstated the original plea deal and ordered her back to Dallas County for re-sentencing based on ineffective assistance of counsel. The sentence range for a second degree felony is 2-20 years; her capital murder sentence was life without parole.

Jamal Ahmed of Harris County was granted relief by the court after he was sentenced to four years in prison for a state jail felony, a crime for which the maximum sentence is only two years. Oops.

The CCA did grant one actual innocence claim last week after laboratory testing proved that Jerrell Bell, who was convicted in Harris County of possessing less than a gram of cocaine, in fact "did not possess a controlled substance." Seems like the crime lab should have caught that one on the front end, but at least his conviction was overturned.

Long delay by CCA in El Paso false confession case

The HuffPost Crime Blog had an article this week profiling a habeas corpus writ involving an alleged false confession case out of El Paso that the Court of Criminal Appeals has been sitting on for nearly a year and a half. The story opened:

Is Daniel Villegas innocent?

According to a district judge, at least 18 alibi witnesses, the jury foreman, one of his alleged shooting victims, the former mayor of El Paso and a local businessman who has turned into his most vocal advocate, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

Daniel Villegas, 36, is serving a life sentence for the shooting deaths of teens Armando "Mando" Lazo, 18, and Robert England, 17, in Northeast El Paso. He has been incarcerated since 1995.

Villegas, who was 16 at the time of the killings, confessed, but claimed immediately after he was separated from then-El Paso police Detective Al Marquez that the confession was aggressively coerced.

According to the HuffPost article:

In August 2012, Judge Medrano ruled that Villegas' confession was coerced -- something that Villegas communicated to juvenile officers immediately following his removal from the custody of Detective Marquez.

"For our justice system to work it must make two important promises to its citizens: A fundamentally fair trial and an accurate result," Judge Medrano told a courtroom. "If either of these two promises are not kept, our system loses its credibility, our citizens lose their faith and confidence in our court system, and eventually our decisions and laws become meaningless."

This summer, supporters of Daniel Villegas marched on the Capitol a year to the day of Medrano's ruling, hoping to get the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to address Villegas' case. Supporters included former El Paso Mayor John Cook, who said he believed Villegas should be granted a new trial, as well as several former death row inmates who lived to be vindicated.

But the appellate court has not so much as set a hearing.

Ironically, Villegas rejected a plea bargain for a 10 year sentence in the double homicide because, he said, he didn't believe an innocent person could be convicted in America. That was nearly 20 years ago. Cases like these, Grits has repeatedly maintained, argue strongly for a requirement that police record interrogations, at least in the most serious cases. But in this case, even the version of the confession obtained by police doesn't match up with other facts in evidence, according to the judge's findings and published reports. I have no idea why the Court of Criminal Appeals has waited to long to confirm or reject the district judge's ruling, but it sure seems like it's time for them to get on the stick.

Shaky science, un-recorded confession form basis of El Paso habeas writ

Jordan Smith at the Austin Chronicle has an excellent new story out ("Science goes to court," Nov. 1) regarding a habeas writ challenging a child-murder conviction out of El Paso. The defendant is seeking relief based on Texas' new law, authored this year by state Sen. John Whitmire and Rep. Sylvester Turner, allowing relief when new scientific developments contradict expert testimony at trial. (In this interest of full disclosure, this was legislation your correspondent helped promote on behalf of my employers at the Innocence Project of Texas.)

As is likely to be the case in much of the litigation surrounding this new habeas provision, the debate centers on whether the defendant's writ relies on new science or evidence that should have been available at the time of trial - in this case biomechanical modeling that has debunked many of the underlying premises of "shaken baby syndrome" and other expert testimony about child trauma. Wrote Smith:

Biomechanics has long been relied on for injury prevention and repair – the development of air bags in vehicles, of helmets to protect football players' heads, of replacement hips and knees – but only recently has biomechanics been incorporated into a criminal law context, to describe with scientific certainty the force needed to cause specific injury. Biomechanical engineering is pivotal to the reconsideration of cases of so-called "shaken baby syndrome," or SBS, and has demonstrated that simple shaking by an adult cannot create the force necessary to kill a child.

"Many if not most non-physicians assume that physicians, skilled in the art of medicine, must have particular knowledge of injury mechanisms. This assumption is wrong," John Plunkett, a veteran pathologist and expert in the diagnosis of child injuries who has been a vocal critic of SBS, wrote in an affidavit filed along with a new appeal in Avila's case. For the most part, physicians, such as Raschbaum, "need not know or apply injury mechanics if they are responsible for diagnosis and treatment," Plunkett continued. "However, if a physician ventures from diagnosis and treatment to speculation of the ultimate force, stress, or energy required to cause injury, he/she must understand mechanics ... and perform or refer to the appropriate experiments."

At the time of [Rigoberto] Avila's trial, and first appeals, biomechanics was not being applied to criminal cases involving child abdominal injuries, a leading cause of death in children, Plunkett and other experts say. Now, Plunkett wrote, such an analysis prior to deciding whether an injury is criminal or not would be "mandatory."

The argument that Avila's conviction was based on faulty, pseudo-scientific conclusions is at the heart of a new appeal filed in September. The appeal cites passage this spring by state lawmakers of Texas' first-in-the-nation law to allow for appeals based upon relevant and newly ascertainable, or evolved, science that contradicts evidence used at trial. The new statute took effect Sept. 1, and is an acknowledgment that criminal law – rigid and, importantly, wedded to finality – must evolve to keep pace with scientific advances.

The principal dispute, Smith reported, surrounds whether biomechanical research regarding child trauma is new science or merely old science re-packaged:

El Paso District Attorney Jaime Esparza does not agree that Avila's case falls under the new law. In a motion filed in October on Esparza's behalf, prosecutor Tom Darnold argues that there is nothing new about the science involved in the case that would warrant review. "Avila acknowledges that the relevant scientific knowledge, that is, the physics of impacts, dates back to Newton and has not undergone significant change since Avila filed his first writ application" 10 years ago, reads a motion to dismiss the case. And even "Reimann notes [in his affidavit] that his analysis of these types of issues is 'based on introductory physics normally presented in a general physics course required for biological, health-science, and pre-med students,'" Darnold noted. As such, the "materials Avila has submitted ... defeat his claim that the scientific knowledge, or the method on which that relevant scientific knowledge is based, has changed since the time he filed his first writ application." And the fact that biomechanics was understood and practiced at the time Avila was tried means only that his lawyers didn't exercise "reasonable diligence" in seeking out that knowledge to present at trial. The plain language of the new law, he notes, "does not authorize the consideration of the merits of a subsequent writ ... based on scientific knowledge that was previously available but not commonly used, or based on scientific knowledge that was previously available but simply was not sought out by the doctors or attorneys in the case."

While it's true that biomechanics takes basic Newtonian physics – the law of bodies in motion – and applies it to living tissues, there is nothing at all static about the science involved, says Peter Stephens, a retired forensic pathologist. And when he hears people dismiss the science as not new or say something like, "'We've moved beyond Newtonian physics now,' most of us just roll our eyes." The fact of the matter, says Stephens, is that using biomechanics as a diagnostic tool for childhood injury is fairly cutting-edge – particularly when it comes to assessing abdominal injuries, like that which ultimately killed Nicholas.

The whole "shaken baby syndrome" (SBS) fiasco - where a field of expert testimony arose in the 1970s to prosecute cases without the underlying science having been tested (see background here) - was one of the brands of junk science under consideration when this new legislation was passed. Grits has no direct knowledge about when new biomechanical modeling that debunked SBS was applied to other types of injuries like the ones in this case. But the idea that the claim should be denied because the physics of impacts "dates back to Newton" is a laughable stance that ignores the history of SBS and the belated rise of biomechanical modeling that has only recently countered it.

Indeed, later this month in Dallas a "World Conference on Infant Head Trauma" will convene to evaluate the evolving status of science in this area. According to the event's website, "The World Congress on Infant Head Trauma brings together international speakers to find common ground and debate controversial topics in pediatric forensic pathology. This unique congress focuses primarily on the pathology and etiology of head trauma (and its mimics) and not the overarching issue of child abuse." This is still very much an evolving field.

In the wake of the new law, not to mention the National Academy of Sciences report in 2009 calling into question an array of non-scientific forensics, we're going to see more habeas writs focused on the question of "what did science know and when did it know it?" That's as it should be.

The case also highlights the drawbacks of failing to record custodial police interrogations. (Regular readers will recall that requiring such interrogations to be recorded is the final, un-enacted recommendation of Texas' Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions.) Here's how Smith described the circumstances of the disputed confession:

Around 11pm that night, as Raschbaum worked on Nicholas [the child victim] at the hospital, Avila was taken to the El Paso PD to give a statement to Det. Tony Tabullo, then a 24-year veteran of the force. Avila was already a suspect in the case, and around 11:30pm Tabullo advised him of his rights before beginning the interview. At roughly 2:10am, Avila signed a statement wherein he detailed that he had been watching TV when Dylan told him that Nicholas wasn't breathing; per Tabullo's instructions, Avila read and placed his initials before and after each paragraph of the statement, and next to the time and date – 23 separate places in all – before signing off on the document.

What happened next is disputed. Accord­ing to Tabullo, after he took Avila's statement he found out that Polaroid photos of Nicholas' body had been brought to the police station. Those photos, he testified, revealed a large area of bruising across Nicholas' chest (the bruised area was seven inches by three inches, according to the autopsy report) that resembled a shoe print. Armed with this information, Tabullo said, he returned to Avila and confronted him with what he considered evidence that Avila had stomped on the baby's chest. Tabullo asked Avila if he could see his shoe; Avila complied. "Well, I asked him," after inspecting Avila's sneaker, "do you want to tell me the truth?" Tabullo testified. "He said yes. He shed a few tears and started telling me the truth."

The truth, according to a second statement Tabullo said Avila offered, hours later, at 5:46am, was that while Avila was watching the basketball game at Macias' apartment he got up and went to the bedroom where Nicholas was alone. "I saw him laying on the floor," reads the second statement. "I don't know what came over me, but I walked over to him and stamped on him with my right foot." Avila then allegedly picked Nicholas up and brought him into the living room where Dylan shook Nicholas to try to "wake him up" and then hit him on the chest with a magazine. Avila called 911. Why had he done it? According to the second statement, it was because he was "jealous" that Macias paid so much attention to the toddler.

According to Avila, Tabullo fabricated that second statement. He said that when Tabullo returned to the interview room where he'd been left after making his first statement, Tabullo confronted him with the photos of the alleged shoe-print bruise. Avila said he knew nothing about the injury, he testified in court. Tabullo told Avila he would have to wait a while longer in an interview room. Tired, Avila asked if he could leave; no, not until Tabullo was "done with you," he testified. Avila was tired and was falling asleep as they talked, he recalled. "I said, 'Is it okay if I go to sleep,' and he says, 'Yes,'" Avila testified. "He goes, 'I just need to make some changes on the statement.' He says, 'If you want ... I'll wake you up when I'm done.'" And that, said Avila, is what he did. When Tabullo woke him up later, Avila said, he was told only that he needed to sign his statement again, and that he could then leave. Avila says he did as he was told – without ever reading the new statement. He was then arrested.

Although there is certainly reason to suspect the validity of the second statement – it was conducted by Tabullo alone and was not recorded, and unlike the first statement, Avila did not initial any of the paragraphs, though Tabullo said that's because Avila told him that he trusted the detective and didn't need to go through that – the damage was done.

How much better would it have been for everyone if Avila's interrogation had been recorded? Without a recording no one besides the two men involved can know for sure what happened in that interrogation room. One of them is lying and it's impossible to know who. Maybe in 2015 the Texas Legislature will finish the tasks assigned it by the Tim Cole panel and finally require recording of custodial interrogations. Otherwise, there's little doubt similar situations will continue to arise, calling convictions into question and muddying the waters for appellate courts trying to suss out the mess after the fact.

Could abolishing Texas' driver surcharges become an election issue? Examining reform suggestions

The El Paso Times' Marty Schladen had a good article published Sunday ("Reform sought in Texas surcharge program," Sept. 22) focusing on efforts by Texas House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee Chairman Joe Pickett to modify the state's Driver Responsibility Surcharge - a civil penalty tacked on top of criminal fines for certain traffic-related violations. The article suggested that, "The debate is of particular relevance to El Paso because the city's drivers lead the state in some of the offenses that lead to charges under the responsibility program." In particular:

El Paso drivers appear to lead the state in the number surcharges they're hit with. 

In a DPS listing of the 10 Texas ZIP codes with the most surcharges, four were in El Paso. Of the 538,000 surcharges on the list, almost half -- 236,000 -- were for El Paso drivers.

Despite the staggering figures presented in the chart on the right, Pickett seems unwilling to contemplate full-on abolition of the surcharge. "I'm not proposing to scrap the program," he told Schladen, "I'm just trying to make it more effective." Regrettably, this program will never be "effective." Enacted in only seven states during a flurry around the turn of the century, two have already repealed similar laws, reported Schladen.

Besides the preponderance of El Paso zip codes, Dallas County stands out from the pack. Plus, clearly many zip codes outside the top ten still have tens of thousands of people liable for surcharges. These are enormous numbers of voting-age Texans we're talking about. If Grits were still advising political campaigns, I'd suggest state rep and senate candidates make abolishing the surcharge a campaign issue: Get the lists of surcharge-owing drivers under open records from DPS, match them to the voter rolls, and target those drivers for voter registration and/or GOTV with messages saying they'd try to abolish it if elected.

Last month, the Texas Department of Public Safety offered recommendations for streamlining the program and improving collections in a document Grits recently acquired under the Public Information Act (see here). Some suggestions may be beneficial to drivers while others are merely aimed at mulcting the maximum amounts from them. These ideas, summarized below, were clearly not intended to all be implemented together but are atomic proposals designed to be broken out into piecemeal reforms. Most would require statutory changes in 2015:

• Eliminate (instead of merely reduce) surcharges for drivers under 125% of the poverty level.
• Allow DPS to share social security numbers with the collections vendor.
• Apply recent extensions of installment plans to older cases.
• Develop a "tiered settlement" program to collect lower amounts on older surcharges.
• Allow DPS to access address information from the Department of Insurance and vehicle registration sources.
• Simplify/clarify language about surcharges on the citation and require courts to both provide information about the surcharges and reduction programs at the time of conviction.
• Expand the military deferral program to include surcharges for DWIs and too many points.
• Allow DPS to change the surcharge amounts for various categories of offenders.
• Require probation or deferred adjudication of all first offenses for Driving With License Invalid. (This offense was already lowered from a Class B to a Class C offense because it was overwhelming local jails.)
• Lowering all the surcharge amounts and applying them for only one year instead of three.
• Expand the incentive program to "include reductions for compliance with the law or rehabilitation." (This could be done by agency rule.)

Another set of suggestions were labeled as having the lowest probability of success:

• Impose additional consequences such as "liens against property, intercepting IRS refunds and lottery winnings, denying passports, placing non-payers on probation, requesting jail time and collecting unclaimed property from the Comptroller."
• Allow drivers to make cash payments through wire transfer stores.
• Allow community service in lieu of surcharges.
• Make the No Insurance, DWLI and No Drivers License surcharges part of the point system, leaving DWIs as the only conviction-based surcharge. (This should have been much higher up in their potential effectiveness rankings!)
• Authorize the vendor to receive "tiered compensation" for older surcharges.

Finally, DPS suggested the following potential administrative changes to the program, some of which they could and should have done long ago:

• Eliminate the notarization requirement for application to the DPS indigency program.
• Waive installment plan fees under the indigency program.
• Combine installment plan fees for customers paying on multiple surcharges.
• Implement another Amnesty program, this time actually promoting it aggressively and advertising it in the media. (DPS should not wait for the Lege to tell them to do this!)
• Allow customers to submit payments through PayPal.
• Advertise the names of drivers with licenses suspended for non-payment of surcharges. (DPS says this would help with notification but it seems to me like a suggestion for public shaming).
• Allow drivers to apply for occupational licenses through an online portal without having to hire an attorney.

If the Lege can't muster the political will to abolish the program, Grits supports many of these proposals as modest improvements over the status quo. (Note to the Public Safety Commission: Enact a second Amnesty program now!). But as the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition's Ana Correa told the El Paso Times, really the state should abolish the surcharge. Even the best of these suggestions amount to putting lipstick on a particularly ugly pig.

See prior, related Grits posts:

• DPS announces 'incentive program' rollout on driver surcharges
• Be thankful: Incentive program all the fix we're getting for now on surcharges
• Lege committee looking to tweak Driver Responsibility program; incentive program about to gear up
• Piling on: TPPF offers more reasons to abolish Driver Responsibility surcharge
• House rep promotes abolition of Driver Responsibility surcharge
• Is 2013 the year legislators axe Orwellian-named Driver Responsibility surcharge?
• Did the Driver Responsibility Surcharge cause Texas' voter ID law to be rejected?
• Few defendants getting surcharges waived by judges based on indigence
• Grits to DPS: Enact incentive rules for Driver Responsibility surcharge now
• Amendment tells DPS: Implement incentive rules for Driver Responsibility surcharge
• Hospitals: Driver Responsibility surcharge an unreliable funding source
• What's the one thing John Whitmire and Leo Berman have in common?
• Declining DWI convictions and the unmitigated failure of the Driver Responsibility surcharge
• Federal suit filed to declare Driver Responsibility surcharge unconstitutional
• DPS Director: No public safety benefit from Driver Responsibility Surcharge
• Prosecutors altering charging decisions to avoid Driver Responsibility surcharge
• Driver surcharge boosting Texas joblessness
• Unexplored costs from DPS surcharge harm safety, the economy
• Driver Responsibility surcharge 'devastating' for court system
• Bill author says 'overly punitive' Driver Responsibility surcharge a 'mistake'

Probation revocations down, but not by much; re-arrest rates among DWI probationers plummets

More evidence that Texas' 2007 probation reforms perhaps contributed less than has been previously estimated to recent prison population declines. The main strategy of the 2007 reforms was to reduce probation and parole revocations to prison by incentivizing diversion and progressive sanctions programs. That's worked better on the parole side than for probation (aka "community supervision"). From the Dec. 2012 "Report to the Governor and Legislative Budget Board on the Monitoring of Community Supervision Diversion Funds" (pdf):

Felony revocations to TDCJ in FY2012 represent a 2.8% decrease from FY2005 (677 fewer felony revocations) and a 1.8% decrease from FY2011 (432 fewer felony revocations). However, the percentage of revocations to TDCJ for a technical violation of community supervision conditions increased from 48.5% in FY2011 to 49.0% in FY2012.

Those are essentially insignificant reductions given the scope of the decline in state prison populations witnessed over the last half decade.* Felony technical revocations among probationers declined 10.9% from 2005 to 2012, TDCJ reported, but they're still awfully high and that small decline was far out-paced by two factors on the parole side: Dramatically reduced parole revocations and marginally increased approval rates by the parole board. Both may be viewed as an expression of legislative policy. Reduced parole revocations stem from greater use of intermediate sanctions facilities (ISFs) and other diversion programs created after 2007. And higher approval rates, particularly for low-risk offenders, resulted in large part from the board finally edging closer to targets under non-binding release guidelines that the Lege mandated they create.

County-level probation revocation trends
By contrast, reducing probation revocations has been a tougher nut to crack, in part because of decentralized local control over the process among various counties and judges. Here are the relative increases and decreases for probation revocations among Texas' largest departments since just before Texas' much-vaunted probation reforms took effect:

Change in Felony Revocations to 

TDCJ among largest counties, 2005-2012

CSCD	Percent change in revocations
Dallas	-22.8%
Harris	-17.8%
Bexar	94.0%
Tarrant	-4.3%
Hidalgo	-5.3%
El Paso	-39.6%
Travis	32.1%
Cameron	22.4%
Nueces	1.8%

**See note below on Collin Co.

.

Travis County's increase in revocations surprised me given their department's reputation for reliance on progressive sanctions, etc.. Cameron County attributes their increase to "more aggressive absconder apprehension and increased monitoring of compliance with community supervision conditions." Otherwise, Bexar County is the most prominent, chronic outlier among large counties, as has been the case since these reports began coming out.

2012 probation revocations compared

to supervised population, large counties

CSCD	% 2012 statewide probation pop	% 2012 statewide felony revocations
Dallas	13.6%	10.5%
Harris	11.5%	12.4%
Bexar	6.7%	6.8%
Tarrant	4.9%	7.1%
Hidalgo	4.0%	2.8%
El Paso	3.7%	1.5%
Travis	3.4%	3.0%
Cameron	2.3%	1.9%
Nueces	1.7%	2.2%
Collin	1.7%	1.9%

This chart perhaps provides a better sense of relative county practices than the previous one. It compares probation populations and revocations among large counties as a proportion of their statewide total. (See this data for all counties in Appendix C to the report.) Counties in which the right-side number is significantly greater than the left-hand column may be considered more aggressive at revoking probationers than their peers. That differential is especially significant in massive Harris County because of the sheer volume they process. Tarrant's numbers here are especially striking, putting their paltry 4.3% decline from the earlier chart in context. Meanwhile, Travis, Hidalgo, and even Bexar don't appear nearly as problematic on this chart as they did in the first table.

Recidivism among probationers declining, especially DWI
According to the Dec. 2012 report, 71.7% of felony probationers revoked back to prison in FY2012 were convicted of nonviolent crimes - drug offenses (32.2%), property offenses (30.4%), and DWI (9.1%), with the rest coming from violent (17.9%) and other (10.4%) felony offenses.

Remarkably, and for the most part unheralded, recidivism rates for felony probationers have been declining. "The overall two-year re-arrest rate for the FY2005 sample was 34.4% (8,914 offenders). The overall two-year re-arrest rate for the FY2010 sample was 31.8% (8,811 offenders), which was a decrease from the FY2005 sample."

The drop in re-arrest rates for DWI offenders in those two studies was especially striking: 16.9% of the 2005 cohort was re-arrested compared to 11.5% of the 2010 cohort - a 32% drop! That's a success story nobody tells much. Re-arrest rates for probationers convicted of drug offenses declined 13% over this period; 10.6% for property offenders. But DWI stands out. Perhaps new treatment resources aimed at that group are helping.

El Paso case highlights need for recording custodial interrogations

Rep. Terry Canales' HB 1096 requiring law enforcement to record custodial confession in the most serious cases passed out of the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee yesterday. Then, as if on cue, reporter Jordan Smith has published a story in The Nation this week describing an apparent false confession case out of El Paso. In 1993, Daniel Villegas was arrested for a drive-by shooting. Wrote Smith:

Villegas insisted he had nothing to do with the crime and said he was with a group of friends—who were babysitting and watching the movie White Men Can't Jump—when the shooting occurred.

Yet, hours after he was brought in for questioning, just before 3AM, Villegas made a statement confessing to the crime. The confession alone would be enough to send Villegas to prison for life.

But 19 years later, in August 2012, El Paso County District Judge Sam Medrano declared that Villegas, who is now 35, should be given a new trial. The confession obtained by Detective Alfonso Marquez was coerced, he ruled, and the court-appointed attorney who represented Villegas at trial was severely ineffective. “For our justice system to work it must make two important promises to its citizens: A fundamentally fair trial and an accurate result,” Medrano told a packed courtroom on the morning of August 16. “If either of these two promises are not kept, our system loses its credibility, our citizens lose their faith and confidence in our court system, and eventually our decisions and laws become meaningless.”

El Paso prosecutors have pushed back against the court’s ruling, filing objections to Medrano's findings and urging the state's highest criminal court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals—known to be fond of finality rather than a stickler for certainty—to affirm Villegas' conviction. Villegas, in the meantime, remains behind bars. Whether he will get a new day in court is now in the CCA’s hands.

Villegas' case remains a potent example of the insidious problem of false confessions, the incomplete or sloppy police work that often accompanies them, and the damage done by defense attorneys who fail to investigate or to defend their clients—in Villegas' case, a story that has almost certainly landed the wrong person in prison while a killer remains unpunished for his deeds.

Villegas was a juvenile, interrogated for hours late into the night, and got many facts wrong in his recitation of events, from where he shot the victim (in the back, he said, but in reality it was the front) to what sort of gun he used (Villegas said he used a shotgun; it was a .22 caliber pistol) and what kind of car he was in (he said a white sedan; witnesses said it was maroon). Then in 2011, in response to billboards placed around town asking for help, a witness came forward who saw the shooting and named the alleged real culprits, two brothers who police had questioned about the shootings but stopped pursuing after Villlegas' confession. One is now dead, the other is in federal prison on drug trafficking charges. The latter man was called to testify at Villegas' habeas corpus hearing but took the Fifth, refusing to testify because his testimony might tend to incriminate him. Remarkably, he did testify that the DA's office had never interviewed him in preparation for the habeas hearing.

Often false convictions stem from a confluence of error as opposed to a single, well-defined cause and  Villegas' case is no exception, combining pretty blatant ineffective assistance of counsel with the apparent false confession. Wrote Smith:

Villegas was actually tried twice for the deaths of Lazo and England. The first time he was represented by a hired attorney who fought hard to counter the state’s case, which was—and remains—built solidly on the confession obtained by Detective Marquez. That trial ended in a hung jury. The state decided to give it another go, but by this time, the Villegas family no longer had money to pay for a defense lawyer, says Mimbela. Although the original attorney offered to continue on, the trial judge refused, appointing an entirely new attorney, John Gates, just sixty days before the retrial.

To say that things did not go well the second time around is an understatement: Gates failed to call any of Villegas' alibi witnesses. In fact, according to veteran criminal defense attorney Joe Spencer, Villegas' current attorney—hired by [John] Mimbela—Gates failed to do anything more to prepare for the case than to read over the transcripts of the first trial. He then failed to do anything with the evidence the transcripts provided.

HB 1096, which if in place at the time would have required Villegas' entire interrogation to be recorded instead of only his confession statement,  is one of two bills moving this session implementing key recommendations of the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions. Now the bill heads to the House Calendars Committee which so far has been extremely picky about which bills it's been posting for floor votes. This legislation, however, deserves an up or down vote by the full House sooner than later.

See related Grits posts:

• Canales: Record custodial interrogations
• Record interrogations, reduce false confessions
• Police arguments against recording interrogations allow fear to impede self interest
• Latest exoneration highlights problem of false confessions
• Are false confessions 'coerced' or 'persuaded'?
• CCA orders Yogurt Shop retrial based on possibility of false confessions
• Jurors from false confession case call for recorded interrogations
• Recording interrogations makes loads of sense
• Expert: Yogurt Shop case a prime example of false confessions
• False confessions a "systematic feature of American justice"
• Recording confessions saves much grief for police
• Police interrogation a 'guilt presumptive' process
• Would you confess to a crime you didn't commit to save your life?
• If CIA can record interrogations, so can police
• Abilene PD requires recording interrogations
• El Paso conference brought together top minds to prevent false confessions
• Why record interrogations?
• Juries need more, better information to prevent false convictions

El Paso hires private crime lab for in-house testing

In July, Grits published a post predicting that "El Paso may close crime lab, outsource controlled substance testing," and the El Paso City Council this week pulled the trigger on the deal, though not without some debate, reported KVIA-TV ("El Paso city council hires outside lab to run police department's crime lab," Aug. 28) which let us know that "City Council voted 6 to 1 to hire Integrated Forensic Laboratories (IFL) the group hired temporarily to help with that out-sourcing, as a permanent in-house option." But the decision wasn't without controversy:

It will cost about half-a-million dollars a year or $2.5 million over the next five years.

City Rep. Dr. Michiel Noe voted against it because of that high cost, stating there was still a free option, which was having the Texas Department of Public Safety handle all of the testing

Noe also objected to the City paying for the entire cost and not involving the County, which he said also benefits from crime lab services.

District Attorney Jaime Esparza said sending testing to DPS takes longer and the majority of his drug cases come from within the city, while the county shares other costs.

In truth, though, the "free option" isn't really free at all. True, DPS doesn't charge for crime lab services, but they have a very large backlog which can take many months to process a case. In cases where the defendant sits in jail until the results come back, which we might conservatively estimate at $50 per day, assuming they have no medical or mental health problems, pharmacy needs, etc. that boosts the cost significantly more than paying for IFL's crime lab services. Savings in county jail costs alone will likely exceed the cost. Local taxpayers are better off with this arrangement all the way around.

Recently a regional fee for service crime lab run by Sam Houston State in Montgomery County had to close because they unexpectedly lost their lease. The Conroe Courier described the effects of switching from the SHSU lab to the "free" DPS one:

With the loss of the SHSU crime lab – which serves more than 70 agencies – Montgomery County now will have to send tests to a Texas Department of Public Safety Regional Crime Lab in Austin, which serves many more clients, [Assistant District Attorney Warren] Diepraam said.“With the Regional Crime Lab, we got results in a week or two,” he said. “Unfortunately, the DPS lab has a backlog of cases. For drug toxicology tests, it could take six to nine months to get results. That’s a concern to the district attorney that we’ll have people staying in jail while we’re waiting on results.”

And of course, costs for testing at DPS aren't actually "free," they're just kicked down the road to state taxpayers who must pick up the tab. For my part, I think DPS should switch to a fee for service model as well for everybody but its own officers. I live in Austin where taxpayers already finance a crime lab. Why should taxpayers here also pay for El Paso's testing, or the myriad other agencies that use DPS because they're too cheap to pay for their own?

Plus, when agencies think of the service as "free," the services are over-utilized. That's particularly true in DNA cases, where the backlog is worst. Agencies don't treat requests for testing with the same sort of cost-benefit analysis as do agencies which must operate within their own budgets.

At the end of the day, DPS' "free for everybody" model creates false incentives and is IMO unsustainable as demand for crime lab services is growing much faster than the actual crime rate. Switching to a fee for service model would rationalize the process from a budget perspective and stop taxpayers in jurisdictions with their own crime labs from subsidizing the rest of the state. It's probably something the Legislature should consider next session.

El Paso may close crime lab, outsource controlled substance testing

El Paso PD is having such problems finding a crime lab director that it may shut down its one-person lab performing controlled substance analysis and begin outsourcing the work, according to a draft report presented yesterday to the Forensic Science Commission. (See earlier Grits coverage; for whatever reason, I have seen no other media reports on the FSC probe.)

FSC Chairman Vincent Di Maio wondered if that might not be a good thing, since small labs may not have the oversight or quality assurance controls of bigger facilities. But prosecutor rep Richard Alpert worried that the need to have lab workers available for court appearances could pose a practical problem if El Paso began to outsource because of the town's relative isolation. DPS would like to expand its crime lab facility outside El Paso but needs budget authorization that couldn't come before next year.

Interestingly, part of the problems at the El Paso lab (which as of this spring has supposedly been resolved) stemmed from their reliance on UTEP for technical assistance when the lab was established. The lab was using a device that's more commonly applied in university research settings than for forensic drug analysis, so their results couldn't be easily cross-checked with other labs. Given recent events surrounding the Criminal Justice Program at UT El Paso, Grits would like to learn more about the backstory to UTEP's involvement in the El Paso PD's crime lab woes.

UPDATE: A knowledgeable source informs Grits that rather than outsource per se, El Paso is considering "insourcing" (I know, it seems a bit like hair splitting), i.e., paying for a private lab to operate on their premises - probably Integrated Forensic Labs, out of Euless, whose director Ron Fazio is presently serving as interim director of the El Paso lab. If that happens, the current analyst - who is an EPPD police officer - would be transferred to other duties and an employee of the private lab would take his place.

Head of UTEP Criminal Justice Program resigns amidst corruption scandal

The head of the University of Texas at El Paso's Criminal Justice Program recently resigned amidst allegations of impropriety and corruption, reported the El Paso Times this week ("UTEP's embattled professor to resign," July 27):

Fernando Rodriguez, the former head of UTEP's Criminal Justice Program who has ties to El Paso's public-corruption scandal, will resign effective Aug. 31, UTEP Executive Vice President Richard Adauto said Thursday.

Rodriguez, the target of an FBI investigation, was suspended in February after the El Paso Times reported that he had received more than $914,000 in outside employment between 2001 and 2009 without reporting it as required by University of Texas at El Paso rules. Additional documents showed that Rodriguez was paid an additional $233,000 by Aliviane Inc. in 2010, bringing his total pay by the nonprofit to more than $1.1 million.

Several projects evaluated by Rodriguez have led to federal investigations and so far resulted in two corruption convictions, including former County Judge Dolores Briones. The CEO of Alviane will go to trial this fall. See much more detail in the Times story.

Another questionable project Rodriguez worked on was a so-called "open sourced crime lab" which never quite lived up to its billing. The Times reported earlier this year ("UTEP: Agencies say university's Open Sourced Crime Lab hasn't given pledged help," March 25) that area law enforcement agencies had never heard of the project and few if any deliverables could be identified.

The Case of the Bluffing Referees: Corruption allegations swirl around contract privatizing El Paso truancy enforcement

An extraordinary,  near-mind blowing tale of graft and greed out of El Paso left this reader's jaw adrop. (The story by Zahira Torres is also an early frontrunner for Understated Headline of  the Year: "New Beginnings anti-truancy program failed to deliver on promises to EPISD," El Paso Times, April 28.) Despite the bland headline, with every unfolding paragraph it's clear this is a much more insidious tale involving not just failed policy but a grotesquely deformed, insular and graft-driven juvenile justice system.

In short, for a pricetag of nearly 20 times what it would have cost the County Attorney to do it both legally and in-house, El Paso juvenile court Judge Alfredo Chavez convinced the school district to contract with a private company to "bluff" truancy enforcement -- a tactic that worked only until students and their parents figured out that the private "referees" had no authority to carry out their threats (which included dropping students from school rolls and even ordering youth to Mexico). This multi-million dollar contract went to men now under indictment on El Paso bribery charges related to a second judge on the county juvenile board. Now, everyone is under investigation.

Back in 2004, El Paso ISD asked juvenile court Judge Chavez to "assign two part-time referees -- court employees who could hear judicial cases -- to the truancy program," reported the El Paso Times. The County Attorney came forward with a proposal to do the job for around $50,000. Instead, Judge Chavez brokered a contract between El Paso ISD and "New Beginnings, a local company run by Cirilo 'Chilo' Madrid and Ruben  'Sonny' Garcia, would spearhead the program. Both men now face federal fraud charges for allegedly bribing County Judge Dolores Briones in exchange for her vote on an unrelated government contract for another company, LKG." Reported the Times, "New Beginnings is now being investigated by the FBI for the $3.2 million in contracts it obtained from the El Paso Independent School District over the five-year period ended in 2007."

New Beginnings reportedly couldn't and didn't perfom the court functions being privatized, instead constructing what seems from a distance almost a surreal Potemkin Village where company officials would bamboozle kids and their  families: "as a private company, New Beginnings did not have the authority to impose legal sanctions on truancy offenders.," wrote Torres. "The company instead would hold mock court hearings before students reached the stage that a real court appearance was necessary. It was a program that one district administrator called 'a bluff factor.'"

So, instead of working with the County Attorney's office to actually establish a truancy program - a subject fraught with its own issues independent of alleged corruption, to be sure - Judge Chavez pushed to privatize the process for $925,000 per year, having it overseen by company-paid "referees" with no legal authority who tried to "bluff" youth into accepting their unofficial edicts, which some unwitting youth probably did, at least in the beginning.

It gets worse, though, when we get to the judgments being meted out by corporate "referees": "notes from a meeting in 2006 in which participants discussed problems with New Beginnings, mentioned concerns with ordering students who were younger than 18 to be dropped for attendance, ordering students to return to Mexico, the truancy court's lack of law enforcement authority and the fact that New Beginnings did not file cases with the justice of the peace courts but instead left that task to school districts." (emphasis added, and then some: Santa Madre de Dios!)

Pretty soon, even the kids saw through the scam and the program ended in 2007 because:

El Paso Independent School District leaders saw a steady decline in attendance rates while the company had the truancy court program.  

State records show that the attendance rate at the district was 95.4 percent in 2004-05. That number dropped to 95.3 percent in 2005-06 and further decreased to 95.1 percent in 2006-07.  

Mark Mendoza, the district's former pupil services director, cited those figures in 2007 when he persuaded school board trustees to end the contract with New Beginnings and implement an in-house dropout recovery and truancy program. The program run by the EPISD does not include the truancy court component. 

"There was a bluff factor that was used," Mendoza said. "People thought that it was a court and, so, during their initial time with New Beginnings, the attendance increased temporarily. Once they figured out that this was not a court and that there was really no teeth behind it, then the attendance for the students would drop in every single case."

At least two of the six county juvenile board members, both judges, have been accused of steering lucrative juvenile contracts in El Paso to Mssrs Madrid and Garcia:

The board then in a 6-0 vote approved appointing two part-time referees who would be paid by the district's contract with New Beginnings. The board members were Chavez, Judges Patrick Garcia, Alex Gonzalez and Bonnie Rangel, Justice of the Peace Guadalupe Aponte and County Judge [Dolores] Briones.  

Briones pleaded guilty on Dec. 9 to a charge of conspiracy to commit theft or embezzlement of federal program funds. She was implicated in a scheme to take kickbacks from a federal grant linked to LKG Enterprises.

As mentioned, this jaw-dropping tale left Grits feeling downright naive. Juvenile  boards are a seldom-examined political backwater where few reporters venture, and quite frankly even fewer understand what they're reporting on. I can't help but wonder how many other similar examples one would find if reporters or auditors comprehensively examined school-district and/or juvenile board contracts on truancy in other jurisdictions? Would they discover similar shennanigans in Dallas, or Bexar?

For that matter, this catastrophic failure makes me wonder at the overall strategy of Texas post-2007 juvenile justice reforms, which have been recently called into question for other reasons. The Legislature's big-picture strategy under Chairmans Sen. John Whitmire and Rep. Jerry Madden has been to rapidly de-incarcerate youth prisons and shift focus to grant-funded community-based programs administered locally. El Paso ISD's contract with New Beginnings ended just before the 2007 statewide reforms. But still, this sun-town saga makes me wonder whether adequate oversight infrastructure exists to monitor those contracts?

Grits tends to operate on the assumption that most folks are acting in good faith until they give me reason to believe otherwise. This bizarre, corrupt episode makes me call such assumptions into question. It would never occur to me that local juvenile judges might so  brazenly abuse their authority, though I guess after the judge in Pennsylvania was convicted for taking kickbacks for  sending youth to a private facility, one shouldn't be surprised. Even so, I must admit, I am.

Read the full story at the El Paso Times, it's quite a tale.