Texas prison baseball league was shockingly well-developed

While I've been away from the blog recently, much of my time has been spent on a side project researching negro-league baseball in Texas, exhuming the Austin Black Senators' history from the fog of segregation and media bias. But in Texas, everything comes back to the justice system, and baseball historian Bill Staples, Jr. schooled me today on an aspect of the Texas prison system I never knew about: It used to have its own baseball league! Every unit fielded teams which played in an annual, 14-week pennant race. 

Baseball leagues 70 years ago were referred to as "loops," and according to this fascinating 1950 assessment of Texas prison recreation programs, the Texas prison "loop [was] divided into two divisions. Units situated south of the United States Highway 90A play in the southern division, and those north of the highway comprise the northern division."

Team names were as follows. In the southern division: Ramsey 1 Hardhitters; Ramsey 2 Monarchs; Darrington Devils; Retrieve Snippers; Ramsey Builders; and the Clemens Cats (aka "Panthers"). The northern division consisted of the Eastham Buffs; Wynne Cobblers; Walls Tigers; Walls Black Tigers; Central 2 Cubs; and the Harlem 1 Red Socks. N.b. that the Walls Unit had segregated squads.

Occasionally, perhaps ringers would come on the scene when some professional athlete would get into trouble. 

Teams played a series with each other team in the division, and the two with the highest winning percentages were declared pennant winners, earning them the right to face off against each other in an end-of-season, 3-game championship series. Sometimes, papers would even publish box scores of the games.

Among the league rules: "an escape by any member of a baseball group during the season of the sport can bring suspension of the entire ball club for the remaining season."

It appears prison baseball existed in Texas even earlier, but the league/pennant format was created in 1949. Staples found reference to the Walls Tigers Cyclones* from 1930. In the first half of the twentieth century, prison baseball appears fairly widespread. In Wyoming, even death row inmates played on baseball teams.

At the Texas Prison Museum, according to Texas Highways magazine, there is:

a large display case with baseball uniforms, team photographs, and game programs from the prison baseball team, the Huntsville Prison Tigers. Prison officials organized the team and built a ballpark in 1924. The team played area semi-pro teams until they disbanded in 1943, a casualty of budget-tightening during World War II.

We know they didn't disband permanently in 1943 because teams were still active in 1950, but the construction of a prison ballpark in 1924 likely marks the beginning of the program. Corroborating this timing, on Feb. 24, 1924, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram ran a short item titled, "Prisoners seek equipment for baseball team," declaring the  Ferguson State prison farm at Midway "has a group of good ball players and will organize a team if the equipment is forthcoming." Donations sought included "Gloves, a catcher's mitt, mask, [and] baseballs," adding that, "When the team is organized it will play amateur and semipro teams in the vicinity of Midway."

According to the 1950-prison-rec-program assessment,  wardens could approve exhibition games on Sundays in addition to league-scheduled contests. Some of these were played before free-world crowds. This flyer from 1942 advertised a baseball game between prison-system all stars and the Southern Select, an "All Mexican Team From Houston." Admission was 25 cents and included entertainment by the "Prison Military Band."

In general, recreational activities seemed more widespread and salutary than TDCJ supports now:

The major activities, which are open to all inmates of good behavior, include competitive sports, such as baseball, volleyball, boxing, tennis, and softball; individual physical activities, such as horseshoe pitching and washer pitching; social games, such as checkers, cards, and dominoes; recreational reading; an annual rodeo; musical activities, including; a weekly radio broadcast; crafts; and motion pictures.

The prison rodeo, begun in 1931, funded a portion of the recreation budget, likely including the baseball league. 

In 1934, prisoners tried to stage an escape while staff were distracted by a game between the Humble Oilers and the Walls Tigers:

The inmates were leading 5-1 in the 9th inning when all hell broke loose. Suddenly and without warning, gunfire came from the over the walls of the prison. It sounded like a war had begun. Guards yelled and threatened the convicts to hit the ground. All inmates went belly down immediately. But in the stands it was pandaemonium. Everyone there scattered wildly in all directions away from the Walls.

There's an entire, book-length account of this escape attempt, which did not involve any of the baseball players.

Given the success of the baseball league competitions, which were the most popular sport among inmates at the time, a suggestion was floated that, "Inter-unit boxing tournaments might be staged," though it's not clear that ever happened. On the other hand, I'd never have imagined teams from Texas prison units played in a baseball league and staged and annual pennant race, so who knows? 

These days, Texas prisons are so understaffed, prisoners are lucky if they get an hour in the rec yard: during COVID lockdowns, they often didn't even get that. They're not playing tennis, much less traveling the state to play baseball in front of paying, free-world crowds.

Still, it's also not like Texas was spending lavishly on prisoners in 1950. From the same report:

Texas taxpayers are getting off very lightly in the operation of the prison. Only two states in the Union spend less per man: Mississippi and Alabama. Texas spends about $310 per year per inmate. Many states spend more than $1,000 per man, while Connecticut tops the list with $1,468 spent on each prisoner in custody.

It's often said that budgets are values documents, and that applies here: Texas wasn't spending much on prisoners, but of what they spent, the state clearly prioritized recreation activities and prisoner well being more than today. The MLB Hall of Fame has a web page on "Baseball Behind Bars" describing early teams at Sing Sing in New York, and its conclusion sums up the values that might prioritize spending tax dollars to create sports leagues for prisoners:

It might be easier to write off all of this coverage of prison baseball as media exploitation, but there is something to be said for the real, positive difference baseball made in the lives of the inmates who played on teams and in leagues while they served out their sentences. The Sing Sing baseball program received praise for the “spiritual change in the men” from the likes of Dr. Katharine B. Davis, the Commissioner of Correction of New York City in 1915. Baseball might be “just a game,” but as any fan knows, it is also one of the things that makes life enjoyable.

*Staples informs me the reference to the prison team he found from 1930 was the Walls "Cyclones," but by 1934, the Tigers were competing. It's possible there were already multiple teams by that time, or that the name changed at some point.

Custodians of History: Old prosecutor files include marginalized voices usually excluded from public media and discourse

Conversations about crime data and police and prosecutor files most frequently pertain to the news of the moment: Did bail reform cause crime to increase? Was this or that police officer held accountable? Are black folks disproportionately stopped for traffic offenses?

But lately your correspondent has undertaken a research project reminding me that these records have much greater value than just informing policy debates of the moment. In many cases, they're the only records available involving important historical people and events. District Attorney and police agencies are among the earliest, continuously operating government departments, and case files are a rich source of detailed, local information.

This is especially important when mainstream information sources about marginalized people are scarce. For example, in New York City, prosecutor records were used to document the early 20th century exploits of an undercover policewoman investigating abortion doctors. Wrote one of the authors of that investigation:

These files record the lives of marginalized populations, often silenced in the historical record. Poor New Yorkers, women, immigrants, queer residents, and people of color, whose lives might have evaded contemporary published material but whose voices appear -- albeit refracted through the justice system -- in these archives.

We're finding that's true in the historical stories I'm researching centered in East Austin. Researching black history in Texas from the 1920s and '30s is a tremendous slog: only a few editions of the main black newspapers remain, and the white press largely ignored black news, sports, and culture. But many of these same people interacted all too frequently with the justice system. To the extent their voices can still be discovered at all, often it's only "refracted" through that ignominious but invaluable lens.

After 75 years, Texas state law eliminates most confidentiality restrictions and discretionary authority to withhold release on criminal records, making them technically public. But most DA's offices don't treat them that way. Here in Travis County, my wife and I recently filed an open records request for files from the early 1940s. The Travis County DAO initially replied that they intended to deny disclosure under all the "discretionary" exceptions they could identify. 

We appealed the matter, pointing out that the Public Information Act doesn't afford them any of those discretionary exceptions. The DA agreed, and supposedly we'll get those records soon. But what's really needed is for prosecutors to develop written policies about record retention and release, then to migrate files to local archivists better trained to handle and preserve them. 

What kind of records are we talking about? Certainly, it differs case by case. But we have lots of examples because, in 2009, then-Travis-County-District-Attorney Ronnie Earle transferred 35 boxes of records, mostly from the 1940s and 1970s, to the Travis County Archivist, which also retains old records for the constables offices, the probation department, and other county law enforcement agencies.

The transfer of these 35 boxes appears to have been a one off. The archivist said there was something in the database about concerns that the files were deteriorating wherever the DAO stored them before. Regardless, they're now all sitting on a shelf at the archivist's office on Airport Blvd.

Kathy and I went to review several of these boxes to see if they contained files related to the now-long-deceased people I was researching. They did not. But Kathy noticed these documents in an unrelated case in which prosecutors adamantly struck black jurors in red pen:

Here's another example:

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure these aren't Batson-approved jury-selection practices. After I posted these photos on Twitter, I got an email from the Travis County DA's first assistant saying she'd referred it to their Conviction Integrity Unit! Bully for them.

This naturally spurred my curiosity. This was a case I was neither looking for nor familiar with, but I'd snapped a photo of the caption and cause number:

It turned out to involve a man named Arthur Raven and a codefendant, Audrey McDonald, and would have been an extremely high-profile case. (Long-time readers will recognize a pattern: the higher-profile the case, the more likely somebody cuts corners to secure a conviction, as with this jury-selection process.)

Raven, a white man, was the first football coach at Reagan High School when it opened in 1965 and from the beginning was highly successful, winning three 4A state championships in 1967, '68, and '70. Reagan was a predominantly black high school, built to replace the old L.C. Anderson HS, which closed in 1971. After his third state title, Austin ISD elevated Raven to become athletic director district-wide.

His son, Arthur Jr., was a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper. In 1972, he  attempted to capitalize on name recognition from his father's success to run for Sheriff against 20-year incumbent T.O. Lang. Lang was a "Shivercrat," a conservative Democrat who'd spent World War II as Austin PD's liaison with the FBI hunting subversives. After the war in the late '40s, he was an APD homicide detective before running for office.

To this day, no one ever held that position longer and, after two decades, lots of people thought it was someone else's turn.

Also running against Lang in 1972 was Raymond Frank, a leftie reformer attempting to capitalize on the same momentum that ousted a wave of right-wing Texas Democrats at the Legislature following the Sharpstown banking scandal. Insiders blamed Raven, Jr., when he split the traditional law-enforcement vote, allowing Frank to push Lang into a runoff. Lang lost. And his allies were furious.

Once in office, District Attorney Robert O. Smith almost immediately turned his sights on Frank. A grand jury under his direction issued a report critical of the new Sheriff. Frank turned around and accused Smith of corruption and manipulating the grand jury.

Arthur Raven, Sr., was accused of coercing prostitution while all this was going on, but convicted of a lesser, misdemeanor charge while the jury acquitted his codefendant. We didn't read the whole prosecutor's file, just this portion concerning jury selection. But news accounts say Raven took the stand in his own defense, testifying most of the day as the defense's only witness. Your correspondent hasn't done enough research to form an independent opinion, but Raven certainly thought he was being railroaded.

Was Smith retaliating against the old ball coach because his son's campaign helped the DA's nemesis get into power? Grits has no first-hand knowledge. But I bet I'm not the first person to imagine so.

To be clear: I haven't read the file and just snapped a few photos and read a few news clips. I don't know who was in the right in these controversies, whether Arthur Raven, Sr., was guilty, or if his prosecution was politically motivated. But this glimpse into the historical record shows how important these old files can be to interpreting past events. Knowing prosecutors went to unethical lengths to exclude black people from Raven's jury is an important part of that story that would remain hidden if one relied only on news accounts.

In 2009, Ronnie Earle (God rest his soul) thought it was fine to make records from the 1970s public at the Travis County Archivist. That policy should be formalized. It's a waste of scarce resources at the District Attorney's office for lawyers to review every request. Better to pass that task along to library-science professionals employed precisely to perform these tasks.

I'm looking forward to receiving the records we requested, which I have no doubt will answer a long list of nagging questions surrounding the historical research Grits has been working on.

Once we get them, the next step is for the DA's office -- eventually, for every DA's office -- to develop written policies for retention and release of historical records. We hear a lot about police and prosecutors as custodians of public safety. They should also be recognized as custodians of history, and behave as such.

False confessions, coercive interrogations, hardly a new problem

Not a Texas topic, but until this NY Times obituary, I'd never heard the story of how the late, great Connie Hawkins - an ABA, Globetrotter, and NBA star in the '60s and '70s - was banned from pro ball in his prime based on false and unproven allegations of game fixing. Hall-of-fame coach Larry Brown has said of Hawkins, “He was Julius before Julius, he was Elgin before Elgin, he was Michael before Michael.” But to the criminal justice system, he was none of those things. He was a suspect in a game fixing scandal, so he got the same treatment as every other young black suspected criminal might have received in the 1960s. (Shudder)

As has been the case with so many modern exoneration stories, his problems arose from the use of coercive interrogation tactics, and his name was cleared thanks to an exceptional act of journalism:

Hawkins’s path to the N.B.A. was buoyed in part by a 1969 article in Life magazine by David Wolf. “Evidence recently uncovered,” Mr. Wolf wrote, “indicates that Connie Hawkins never knowingly associated with gamblers, that he never introduced a player to a fixer, and that the only damaging statements about his involvement were made by Hawkins himself — as a terrified, semiliterate teenager who thought he’d go to jail unless he said what the D.A.’s detectives pressed him to say.”

This sort of coercive questioning of vulnerable suspects matches the story of dozens of documented false convictions from the DNA era. It's a brand of interrogation nearly unique to American law enforcement known as the Reid technique (see here, here, here, here, and here), which earlier this year was finally abandoned by the company that had originated and popularized it.

Because interrogations happen in secret - meaning abusive tactics taught by the Reid method were almost never documented (particularly in the 1960s before recording equipment was cheap and common), much less made public and rectified - they also represent thousands of additional false convictions we'll never know about. Thanks his basketball skills, however, Hawkins' case received greater attention:

On Hawkins’s behalf, Roslyn Litman, a civil liberties activist, along with her husband and law partner, S. David Litman, and another lawyer, Howard Specter, sued the N.B.A. on antitrust grounds, arguing that the league had in effect illegally banned Hawkins and deprived him of the “opportunity to earn a livelihood.” 

They won. The league paid Hawkins a settlement of nearly $1.3 million and dropped the ban. Hawkins joined the N.B.A. in 1969 and became an instant star with the Suns.

To recap: 50+ years ago a black kid was questioned intensely by authorities without an attorney, and like so many others before and after him, he told them what they wanted to hear. He didn't do so because he was guilty, just to get out of the room and make the pressure relent. But it was a false confession which matched no other evidence the investigators had uncovered, so in this case he was never prosecuted. Still, the professional damage lingered for a decade. And others similarly situated likely suffered their fates in silent ignominy, with no obituary featured in the Grey Lady to set the record straight on history's behalf.

These are not new problems, for the most part; the broader public has only become newly aware of them.

Prosecutors whiff on Pettite testimony at Roger Clemens perjury trial II

Roger Clemens' second perjury trial demonstrates the dangers of pursuing criminal prosecutions based on the personal political agendas of members of Congress. Much has been made of the fact that pitcher Andy Pettite told Congress he recalled Clemens telling him he'd used HGH, though he said in a past deposition he could have misunderstood the Texan pitching ace. In any event, he had never been cross-examined over the statement. When he was, according to the Washington Post, Pettite:

admitted that he might have misunderstood his close friend admit he took performance-enhancing drugs in 1999 or 2000.

Under cross-examination by defense lawyers, Pettite agreed that there was a “fifty-fifty” chance that he misheard Clemens when he testified earlier that “The Rocket” had confided in him that he had taken the drug Human Growth Hormone.

And with that the feds' case likely went down the drain. What a waste of time and money this witch hunt has been! Now it seems that Clemens will likely walk (and good for him): Pettite's testimony was what held the case together, with the only other witness a discredited, self-interested snitch trying to weasel out of prosecution himself.

Grits remains amazed that Congress and federal prosecutors have focused on baseball players and track stars when the much more problematic use of steroids from a public policy perspective occurs among cops and federal security contractors. Such skewed priorities IMO stem from sheer geek envy of jocks (and likely also undue deference to the security apparatus). Politics has been aptly called "show business for ugly people," and politicians compete with celebrities for the scarce commodity of public attention. Neither members of Congress nor federal prosecutors will ever hurl a fastball like Roger Clemens nor run as fast as Marion Jones, so some insecure pols feel the need to take such public heroes down a notch to elevate their own (oft-sullied) class. Sure, the public policy concerns abut cops and security contractors buying and using steroids from the black market have much more critical implications for the public than whether Roger Clemens juiced at a time when there was no law or Major League Baseball regulation banning it. But investigating those far more serious issues wouldn't get everybody's picture in the paper, at least not as often or predictably as hounding a celebrity from the capitol to the courts on trumped up charges.

For more, see a dedicated blog on the case at the Houston Chronicle.

How the Grinch stole clemency: Christmastime pardons trivialize process

Our pal P.S. Ruckman over at Pardon Power pointed me to his terrific piece on George H.W. Bush's pardon of Houston-born basketball great Charles "Tex" Harrison, the first black player named an "All-American" and a long-time star and coach of the Harlem Globetrotters who'd been convicted of marijuana possession in 1965. I didn't know that history and I bet some of y'all didn't, either, so those interested should give it a read.

And speaking of pardons, it's December which means it's pardon season. Ruckman is fond of noting that half of all pardons are issued in December, and I'd expect Governor Rick Perry's usual Christmas pardons to come out like clockwork any old time now.

Numerous other blogs and MSM outlets have been rightly lamenting President Obama's Grinch-like clemency for 9 penny ante defendants, in an act with little more practical significance than the pardoning of Thanksgiving turkeys. It took Obama longer than any other Democratic president - 682 days into his presidency - to issue his first pardons. Pathetic. Ruckman emphasizes that the nine tepid cases that made it represented a tiny fraction of the candidates: " To date, Obama has received 3,389 new petitions for federal executive clemency. At the beginning of fiscal year 2010, there were 4,716 petitions pending. He has denied 1,288 petitions and an additional 842 have been 'closed without presidential action.'"

To his credit, Ruckman had predicted this outcome, writing in early November that

dumping a handful of pardons at Christmas is a very sorry way to demonstrate that you (or the DOJ) has anything like a serious clemency program. Instead, it clearly sends the signal that the justice that can only be wrought by acts of mercy is a mere afterthought, inappropriate for the other 11 months of the year, when you see yourself as taking care of "important" stuff.

In addition, Christmastime pardons send a very wrongheaded - if not outright dangerous - signal to the American people that pardons are something like Christmas gifts, passed out during the holiday season, to those who actually may, or may not deserve them. Which is to say, it is no wonder the DOJ and OPA are so shy about pardons. The very timing of them implies their work re the assessment of pardon applications is a joke.

Of course, if the media were to inquire about the "typical" pardon half as much as they do the "controversial" ones, they would learn (and educate the American public to) the fact that the typical act of clemency does not spring anyone from prison or overturn the judgment of judges and juries at all! In fact, the typical act of clemency simply restores the civil rights of individuals who have served their time, waited a prescribed period before applying for clemency and have become productive members of society. Which is to say, their pardon was not really much of anything like a "gift." They earned it. Believe it, dear reader, when a person gets a pardon out of the DOJ in the last 4 decades - it is earned!

So, while some may be encouraged by the morsels of mercy that President Obama distributes while Santa Claus is in the neighborhood, let us be the first to complain. Shame on you, Mr. President. To date, your clemency "policy" deserves nothing but scorn, slight regard and contempt.

Strong language, but he's got a strong point. Clemency is an important power of the executive branch but it's not one that's exercised on an ongoing basis. Instead, as Ruckman says, pardons are handed out like symbolic Christmas gifts or else end-of-term political favors.

The same criticism about trivializing pardons by issuing them mostly at Christmastime applies, for the most part, to Governor Perry's clemency record, though his is certainly better than Barack Obama's. This morning I took a chart published earlier on Grits that was compiled from annual reports from Texas' Board of Pardons and Paroles, updating and extending it back to 2001 to get a fuller picture of Governor Perry's overall clemency record (including pardons, commutations, etc.) since he ascended from Lt. Governor after Gov. Bush was elected President. Take a look:



Clearly 2003 was the high-water mark for Perry pardons, with 73 clemency requests granted out of 90 recommended by the Board of Pardons and Paroles, including pardons for 35 people convicted in the notorious "Tulia drug stings" and others from the Dallas fake drug scandal. Otherwise, though, commutations have been rare and pardons have mostly come either around Christmastime in relatively trivial cases, as Ruckman describes, or in the wake of high-profile DNA exonerations.

In debates over "innocence" issues, one frequently hears executive clemency tossed around as a (theoretical) remedy available to actually innocent people who are convicted, but without exoneration by the courts that's an incredibly rare occurrence. For the clemency process to actually fulfill that role in the justice system, Ruckman's right that it must be exercised on an ongoing basis throughout the year and not just used as a symbolic Christmas photo op. And that's not a criticism that's exclusive to Barack Obama.

Criminals in Lubbock pause for Tech football games

Crime in Lubbock declines 14% when Texas Tech plays football, reports the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Further, for the period examined, "Tech’s 2008 upset of then-No. 1 Texas correlated with the sharpest drop in calls — more than 25 percent fewer calls than the average for the 7 to 11 p.m. period."

I'll bet there wasn't a lot of crime in College Station last night.

TYC football team receives spirited welcome

Occasionally, following this nationally publicized example, schools on the schedules of TYC's fooball teams have taken to welcoming the visiting squad with their own cheering section, food after the game, etc.. Here's a story of a private Austin school which showed the Giddings State School Indians a good time before and after a thorough on-the-field trouncing. With the emphasis on group prayer and affirming the humanity of offenders, plus the fact that some of the schools putting on these welcomes, like this one, are religious academies, such events almost have the feel of prison ministry work. I'm glad to see it.

Because all the other big problems have been solved ...

Obama's Justice Department today indicted Texas baseball legend "Rocket" Roger Clemens for perjury related to alleged steroid use, reports USA Today. See the indictment (pdf). The allegations rest primarily on the word of a snitch who turned on Clemens to avoid prosecution himself.

This seems to me like a massive waste of time and resources and an extremely poor exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Making the situation appear even more hypocritical, as I pointed out before Clemens' ill-advised testimony to Congress, "We couldn't get Condi Rice to testify under oath about 9/11, and myriad Bush administration officials under the GOP Congress were allowed to appear before Congress without risk of perjury charges if they lied," but the feds are using Clemens' Congressional testimony as a perjury trap to go after baseball's all-time strikeout leader Clemens for no good reason I can identify. Hell, even Henry Waxman who chaired the hearing where Clemens allegedly committed perjury later said he regretted staging the event. The whole fiasco was a bad idea from the get-go and this indictment just makes matters worse.

Perjury is a crime that's prosecuted very selectively, with many obvious instances routinely overlooked by prosecutors. Federal prosecutors are going after Clemens because of his star power, not because he poses some terrific threat to the public, or for that matter to anyone but a batter on the receiving end of a beanball.

UPDATE: Tom Kirkendall rightly delcares that "These witch hunts, investigations, criminal indictments, morality plays and public shaming episodes are not advancing a dispassionate and reasoned debate regarding the complex issues that are at the heart of the use of PED's [Performance Enhancing Drugs] in baseball and other sports. On a very basic level, it is not even clear that the controlled use of PED's to enhance athletic performance is as dangerous to health as many of the sports in which the users compete."

Prison ministry by and for youth

Here's a nice article from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about high school athletes at Southlake-Carroll taking time for a weekly softball game with TYC youth from McFadden Ranch. The story opens:

Take a 20-minute ride from the well-manicured community of Southlake through the back roads of rural Roanoke and you might, if you can find it, stumble upon McFadden Ranch.

The 48-bed facility set in the middle of a handful of acres serves as the centerpiece for this community-based residential program that, through the Texas Youth Commission, provides care and treatment to juvenile offenders.

The drive is one several members of the Southlake Carroll football team have become very familiar with over the last few months... for all the right reasons.

Nearly every week this summer around 15 Dragons, mostly offensive linemen, show up at 6 p.m. to engage in a friendly game of softball with the TYC kids. The groups share gloves, bats, watermelon and testimonial for about two hours each time.

This all started by Carroll senior offensive lineman Nathan Butler. His father, Steve Butler hosts a bible study for football players every Wednesday during the school year. Once summer commenced, Nathan came up with the idea to play softball at McFadden Ranch.

"[Southlake Carroll] Coach [Hal] Wasson always tells us to go out and reach out," Nathan Butler said. "My dad's been doing prison ministries for as long as I can remember. So I am just following in his footsteps and doing something to help the offensive line and defensive line come together."

Shift steroid testing dollars from students to cops

Kuff criticizes the high-school athletics steroid testing that this blog has derided since its inception, noting that "About 50,000 tests since February 2008 have found only about 20 confirmed cases of steroid use." Chuck opines that the program at one point cost $3 million per year before it was scaled back in reaction to reports of its ineffectiveness. "It’s now down to $750K," he says, "Which ought to be the first thing erased from the budget next biennium, since clearly we’re spending all that money on a non-problem."

I certainly understand that sentiment. I'd suggest, though, that funds for steroid testing not be eliminated entirely but instead redirected to an area where we know there's a much more significant problem than in high school sports: Steroid use among law enforcement. After a high-profile steroid dealer in Plano who was accused of selling illicit drugs to cops and professional athletes died of gunshot wounds along with his bodybuilder girlfriend, Plano authorities chose to aggressively pursue his athlete clients but didn't investigate who were his police officer customers. Only one of the five agencies at which he allegedly sold drugs implemented steroid testing in response. Too often, police agencies tolerate steroid use among their own even while investigating others for the same offense.

There are so many high school athletes that spending $750K can't remotely check everybody, and even when they do test, only 2 in 10,000 athletes come up positive. OTOH, that much money aimed at steroid testing a much smaller number of active-duty law enforcement officers would allow for much broader coverage among a group where there's a lot more evidence that steroid use is a widespread, significant problem. Right now, in most cases investigators - federal, state and local - fail to take the most obvious first steps toward investigating steroid use among police, even when they have evidence that would allow such an inquiry. (If you're a celebrity sports star, though, they'll spare no expense to hang you out to dry.)

Steroid testing on student athletes turned out to be well-intentioned but unnecessary. Perhaps if police were tested, we'd similarly discover that a de minimis number were using steroids, at which point I'd argue, just like with athletes, that it's simply not necessary if it's catching so few. OTOH, there's good reason to suspect steroid use among police is much more widespread than among high school student athletes, and if the state is going to invest in steroid testing, it makes a lot more sense to put resources there.

TYC's football season underway

Last year's story about the Grapevine high school that put on a heart-warming reception for the Gainseville Tornadoes football team - one of two made up of students from Texas Youth Commission juvenile detention facilities - will be made into a movie called One Heart, featured on this promo web site. The coach at Faith Christian HS (Grapevine) who came up with the idea to have half his own fans root for the TYC kids was honored at the most recent Superbowl for engineering the remarkable event.

The other TYC team is the Giddings Indians. These teams don't play against public schools but participate in a league run by the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools.

For reasons I can't explain, the teams' football schedules are nowhere on the TYC website. Maybe that partially explains why they have few fans in the stands! But a friend at TYC forwarded me the Giddings Indians' schedule:

• Thursday, Sept. 24 Cornerstone San Antonio 7:30
• Thursday, Oct. 2 Open
• Thursday, Oct. 8 St. Joseph Victoria 7:30
• Thursday, Oct. 15 Hyde Park Austin 7:30
• Thursday, Oct. 22 San Marcos Baptist San Marcos 7:30
• Friday, Oct. 30 San Antonio Christian San Antonio 7:30
• Friday, Nov. 6 Texas Military Institute, San Antonio 7:30
  

And here's the remaining schedule for the Gainesville Tornadoes, according MaxPreps:

• Friday, Sept. 25 Bishop Dunne, Dallas, 7:30
• Thursday, Oct. 2 Bishop Lynch, Dallas, 7:30
• Thursday, Oct. 8 Open
  
• Friday, Oct. 16 Nolan Catholic, Fort Wort, 7:30
• Friday, Oct. 23 John Paul Stevens II, Plano, TBA
• Friday, Oct. 30 Trinity Christian, Addison, 7:30
• Friday, Nov. 6 Faith Christian, Grapevine, 7:30

Every single outing for these kids is an away game and they don't typically have a lot of folks show up to cheer for them. Because of privacy issues involving juvenile offenders, the papers can't even print box scores with the kids' names, and even if they did, many of their games are outright drubbings. It's hard to field a competitive team when kids cycle in and out throughout the season because of academic or disciplinary problems, or simply because their sentence is up.

Youth have to earn the right to participate in sports through good behavior while in detention, so the kids participating in youth sports at TYC are generally among the ones at least trying to work the program and get on the right path. They deserve someone to come cheer them for that effort alone, even if the outcome of the games may be lopsided.

If any of the contests on the upcoming schedule are near where you live, consider spending an evening rooting for the underdogs and giving just a little encouragement to some youth who don't receive a lot.

Texas Police Games: Maybe Grits needs a sports beat

It's occurred to me before maybe Grits needs a sports beat, and if so the place to be this weekend would be Conroe where reportedly 2,000 sworn officers have gathered to compete in the Texas Police Games.

They've got quite an impressive list of events lined up. The K-9 Narcotics competition will be held this morning.

Photo from the Montgomery County News.

Should have eloped

In Galveston last year, a bride's 19-year old brother got drunk and belligerent toward a police officer at her wedding, so he responded by calling in 30 more officers who decided to clear the room using "pepper spray and electrical shock Tasers to detain and arrest 13 people," including Houston Astros pitcher Brandon Backe. The event and subsequent disciplining of 13 Galveston police officers for the incident - not for excessive force but for "failing to record details of what happened" in official reports - made national headlines.

That's got to qualify as one of the worst weddings ever.

An act of compassion that transcended sports

At the prodding of former Dallas Cowboys football great Troy Aikman, National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell will hold a press conference on Friday hailing the private high school football coach from Grapevine who engineered a surprise welcome for TYC football players from the Gainesville unit, including cheerleaders, vocal fans, a band, and a forty yard "spirit line" they ran through entering the stadium. (See prior Grits coverage.)

There's no doubt the coach, whose brainchild garnered national media attention, wasn't looking for earthly rewards when he urged half his own team's fans - for one night - to root for the opposing team. But according to AP:

A story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram the next day led to a column by ESPN's Rick Reilly. Troy Aikman made sure Goodell read it, leading to the invitation for this weekend. The fallout has helped Gainesville, too, with Williams noticing warmer welcomes at basketball games and more kids wanting to play football.

"Coach Hogan inspired an entire community in an extraordinary way and gave those young men on the Gainesville team a chance to believe in themselves," Goodell said. "It's a powerful message and shows how football can be such a positive force in shaping values and building communities."

In a sense, Coach Kris Hogan is right when he said, "I hate it that this thing that we did is so rare ... Everybody views it as such a big deal. Shouldn't that be the normal m.o., though?" But the truth is what happened that night in Grapevine really was rare, special and inspirational - an act of compassion that transcended sports.

Good for Aikman and Goodell and bully for Coach Hogan for this much-deserved recognition.

MORE: I'd missed this excellent, extensive coverage from the Fort Worth Star Telegram by sports reporter Dave Thomas, who covered the game for the paper.

WATCH VIDEO OF THE GAME: Via the Star-Telegram.

Grapevine fans give early Christmas gift to TYC football team

This story from Sports Illustrated about a remarkable high school football game last month between a Grapevine Faith and the team from TYC's Gainesville unit literally made me weep:

It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through.

Did you hear that? The other team's fans?

They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, "Go Tornadoes!" Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions.

It was rivers running uphill and cats petting dogs. More than 200 Faith fans sat on the Gainesville side and kept cheering the Gainesville players on—by name.

The Grapevine Faith coach deserves credit for this astonishing, inspiring event:

This all started when Faith's head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery—many of whose families had disowned them—wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.

So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the Faithful to do just that. "Here's the message I want you to send:" Hogan wrote. "You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth."

Some people were naturally confused. One Faith player walked into Hogan's office and asked, "Coach, why are we doing this?"

And Hogan said, "Imagine if you didn't have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you."

Next thing you know, the Gainesville Tornadoes were turning around on their bench to see something they never had before. Hundreds of fans. And actual cheerleaders!

"I thought maybe they were confused," said Alex, a Gainesville lineman (only first names are released by the prison). "They started yelling 'DEE-fense!' when their team had the ball. I said, 'What? Why they cheerin' for us?'"

It was a strange experience for boys who most people cross the street to avoid. "We can tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to the games," says Gerald, a lineman who will wind up doing more than three years. "You can see it in their eyes. They're lookin' at us like we're criminals. But these people, they were yellin' for us! By our names!"

Maybe it figures that Gainesville played better than it had all season, scoring the game's last two touchdowns. Of course, this might be because Hogan put his third-string nose guard at safety and his third-string cornerback at defensive end. Still.

After the game, both teams gathered in the middle of the field to pray and that's when Isaiah surprised everybody by asking to lead. "We had no idea what the kid was going to say," remembers Coach Hogan. But Isaiah said this: "Lord, I don't know how this happened, so I don't know how to say thank You, but I never would've known there was so many people in the world that cared about us."

And it was a good thing everybody's heads were bowed because they might've seen Hogan wiping away tears.

Wow. Just ... wow.

Hat tip to TYC Ombudsman Will Harrell for passing this along.

MORE: See earlier coverage from the Waco Tribune Herald.

Happy Thanksgiving: Go Longhorns, OK State!

I'm taking a couple of days away from the blog to spend with the family and root for Oklahoma State full-time between now and the Bedlam game Saturday. ;)

Since this blog is all about justice, I'm naturally highly outraged at the idea that the Oklahoma Sooners might jump past my beloved Longhorns to play in the Big 12 Championship game after the Horns whipped them 45-35 on a neutral site. And it's not just the outcome between Texas and OU, but the way the Longhorns won: They took every blow the heavyweight Sooner offense could deliver - the same hailstorm that rained down on Texas Tech last week - but weathered the maelstrom and came back to win in the fourth quarter based on superior stamina and character. For Texas, after that game, to watch two teams it has beaten (Missouri and Oklahoma) play for the Big 12 Championship and potentially the national title, would be a true injustice.

In addition, to seal the deal, it'd be nice to see Texas beat A&M tonight like a rented mule.

Use this as an open thread to discuss any criminal justice topics, this weekend's football games or whatever is on your mind. And Happy Turkey Day.

Free Pacman Jones! Or at least let him back on the football field

As UT's Longhorn football team approached their spectacular game with Oklahoma last week and a tough stretch in their schedule over the next few games, including tonight hosting #11 Missouri, I've found myself checking in more frequently at the venerable sports cable network ESPN and couldn't help but notice they're producing a flood of stories aggressively criticizing troubled Dallas Cowboys cornerback Adam "Pacman" Jones, who was suspended this week by the league after an argument with a bodyguard at a hotel.

ESPN and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell seem determined to turn Pacman Jones into the next Michael Vick - a sacrificial lamb suitable for crucifixion in the media to show the league doesn't tolerate bad guys. Maybe Jones deserves it for his past transgressions, which I've never closely followed before he came to Dallas, but not for the incident that most recently hounded him out of the league.

Much of the coverage I've seen has been mean-spirited and misleading. I want to punch ESPN anchor Trey Wingo in the chops every time he announces that Jerry Jones hired Pacman a four-man security team to look after him. "Why does a grown man need four men to follow him around?" Wingo gleefully repeats like a manta, when any fool knows security staff don't work 24 hours per day and a four-man team is needed to provide a week's worth of coverage, one shift at a time. I've even heard Wingo corrected on that point by people he's interviewing and he persists in the misrepresentation. Pacman never had more than one bodyguard with him at a time but you woudn't know it from ESPN's spin on the situation. Do the math, Wingo, and stop the smears!

Tanya Eiserer at the Dallas News Crime Blog ordered the incident reports on the matter (see here -pdf). Thank you, thank you, thank you, Tanya! I'm so grateful somebody's actually performing journalism on the incident instead of just demagoguing about it, I could give give you a big, sloppy kiss!

So what do we discover from these documents? Many interesting things.

For starters, what exactly happened? The official offense report says that Pacman and his bodyguard "caused a verbal argument disturbance" in a hotel restroom. Officer Rodney Allen was already at scene for some other, unknown reason and he called in the disturbance, Corporal Miguel Jamaica was sent as backup. Here's a relevant excerpt from Officer Allen's narrative in his report:

I observed Mr. Adam Jones and his bodyguard walking in the hallway towards the restroom. At that point I observed Mr. Jones and his bodyguard joking around with each other. As I admired the hotel designs, the hotel security advised me that something was going on in the restroom near the lobby. The hotel security then asked me to check out the problem becaue two male individuals were in the restroom playing around. As I arrived at the restroom, I observed Mr. Jones girlfriend at the restroom door stating two male individuals to stop playing around. ...

[Officer Allen] asked hotel security to help me escort Mr. Jones and his bodyguard to their vehicles. ... Before Mr. Jones and his bodyguard left the location, I asked both of them did they want to make an offense report and both of them refused ...

Ater Mr. Jones and his bodyguard left the location, I then talked with the on duty manager. The manager stated to me that she wanted me to make a note of the incident. I then gave the manager the incident number #312126v. I also did not observe Mr. Jones intoxicated.

Officer Jamaica's report adds this additional material. After arriving at the scene, said Jamaica, Officer Allen:

informed me that no offense had occurred and that the hotel just wanted them gone. Both parties left without further incident. At no time did anyone involved in the disturbance or hotel management report an offense to me. After the parties left, I suggested to PO Allen that he complete a Miscellaneous Incident Report documenting the incident.

Here's where things get even more interesting. Deputy Chief Vincent Goelbeck criticized Officer Allen, in particular, in a memo to Chief David Kunkle which alleged that Allen's vague account of the incident could be "construed as not being forthcoming." He could also have pointed out that Allen gave contradictory accounts about whether Pacman was drinking, saying in his report that "I also did not observe Mr. Jones intoxicated." But that differs from the version he told supervisors who questioned him about the incident after the fact:

[Allen's incident report] was very vague but both officers stated that they did not witness or have information that an assault had occurred or that hotel management wanted any offense made. During the verbal questioning of Officer Allen, he stated that Mr. Jones appeared to have been drinking but not to the point where an arrest needed to be made for public intoxication. However he didn't include this in his written statement. Officer Allen was counseled on the importance of a detailed [incident report] and being specific with information during questions from supervisors, understanding that vaguesness can be construed as not being forthcoming with all of the fact known, which can cast doubt on his and the department's credibility.

Lt. Kimberly Owens has reiterated to her officers and supervisors the importance of contacting all chain of command on a potentially high-profile incident like this.

So the officer has given two different stories about whether Jones was drinking - one is obviously a lie but who knows how to pick between them?

Otherwise, all accounts from those at the scene attribute whatever happened in the restroom to "playing around" or some type of horseplay, not a fight or a brawl. Neither officer at the scene thought arrests were merited and the hotel declined to press charges.

Pacman Jones already has been suspended from the league over this and many talking heads on ESPN, in particular, are declaring he should never be allowed to play professional football again. That's pure demagoguery.

Those same talking heads have criticized Jerry Jones because he initially reviewed the incident and decided not to discipline Pacman. Cynics jumped to the conclusion that the Cowboys' owner was simply willing to tolerate any misconduct to keep his players on the field, and the media drumbeat finally pressured NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to intervene with his own suspension. The irony, though: When you look at the details of the case, Jerry Jones was right and Roger Goodell's decision was based in cowardice and media pandering.

The worst thing Pacman Jones has been accused of that night was horseplay. Nobody was hurt. No one involved including the hotel management thought anyone should be arrested or that charges should be filed. Nobody went to jail. And the officer on the scene wrote an offense report so vague (and which he contradicted other statements to supervisors) that a Deputy Chief said it undermined the credibility of the department.

If Pacman Jones had been out drunk with his posse in a strip club and he decided to "make it rain" as he did in the most famous of his prior indiscretions, I'd think it'd be fine to bounce him out of the league for good - after all, he's had plenty of chances.

But nothing I see in these official accounts indicates to me he was engaging in that type of behavior. When confronted he immediately demurred, left the premises as requested, and even "thanked" Officer Allen at the scene for intervening. Nobody at the scene thought he'd committed any offense or deserved to be arrested.

Although I'm a lifelong Cowboys fan, personally I have few stakes from a fan's standpoint regarding whether Pacman Jones gets to play. He's been at best an average cornerback and kick returner for Dallas despite his much-ballyhooed speed and skills coming in. (Give me Terrance Newman as CB any day of the week and twice on Sundays.) But if these documents from the Dallas Police Department are an accurate reflection of what happened - and I know of no other first-hand documentation - Pacman Jones didn't do anything here that merits the media demagoguery he's enduring, much less suspension by the league and possibly terminating his career.

Free Pacman Jones! Or at least reinstate him.

The case for steroid testing high school athletes if 2 in 10,000 are users

Since I've argued against continued steroid testing of high school athletes, maintaining that steroid abuse by police officers empirically poses a more significant threat, I wanted to point readers to a column by Donald Hooton, father of a steroid using teen who committed suicide for whom Texas' steroid testing law is named. Writes Hooton in the July 14 Dallas News:

Out of the preliminary findings, two positive tests resulted from more than 10,000 tests conducted by the National Center for Drug Free Sports and the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory. But the law's primary purpose is to prevent our children from turning to steroids by providing a deterrent – the risk of getting caught gives our kids a solid reason to say no.

Consider speed traps on highways. Many adults and teens drive the speed limit not because they know that doing such is safer and saves fuel, but because they know someone is watching – the fear of getting caught is greater than the desire to disobey the law. What happens when you take away the speed traps? People start breaking the law.

Whether the program yielded two positives, 400 positives or 1,000 positives, no one should be drawing conclusions about the extent of steroid use based on these preliminary lab results. The program was never designed to measure steroid use among high school athletes.

According to the statistics from the 2007 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, recognized as the premier organization in this field, 3.9 percent of high school students are abusing anabolic steroids nationally. Given that 10,407 students were tested in Texas in the past year, the results should have yielded at least 400 positive tests. Based on the preliminary results that we've read about, what we do know is:

• The random testing preliminary results of Texas students identified that 99.98 percent of the sampled student-athletes tested clean for performance-enhancing drugs.

• At least two kids are going to get help before something tragic happens. (I can only wish that my son had been "caught" and been able to receive help.)

• Ten thousand kids know firsthand that we are taking this issue seriously here in Texas.

• Millions of Texas families now know about the dangers of anabolic steroids.

Those results are, to me, an excellent definition of success.

The speed trap analogy is a particularly poor one. If officers only gave tickets at 2 out of every 10,000 traffic stops, there'd be scarce incentive to continue them. Speed traps make money because traffic violations are a lot more common than that.

Also, even if the "program was never designed to measure steroid use among high school athletes," the results are more directly probative than a survey that merely asks verbally about steroid use. The size of the sample is quite large and Texas specific. I don't think we can rely on that 3.9% figure based on these results - certainly not if next year's round of steroid testing duplicates the lower number.

I'll agree with Hooton the program served a short-term public relations benefit, but that has already been realized. Now the public relations message is actually being undermined by extremely de minimus results.

To the extent steroid abuse is a widespread problem, these data show the main nexus of its use does not lie with high school athletes. That means education and prevention resources are likely adequate for that population and enforcement spending (the 10,000 tests cost $3 million) should be reserved for groups where testing gets more bang for its buck.

Justifying Failure: Columnist defends steroid testing high school athletes despite logic and evidence. What about police?

I'm amazed anyone can look at the results from Texas' experiment steroid testing high school athletes - which identified two steroid users out of more than 10,000 tests given - and think the idea was anything but an abominable failure. However, columnist Cedric Golden at the Austin Statesman believes that cost-benefit analysis is just fine ("Steroid problem should be tackled at home, not just with testing," July 3):

So Texas taxpayers spent $3 million to expose two steroid users?

The $1.5 million-per-positive test would appear from the outside to be a muscle-headed waste of our tax dollars. It would also suggest the other $3 million earmarked to test 40,000 to 50,000 athletes this coming school year should be put back in the vault.

Not exactly.

The numbers may not bear it out, but the state made progress here. Somewhere out there, at least one kid was scared straight by the thought of the parents' negative reaction to a positive drug test.

So the state "made progress" because by spending $3 million they might have "scared" one kid? Really? Scaring kids isn't that hard, when you get down to it - that's not such a great accomplishment for that much money! After all, is spending $3 million to change behaviors of three kids instead of two really all that much better?

I continue to believe steroid testing in Texas police departments would yield a much larger number of illegal steroid users than any batch of high school kids you can find, and to be honest it matters a lot more!

Por ejemplo, now-deceased steroid dealer David Jacobs claimed to have sold steroids to officers in five Metroplex police departments before he and his girlfriend died of gunshot wounds this spring that were ruled a murder/suicide. Dallas PD implemented department-wide steroid testing after the incident, but the other four (Garland, Richardson, Arlington and Plano) did not. That's apparently a bigger nest of illegal steroid use identified than in all of Texas high school athletics!

Golden asks several questions about the testing of high schoolers aimed at rationalizing its continuation, all of which appear to me to have obvious answers, but let's run through them: "Did we learn anything?" Yes! We learned that the problem of steroid use in high school is dramatically overhyped by the media and not really that big deal.

"Did the testers scare off the users, or are high school students using masking agents?" Since when does anyone think high school students pay attention to the newspaper or the actions of the state Legislature? It's a safe bet most students never had the remotest inkling about the test until their own coach announced it. As for masking agents, they're a crapshoot; they don't work consistently enough to explain these results, and anyway it's a reach to think everybody figured out how to cheat.

"Are they testing at the right time of the year?" Well at what time of year besides summer aren't high schoolers somewhere participating in athletics? Unless you operate under the assumption that only football jocks use steroids (or that athletes stop training in the off season), that makes no sense at all.

Texas legislators should take that same $3 million per year in the next budget and use it to pay for random testing in Texas police and sheriff departments. I'm certain we'd get a lot more bang for the buck in terms of how many steroid abusers the state identified and the relative import of each finding.

That said, if Texas did 10,000 tests and found only two steroid users among police, I'd be the first to say it was unnecessary and needed to be discontinued. There's no need to manufacture problems that don't exist (though I suppose they're easier to solve that way!). Even after writing on Grits for several years now in favor of steroid testing for police, if the in-the-real-world results turned out that lopsided, I couldn't imagine viable arguments for continuing it. That goes double in the case of high school athletes.

See prior related Grits posts:

• Steroid use negligible among high school jocks; what about testing police?
  
• Dallas PD will implement steroid testing after David Jacobs' allegations
  
• Possible suicide by snitch who alleged police doping deserves outside inquiry
  
• Informant who accused Metroplex police of steroid use turns up dead
  
• Plano steroid dealer said he sold to police in five Metroplex cities
• NYPD requires steroid testing of officers in wake of scandal
• Feds should check names of steroid customers with state law enforcement registries
• Where is Congressional investigation of steroid abuse among law enforcement?
  
• Why test Texas high school athletes for steroids but not police officers?
• Arbitrator reinstates steroid using police officer
  
• Cops on Steroids
• Lawsuit: Private mercenaries, police trainers abuse steroids in Iraq
• Insert Shrunken Testicle Joke Here: Book by ex-Texas cop defends steroid use by police
  
• Readers back steroid testing for cops and high school athletes

Possible suicide by snitch who alleged police doping deserves outside inquiry

As the mainstream media continues to focus on whether the National Football League will investigate allegations by deceased Plano steroid dealer David Jacobs, I continue to wonder who will investigate allegations that he sold steroids to police in five Metroplex departments?

Jacobs' death was ruled a suicide, but the more I learn, the more I think his case deserves an outside investigation.

Let me be clear I have no first-hand knowledge; I can't know what happened. Perhaps it really was a murder-suicide, the denouement of a rocky and jealous relationship with his bodybuilder girlfriend Amanda Jo Earhart-Savell. But when a police department Jacobs accused of harboring steroid abusers is the same one conducting the investigation, that creates an inherent appearance of conflict that would be better served by enlisting independent investigators. I agree with Bill Baumbach from the Collin County Observer who:

hope[s] Collin County DA John Roach takes a very hard look at this case. Even if the evidence supports suicide, Rossi died before he could give testimony against law enforcement officers . An outside investigation is warranted. If Mr. Roach will not investigate, then the feds should.

I'd earlier compared Jacobs' case to a New York steroid dealer who accused police and was soon thereafter found dead from gunshot wounds to the chest and head, which was ruled a suicide. (NYPD instituted department-wide steroid testing as the result of his allegations.) It turns out David Jacobs was also shot in the abdomen and head, but the medical examiner concluded his death was a suicide, too.

In general, how likely is it that a suicide requires two shots? Certainly possible, but statistically speaking, not very. Via Steroid Nation I found this study from North Carolina that has the biggest dataset I've seen on the topic. Here's the abstract:

Suicide by firearm is a frequent mode of death and the most common mode of suicide in the United States. So typically is there but one bullet entrance would in the suicide victim, and so often are there multiple wounds with homicide that some investigators and the public are unaware or forget that the person intending suicide may discharge his gun into himself more than once. The frequency, incidence, and other characteristics of the phenomenon deserve more recognition. The data presented are from medical examiner reports and related material from 7,895 gunshot deaths, including 3,522 suicides by firearm, that occurred in North Carolina in the 7-year period 1972-1978. The 58 multishot firearm suicides represent 0.7% of all firearm deaths (one in 136) and 1.6% of forearm suicides (one in 61). Characteristics of the individual entrance wounds such as body regions involved and muzzle distance were the same as those of single shot cases. Long gun use was not rare, but 0.22 caliber handguns predominated. Other characteristics of weapon, victim, wounds, and situations are presented. Each of the cases was assessed by forensic pathologists as it was reported and was reviewed again for the study. The type of data presented is one advantage of a structured, centrally guided, statewide medical examiner system.

So .7% of gunshot deaths were two-shot suicides, but steroid dealers who accused police in New York and Plano both died that way? (A possibly probative followup study question might have been, "what percentage of two-shot suicides were people who had pending accusations against police officers regarding misconduct?")

Also, who tries to commit suicide by shooting themselves in the abdomen?

Another piece of datum makes me think there's more to investigate: the North Carolina study found most two shot deaths were with "long guns" and .22 caliber handguns. But David Jacobs supposedly couldn't do the job with a .40 caliber Glock?

Over the weekend, Tanya Eiserer at the Dallas News gave more detail about what police found ("Steroid dealer David Jacobs death ruled a suicide," June 7):

Police responded to Mr. Jacobs' home after receiving a missing-person call about midnight Wednesday from Ms. Earhart-Savell's family. The family told police they had not heard from her and thought she might be at Mr. Jacobs' house.

Police were still trying to determine who owned the gun believed to have been used in the shootings.

Authorities said they found "no sign of forced entry" and have no reason to believe anyone else was in the home at the time of their deaths. But according to the court records, they found signs of a struggle, six fired bullets and 10 bullet casings.

After the bodies were found, Plano police wearing masks over their faces were seen entering the house and taking evidence away, some in boxes. Police say they were undercover officers who need to protect their identities because of other work.

According to the court records, police seized computers, several cellphones, video equipment and other computer-related equipment, as well as more than $3,000.

One wonders exactly how many undercover Plano cops are working on steroid cases? After all, Jacobs already cut a plea deal and was no longer an investigative target. For whole groups of investigators to be hiding their identity while they're investigating the snitch who accused their colleagues of crimes simply leaves an eery and decidedly ambiguous impression. Wrote Dallas News columnist Kevin Sheridan:

Frankly, Jacobs made lots of public allegations, which was part of the problem. Besides counting athletes as customers, he said he sold to police officers in Garland, Richardson, Dallas, Arlington and Plano. He even said a Plano cop stole $4,500 from him during a raid last year.

"One of the feds told me that [Jacobs] was talking a lot more than they wanted him to," [said Don] Hooton [father of a steroid using high-school pitcher in Plano who committed suicide] ... "They weren't happy about that at all.

"The last thing they want to see is all this stuff on the evening news."

I've argued previously that the Department of Justice has little business investigating drug use by professional athletes, but DOJ has longstanding authority and responsibility to investigate allegations of police corruption. If it's true that Jacobs operated one of the largest steroid rings in America and sold his product to police officers, the feds need to step in so the public can feel confident nothing will get swept under the rug. At the end of the day, it's a lot more important to root out police officers who're trafficking in illegal steroids than to investigate a bunch of overpaid NFL jocks.