Bill filed to eliminate forensic hypnosis from Texas courts

Many thanks to State Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa for filing SB 130 to eliminate forensic hypnosis from Texas courtrooms. Grits has been fascinated with this topic since we first discussed it on the podcast last year, and reporters at the Dallas News and the Dallas Observer have covered the subject as well. A recent Psychology Today column on the topic concluded that the "cons" related to forensic hypnosis outweighed any "pros." Most states' courts do not allow it.

Required textbook for Texas
forensic hypnosis certification class

In this Twitter-string in response to SB 130, I briefly made the case for ending the practice. In essence, modern brain science has shown most of the thinking behind it is garbage. For example, recently I purchased a copy of the textbook the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement requires for forensic hypnosis trainings. That learned tome informs us that the "conscious" mind takes up 1/8 of the brain and the "subconscious" 7/8(!), with memories stored in the latter. It suggests "automatic writing" may be "useful in eliciting suppressed" memories, as well as "age regression," allowing witnesses to reenact past events.

Another Tweet in that string cited to the TCOLE curriculum for forensic hypnosis wondering aloud why the state would require detectives being trained in forensic hypnosis to demonstrate proficiency in post-hypnotic suggestions? (Item 14) Should detectives really be taught to implant memories in hypnotized witnesses? That seems dubious, at best.

There was a time when more than 800 Texas peace officers boasted forensic hypnosis certifications. Today, just two agencies - Texas DPS and the Harris County Sheriff's Office - employ nearly all of the fewer than two dozen forensic hypnotists in the state.

Indeed, forensic hypnosis appears to be a dying profession in Texas. There aren't many trainings conducted anymore. Pam Colloff, Mandy Marzullo and I wanted to take a forensic-hypnosis-certification course this year, but could not find one given in the state of Texas throughout all of 2018.

Most practitioners boast gray hair and decades-long resumes, and there doesn't appear to be an eager new guard anxious to stake their careers on a practice that's perhaps a half step above a tarot-card reading in terms of investigative utility.

The Texas Legislature should absolutely pass Sen. Hinojosa's SB 130, and while they're at it, they should get rid of this ridiculous certification at TCOLE. It can't be fixed. There's no scientific version of hypnosis-based memory enhancement to fall back on, even if the agency wanted to revise its trainings, which mostly don't occur anymore.

Anyway, TCOLE doesn't have sufficient curriculum staff to revise outdated police trainings, which is a budget question this blog will be revisiting later. They could use three additional FTEs for that purpose, according to the "exceptional items" request in their LAR. (And that's a no-BS request; their backlog is worrying.)

Neither can the Legislature count on the Forensic Science Commission to address the question, although they have received multiple complaints on the topic. That's because, by statute, they are only allowed to consider forensics related to "physical evidence." So hypnosis has somehow slithered through unintended gaps in the government's forensic-vetting apparatus.

That leaves the issue on the Legislature's doorstep. The case seems easy to make: In 2018, a curriculum suggesting police try to get witnesses to engage in "automatic writing," or teaching cops to implant post-hypnotic suggestions, doesn't even pass the laugh test. And yet that's the state of evidence Texas courts have allowed, with the Court of Criminal Appeals reaffirming the admissibility of hypnotically induced testimony as recently as 2004.

Courts in Texas have until now abdicated their duty to protect the public from junk science when it comes to admissibility of forensic hypnosis. In such instances, it's necessary and proper for the Legislature to step in. Bully for Chuy Hinojosa for doing so.

For more background on the topic, see:

• A brief primer on forensic hypnosis
• You're getting sleepy, so you won't notice Texas is still using junk science like 'forensic hypnosis' in death penalty cases
• Reasonably Suspicious podcast, Nov. 2017 (beginning at 28:10 mark)
• Reasonably Suspicious podcast, May 2018 (beginning at 21:19 mark)
• The Dallas News' Lauren McGaughy authored the best MSM deep dive on the topic.

More unconstitutional court fees defenestrated

On Twitter, the Texas District and County Attorneys Association mocked a defendant represented by the Harris County Public Defender for winning a court-fee reduction of about $13. And if that's all there were to it, they'd be right to criticize the court for wasting its time.

But in reality (which in general lies FAR away from the TDCAA twitter feed), the Court of Criminal Appeals overturned a lower court's finding, holding that portions of the "consolidated court cost relating to 'law enforcement officers standards and education,' 'comprehensive rehabilitation,' and 'abused children’s counseling' were all facially unconstitutional" and couldn't be applied to anyone. To boot, the 8-1 margin means the ruling is unlikely to change if one or even two judges are replaced during this election cycle.

So sure, if we were just talking about one defendant getting $13 back, it might be a small thing. But reducing all consolidated court costs by about 10 percent and eliminating those specific funding streams? That's a big deal no matter how much snark and disdain arises from prosecutors.

Jani Maselli-Wood, a former Republican CCA candidate who works at the Harris County Public Defender Office, has been knocking down these unconstitutional fees one by one after they were exposed in a legislatively mandated report written by her husband, Ted Wood, when he was at the Office of Court Administration.

TDCAA sees that marital link as evidence of conspiracy, but if eight members of the CCA including three of the four members of the Government-Always-Wins faction, agreed the fees are unconstitutional (Grits is now counting Yeary in that GAW cohort), it seems to me any conspiracy was a good thing. Why would prosecutors or anyone else think it's a good idea to keep unconstitutional laws on the books?

Rethinking use of force: De-escalation

It's called different things – "de-escalation," "tactical disengagement," or "preservation of life" – but the message is the same: police departments across the country are retraining officers on the appropriate use of force.

Texas' basic peace officer course was last revised in 2014 and will be overhauled sooner than later. Currently, DPD deputy chief Jeff Cotner is leading a TCLE committee undertaking a yearlong review of the 643-hour course, flack Gretchen Grisby said. Your correspondent emailed Cotner to inquire as to whether de-escalation tactics are being considered in that review but didn't immediately hear back.

An August 2015 PERF report recommends the "overhaul of police training, policy, supervision and culture on use of force." While many high-profile shootings may have been legally justified, the report said, "there were missed opportunities" to calm things down before shots were fired. Instead of training officers on what they can legally do, PERF suggests officers receive training on what they should do. 

PERF surveyed 281 police agencies, which spent about 58 hours training on firearms, 49 hours on defensive tactics and eight hours on de-escalation and crisis intervention. Traditionally, officers are taught to use deadly force when it's justified, not necessarily to slow things down. Critics say the tactics are time-consuming when time is particularly of the essence.

Still, police in Dallas, New York City, Kansas City, Seattle and Los Angeles have recently added training on the subject. Excessive force complaints against DPD officers are on track to be the lowest this year in 20 years, a drop Chief David Brown attributes to de-escalation training.

Will Texas join them? Ranjana Natarajan, director of the Civil Rights Clinic at UT's law school, hopes so.

"Police departments still have a ways to go in terms of training officers to use only the amount of force necessary and not use force at all when it's not necessary," she said. "We have to go on improving use of force." 

Ed. note: Eva Ruth Moravec, the latest addition to Grits' mighty cadre of contributing writers, covered crime, courts and government for the San Antonio Express-News for six years, where she repeatedly impressed Grits with the quality and professionalism of her work.  She covered the 2015 Texas legislative session for the Associated Press. Her freelance writing has appeared in The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, and other outlets. She is currently attending grad school at UT Austin studying data-based journalism. Eva's a super-talented young gun who Grits feels blessed to add to the roster, which has grown damn impressive over the last couple of months, don't you think?

AP: Hundreds of cops lost licenses for sexual misconduct, dozens in Texas

The Associated Press performed an investigation into police officers who lost their licenses over sexual misconduct, finding 1,000+ cases over six years in 41 states. See the list, the narrative, and a discussion of their methodology.

In Texas, "The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement decertified 619 officers [from 2009-2014], 79 for sex-related misconduct. Agencies are required to report officer arrests to the state, though not the cause of those arrests. Decertification can happen when an officer is convicted or found to have committed noncriminal misconduct."

Compared to less populous states with more robust licensing and reporting schemes, though, perhaps the numbers should be even higher. (AP acknowledges the 1,000 number "is an undercount.") During the same period, Florida "decertified 2,125 officers, 162 for sex-related misconduct," while Georgia "decertified 2,800 officers, 161 for sex-related misconduct." Do we really imagine that Texas cops' misconduct rates are so much lower, or are disciplinary processes in those states more effective and transparent? My money's on the latter.

Of course, decertification doesn't happen in every case of sexual misconduct, so all these data fail to include officers who are disciplined, or even fired, for sexual misconduct, but not decertified.

On 'Cops in Lab Coats,' the pitfalls of basing police practices on Jonah Hill, Wallace Jefferson for SCOTUS(?) and other stories

Before the day's family festivities begin, here are a few items which deserve Grits readers' attention but haven't made it into independent posts:

The case for raising the age of criminal culpability based on Pearland ISD cops mimicking Jonah Hill movies
Dan Solomon at Texas Monthly described an 8-month undercover sting at Pearland ISD and the episode's idiotic if inescapable similarities to the 21 Jump Street franchise, comparisons to which consumed national media coverage about the event. Playing the killjoy, Solomon framed the issue in terms of Texas' "raise the age" debate, declaring: "It’s frightening that a high school junior who hasn’t committed a violent crime (none of the charges in the sting are for violent crimes), might find himself or herself facing time in an adult facility designed to imprison violent criminals. And that prospect is only thrown into relief when we’re all laughing about Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill."

No room at the inn for civil commitment offenders
As the state struggles to find housing for civilly committed sex offenders, the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee prepares to hear legislation on Tuesday, elaborated in detail by guest blogger Nancy Bunin in this Grits post, to revamp the program. Jefferson County Commissioners blocked using a facility in Beaumont. Even the private prison companies don't want them. The Geo Group "said in a statement that its mission 'no longer aligns' with housing" this cohort.

Casey: Wallace Jefferson for SCOTUS
Long-time columnist Rick Casey poked his head up out of retirement to suggest a potential dark horse nominee for US Supreme Court, should there be another opening: Former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, who Casey rightly speculated is somebody who could actually be confirmed by the Republican-controlled US Senate. Rick Perry has already named Jefferson twice to Texas' high civil court, first as a Texas Supreme Court Justice, then as its Chief Justice. So it's intriguing to imagine that Barack Obama might consider a high-profile Rick Perry appointee for SCOTUS. Indeed, while a longshot, it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility that Jefferson could ascend to the court with either man as president. Where do I get my "Wallace Jefferson for SCOTUS" bumper sticker?

Justice Kennedy: Corrections system misunderstood, broken
Speaking of SCOTUS, when asked this week about prison overcrowding while testifying before a congressional budget subcommittee, Justice Anthony Kennedy took the opportunity to expound on prison policy, declaring, “The corrections system is one of the most overlooked, misunderstood institutions we have in our entire government.” “In many respects, I think it’s broken,” lamented the 78-year old Reagan appointee.

'Cops in Lab Coats'
According to this press release, "University of Houston Law Center (UHLC) Professor Sandra Guerra Thompson argues in her released new book. 'Cops in Lab Coats, Curbing Wrongful Convictions through Independent Forensic Laboratories' is published by Carolina Academic Press."

Of glitter bombs and bathroom blues
The Texas Tribune provides balanced coverage of an unbalanced issue: Legislation to criminalize using the wrong restroom, honing in on Rep. Debbie Riddle's legislation highlighted by Grits back in February. The story doesn't mention it, but there's little doubt these bills were the proximate cause of the representatives' district office receiving a "glitter bomb" last month. Her bills have been referred to the State Affairs Committee which is chaired by Byron Cook, a notably open minded Republican when it comes to civil rights for gay people. Grits continues to believe that, if Riddle's bill criminalizing business owners who let someone use the "wrong" restroom were to pass, it would foster the unintended but entirely predictable consequence of rapidly promoting unisex bathrooms to avoid civil or criminal liability. This one's a "be careful what you ask for" moment. I'm not sure everybody has thought this through.

More arrests over faked police training
Arrests warrants for the Hill County Sheriff and three of his employees were issued recently alleging they falsified training records based on an investigation by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, adding to a growing list. Grits' belief is that these cases argue for the sort of independent prosecution of police misconduct (by the AG or a special prosecutor) discussed in Reps. Dutton's and Reynold's bills recently at the Lege. Local prosecutors have strong disincentives not to prosecute cases where faked training may endanger the credentials of large numbers of officers in a department - the same folks who are witnesses in all their cases and who they work with every day. In cases like these, it makes more sense to separate that function from local politics.

Audit: Failures of oversight at Dallas police academy

Grits has not been closely following the ongoing back and forth between the Dallas police chief and local police unions over failures in management, allegations of racial bias, supposed lax standards for new recruits, retaliation against whistle blowers,  etc., at the Dallas Police Academy.  The police union has accused DPD internal affairs of “Bullying and manipulating officers and civilians into providing manufactured statements that fit what the command staff may be looking for.” As DPD Chief David Brown put it, the whole thing is a "hot mess" into which I haven't had time to deeply delve.

But when I noticed in this article that the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCLE) issued an audit of the academy this week, I asked for it under open records and thought I'd post a copy for anyone interested. Here it is:

• Dallas Police Department Academy Evaluation, 2014
• Response letter from Chief David Brown to TCLE, including action plan
• TCLE response to Chief Brown 

Not too much there, I'm afraid, that could help resolve the issues being raised between the chief and the unions.

TCLE found the academy's Advisory Board wasn't composed correctly, had no chair, and failed to function properly. There were also documentation issues. Nearly 20 percent of training rosters weren't submitted to TCLE within required time frames (30 days after completion), with the worst one 107 days late. DPD said a chair has now been appointed and plans to fix the rest.

One of the most strident complaints spurring the audit related to allowing students to take multiple retests of their driving test if they failed the first time. DPD has changed its policy to allow multiple retests but only if they're taken on the same day as the first one. They also created a policy for a single retest on written examinations if a cadet scores lower than 70.

Perhaps most concerning: The audit found that DPD exercised little oversight over in-service or academy curricula. Lesson plans hadn't been updated, contained insufficient detail, and the academy made little if any effort to ensure instructors were accountable for teaching from the lesson plan. And among instructors there was significant variation and little consistency regarding how students were graded. DPD was directed to "Develop a review of instructors to determine if the instructor is effective and ensure a process is in place to capture the student's critiques of the instructor." DPD says it will do so, but why wasn't it happening before?

Grits' own opinions on this nascent fiasco remain largely unformed. So far it feels more like a skirmish in a larger battle between the chief and the Dallas Police Association than a scandal in-and-of itself. But it does appear that DPD's management of the academy had become relatively lax and laissez faire, to say the least. So the episode gives the chief's critics more ammunition with which to attack him at a vulnerable spot where management is culpable. Ironically, cleaning house among academy leadership was probably necessary given that lack of oversight and supervision were the main flaws found in the TCLE audit. That won't stop the union from criticizing him, though. When there's blood in the water, sharks circle.

The Michael Morton Act five months in: Too much? Too little? Too soon to tell

The Texas Tribune's Terri Langford last week had a brief overview (May 29) discussing implementation of the so-called Michael Morton Act, which readers will recall was Texas' open-file discovery statute for prosecutors in criminal cases. The big complaint: "Prosecutors say the [law] ... is driving up evidence costs." The article closes with this summation of perceived flaws of the Michael Morton Act according to the sources in Langford's story:

There have been some kinks to work out, though. Besides the cost, there are questions about measures in the Morton law that prevent criminal defense attorneys from disclosing some information to their clients. The law prevents lawyers from disclosing certain information, primarily to protect victims. A motion has been filed in a Lubbock case that claims the Morton Act violates a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel because preventing full disclosure impedes a thorough investigation.

And back in Dallas County, the law has raised questions about whether prosecutors should get more access to grand jury transcripts. 

Brad Lollar, a Dallas County public defender who is defending a client charged with capital murder, said the district attorney is fighting his request for a grand jury transcript.

Defense attorneys are not permitted in grand jury proceedings. But they can ask a judge for transcripts of the prosecution witnesses' testimony before the grand jury.

Defense attorneys must prove that they have a "particularized need" for the information. Lollar argues that because a transcript of any witness testifying before a grand jury could potentially help his client, the particularized need requirement has been expanded by the Morton law.

“We routinely request grand jury testimony in our pre-trial motions. That is routinely granted by the judges,” Lollar said. “I think they are concerned that the Michael Morton Act will require them to turn over grand jury transcripts across the board, if [transcripts] exist. We’re saying a reading of the Michael Morton Act will require that.” 

Kepple said his reading of the new Morton law says it does not “disturb” the protections of grand jury secrecy already in place.

“I would argue that grand jury testimony is still covered under the same rules beforehand,” he said. 

Grand jury testimony, though, is not specifically addressed in the Morton law, so lawmakers may re-examine questions about access to it during next legislative session.

Those aren't the only hiccups, though. For a few more examples, let's return to Grits' notes from the May 1 gathering of the Court of Criminal Appeals' Criminal Justice Integrity Unit (TCJIU), reviving a few aspects of the event that didn't make it into my earlier writeup from the meeting.

Judge Barbara Hervey and others expressed concern that, while prosecutors are responsible in the courtroom for revealing exculpatory information held by any arm of the state, folks like crime-lab employees or local police may not fully understand that the state is responsible for revealing every detail of their work. For example, said Hervey, some agencies have begun scanning officers' written field notes and attaching them to incident reports while others have been resistant, fearing the notes and the report may contradict. Calling these debates "fallout" from the Michael Morton Act, she suggested that the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement expand training for police officers on Brady/Michael Morton Act obligations as well as report writing. She also suggested that crime lab workers receive similar training, which in my experience is sorely needed.

Another Brady issue raised but left unresolved from the TCJIU meeting: Many if not most District Attorneys keep a list of police officers in their jurisdiction who have had disciplinary problems that might impeach them as witnesses on the stand. In Harris Tarrant County this has been dubbed "the pink list," while in other counties DAs call it a "do not sponsor" list. The problem: Police departments sometimes fail to notify DAs of significant disciplinary actions. Worst case outcome for the state: The information is discovered independently by defense counsel and sprung on prosecutors at some critical point in the process. El Paso DA Jaime Esparza told the integrity unit that information on his county's version of a do-not-sponsor list often comes from defense counsel.

In non-civil service cities (the biggest are Dallas and El Paso), incomplete reporting about police disciplinary histories would eventually backfire because the bulk of disciplinary files are open records under the Public Information Act. So often defense counsel can independently find them, if they try. But thanks to 1989 amendments to the statute, the +73 cities which have adopted the state civil service code now keep two personnel files: A public one where they keep commendations and brief summaries of disciplinary actions (defined as suspensions or demotions), and closed files that include most workaday disciplinary violations and potentially other information that arguably should be turned over to the defense under the new discovery law.

If those lesser violations include, for example, confirmed allegations of lying, does the Michael Morton Act trump the civil service code? How much of the second, secret personnel file must civil service departments reveal to prosecutors or for that matter defense counsel? At the moment, that's being interpreted differently by different departments. And that doesn't even take into account disciplinary actions against an officer by past law-enforcement employers: Even police human resource officers can't seem to crack that nut.

At the TCJIU, panelists mostly suggested more training as the remedy for most Michael-Morton-Act related complaints they discussed, and for now, I agree. It's too early yet to tell if the law needs to be "fixed." By 2017-19, it'll be clearer exactly what is and isn't working with the Michael Morton Act. These issues will have either worked themselves out or wound themselves into a knot; the same is true for prosecutors' concerns about the law raised in Langford's story.

Whether one considers the Michael Morton Act too onerous or incomplete, the statute only took effect five months ago and Grits would argue that it's too early yet to talk about significant changes in the coming 84th legislative session. The Lege should give the law a couple of years to get its legs under it, for prosecutors and cops to train on it, for judges to rule on it, for appellate courts to interpret it, for analysts to study more than anecdotes, before looking to alter a law that at most needs tweaking.

CORRECTION/Ed. note: An earlier version of this post erroneously stated that Harris County maintained a "pink list" of police officers with significant disciplinary problems. It was actually Tarrant County.  My apology for the error and thanks to the commenter who listened to the TCJIU audio to do the needed factchecking. My bad. Lo siento.

Y MAS: Paul Kennedy has little sympathy for complaints with the Michael Morton Act. 

TCLE form fails to track gypsy cops fired for misconduct

The Austin Statesman over the weekend published a fine investigative piece by Eric Dexheimer and Tony Plohetski about the problem of "gypsy cops" fired from one police department and later rehired at other agencies ("Town's police force highlights struggle to track cops with a history," May 17). Reported the paper:

Despite a number of efforts by regulators to restrict the practice, Texas police officers with histories of misconduct often move easily from department to department.

At the heart of the failure is a piece of paper called the F-5, which must be filled out by chiefs every time an officer leaves a department and placed on file at the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement. Required in Texas since 2005, the confidential form requires chiefs to label departing officers’ performance as “honorable,” “general” or “dishonorable.”

Yet changes over the years have created incentives and opportunities for the document to be manipulated so as to obscure an officer’s true performance. The result: Regulators say the F-5 has turned into an essentially worthless piece of paper.

“You can no longer trust it to tell you what it’s suppose to,” said Kim Vickers, the state commission’s executive director. “The system is broken.”

It is also a reminder of how difficult it can be to remove bad police from the profession generally. Teachers, doctors and other professionals can all lose their state licenses for unprofessional behavior. Texas laws covering police officers, by comparison, contain no blanket provision for suspending or revoking an officer’s license for misconduct — making it virtually impossible to take away an officer’s license for anything short of a felony conviction.

The Legislature has created a system that lets bad cops easily get their discharges upgraded and created disincentives for departments to accurately describe reasons for dismissal on the state's F-5 form. Again, from the Statesman:

“Are there small town chiefs not checking ‘dishonorable’ when they should? Absolutely,” said Christopher Davis, who was the top lawyer at the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement until retiring two years ago.

[TCLE Chief Kim] Vickers said he knew of a half-dozen cases in the past year in which a chief agreed to let an officer resign in lieu of firing as long as he agreed not to seek a new law enforcement position in nearby jurisdictions. In other instances, Vickers said, police chiefs simply don’t show up to contest dishonorable appeals, which means the case is automatically decided in favor of officers.

The number of “honorable” discharges across the state has climbed steadily. In 2009, 74 percent of the 15,000 discharge reports issued were “honorable,” with about 22 percent of the departing officers receiving a “general” discharge.

By last year, 85 percent of the 16,500 departing officers leaving a department received “honorable” discharges. Barely 11 percent were labeled “general.” The number of dishonorable discharges has stayed flat.

“It’s not that there are not problem officers out there,” Vickers said. Rather, more and more are being given upgraded classifications, making it difficult for hiring departments to distinguish good cops from bad ones.

The minimalist F-5 form and the failure of departments to apply dishonorable discharges to fired cops is surely a problem. And it's exacerbated by the statute closing records about police officer discipline in civil service cities like Austin. Those issues are easier to track in non-civil service cities like Dallas where the open records act applies.

See related Grits coverage.

DPS crime lab fiasco headed to CCA oral arguments, and other stories

Here are a few tidbits that caught my eye before Grits must leave town today for work:

Auditor critiques state LEO licensing agency
The state auditor has produced a new report on the Texas Commission of Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education. They found, "The Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education (Commission) reported unreliable results for all three key performance measures tested for fiscal year 2012 and the first two quarters of 2013." Two particular areas of concern:

• The Commission backdates the license award date in [its data system], rather than using the actual date on which the Commission issued the license. As a result, the Commission's licensing data may change frequently.
• The Commission does not sequentially number its licenses. As a result, the Commission cannot ensure that the licensing data is complete

Last session, the Legislature changed the name of the agency to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCLE, pronounced "Tickle").

High court set to hear arguments on DPS crime lab fiasco
Oral arguments have been set for October 23 in Ex Parte Leonard Coty, in which the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will revisit their already decided opinion that evidence from discredited DPS crime lab analyst Jonathan Salvador is fundamentally unreliable because of his history of errors and drylabbing. The Harris County Public Defender Office has published their brief (pdf) online. Grits hopes to attend; it should be quite a show, with major implications for thousands of East Texas drug convictions.

Mugged (and extorted) by online mugshots
Good New York Times piece regarding one of the most cynical, sleazy business models Grits has run across in all my years working on criminal justice policy.

When crime-scene evidence crawls away
Interesting piece on practical problems for forensic scientists trying to date dead bodies based on maggots.

Floating prisons in the war on terror
The Obama Administration is beginning to house terrorist suspects in navy vessels outside of US waters so they won't be subject to protections in the US legal system, the same rationale for using CIA "black sites" for interrogations in foreign countries. Bryan Finoki predicted this some time ago, as Grits noted in 2008. New York City experimented with prison barges as recently as the '90s to handle overflow from Rikers Island and later juvenile offenders. Here in Texas, TDCJ considered but rejected similar plans back in the 1980s.

Acronym of renamed regulatory agency for cops must be pronounced "Tickle"

Let's get back into the post-holiday swing of things by delving into the really important stuff ... This year the legislature shortened the unwieldy moniker of the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education (TCLEOSE) - an agency known universally as "Tee-close," which oversees licensing and training of Texas law enforcement officers - to the admittedly less cumbersome Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCLE).

This brings up the question for anyone who deals with the agency: How to pronounce the new acronym? How do you say, "TCLE"? Agency folks are promoting the boring pronunciation "Tee-clee," which Grits finds utterly uninspiring. I prefer the suggestion from Rob Kepple at the Texas District and County Attorney's Association, who told the audience at the summer legislative update Grits attended that they're promoting the pronunciation of TCLE as "Tickle." That clearly the best choice by any rational criteria.

Grits earnestly encourages readers to promote the "Tickle" pronunciation of TCLE widely in every day use. And be sure to correct others around you if they pronounce it the other way. How else will they learn? ;)

The agency's name only just officially changed over the weekend. Now's the chance to make a less boring, more playful and pleasant nickname stick. And really, they brought it on themselves by choosing it, don't you think?

Law enforcement academy contract canceled for hinky licensing of pro football player

A Texas law enforcement training center has had its contract with the state rescinded for giving a professional football player credits for law enforcement training he didn't earn. Reported the Conroe Courier (July 24):

TCLEOSE officials seek protection after enforcement actions generate threats

Until the ascension of current executive director Kim Vickers about a year-and-a-half ago, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education (TCLEOSE) rarely if ever engaged in enforcement actions against local agencies that violated standards in the Occupations Code, focusing instead on provision of training and technical assistance to police administrators. Vickers told Grits yesterday that, once they started enforcing the rules - even seeking indictments in some instances when criminal conduct was discovered, as evidenced by this Grits post published Sunday - he and his commissioners began receiving personal threats. As a result, on the advice of a 47-page threat assessment prepared by a fellow who previously coordinated dignitary protection in Afghanistan, TCLEOSE now has a protection detail for Vickers and TCLEOSE commissioners to go with them when they make public appearances in official capacities. (Grits has requested a copy of the assessment under the Public Information Act.)

Isn't that remarkable? These aren't gang members or drug cartels threatening TCLEOSE officials but disgruntled current and former police officers! Vickers said officers sometimes get extremely angry and emotional when their livelihood and personal identity are threatened, even when it's because of their own misbehavior. These folks, he said, are armed and generally proficient and more comfortable with weapons than the general public, so the agency takes threats to personal safety quite seriously.

After five felony indictments were brought against a training coordinator in Alpine last year (still pending) and the Buckholts police chief was was arrested, Vickers said his office was "inundated with calls" alleging misconduct at other agencies. Many complainants had not reported the incidents earlier because they thought the agency wouldn't do anything. Partly because TCLEOSE in the past seldom pursued such cases and partly because of 2011 budget cuts, the volume has overwhelmed them. There are only two investigators available to look into these allegations, both of whom presently have 50-75 cases on their plate, he said. Vickers indicated there would likely be more, similar cases reported in the press before the year is out.

For now, with the volume so high and the agency understaffed (they lost 27% of their staff to 2011 budget cutting), TCLEOSE cannot proactively pursue such cases, Vickers said. They can only react, investigating the small mountain of cases brought to them. He said additional staff included in the House and Senate budgets would help but not solve the problem. He told the Senate he'd need ten more investigators - on top of the current two - to effectively manage the volume. But of the new TCLEOSE staff envisioned in the House and Senate versions of next biennium's budget, he said, only one is an investigative slot.

Vickers contacted me to offer clarification regarding media reports of recent TCLEOSE enforcement actions, reacting to questions by Grits commenters and clarifying the law surrounding a Starr County case where a Sheriff's deputy was licensed with a deferred felony on his record. He distinguished between administrative violations alleged in Bell County and allegedly criminal acts committed by the Freestone County Sheriff and others. In the case out of Starr County, he said the McAllen Monitor incorrectly reported that a deputy's felony deferred adjudication would bar him from service - the Legislature didn't change the law to disallow that until 2001 and the deputy's 1999 licensure would have been grandfathered. See the final addendum to Sunday's post for more details.

TCLEOSE licensed felon who allegedly took cartel bribes, LE agencies faked training

If you've never heard of the Texas Commission of Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education, with its awkward acronym TCLEOSE, you couldn't be blamed. They're the licensing agency in Texas for state and local cops and enforce police training criteria, but their activities rarely enter the public eye. Lately, though, the agency's oversight or lack thereof has been getting more attention.

Bell County
In February it was reported that the Bell County Sheriff's Office had allegedly faked test results from its training program on a wide scale. TCLEOSE's own inspectors hadn't caught the discrepancy and the agency only took action after receiving an independent report.

Bexar County
The previous month, a former deputy constable from Bexar County Precinct Four was extradited from New Hampshire, charged with "allegedly reporting state mandated training credit for individuals who did not attend the training." The episode received little publicity: A San Antonio TV station covered it but the Express-News did not. WOAI reported that, Parrish "allegedly charged for the courses, and pocketed the cash, while working as a reserve deputy constable with the Precinct 4 Constable's office."

Freestone County
Then last month, reported the Corsicana Sun (March 28) Freestone County Sheriff Thomas Don Anderson and a captain in their department face charges after they allegedly "routinely submitted falsified documents to TCLEOSE claiming that Deputies received law enforcement training when they actually had not attended the training." Said the Sun:

Sheriff Anderson was elected in the 2012 general election and took office in January of 2013, after the previous sheriff, Ralph Billings, retired. At the time of the offenses alleged in the indictments, Anderson was the department's Training Coordinator responsible for the administration of all training at the Freestone County Sheriff’s Office and Travis Robertson was the primary instructor for most of the training given by the Freestone County Sheriff’s Office.

See a TCLEOSE press release about the Freestone County officials who will be prosecute by the Travis County Public Integrity Unit in Austin.

Starr County
Just as disturbing, though unrelated to training, in March Starr County Sheriff's Capt. Romeo Javier “Compadre Nacho” Ramirez pled guilty to accepting $30,000 in bribes from the Gulf Cartel in exchange for transmitting sensitive law enforcement information, reported the McAllen Monitor. But there's also a TCLEOSE angle: It turned out he had a prior felony conviction from the '90s that should have barred him from ever receiving a peace officer's license. Notably, this is the same jurisdiction where former Starr County Sheriff Reymundo Guerra was convicted in 2009 of assisting drug traffickers. Ramirez at the time was in charge of running the Starr County Jail. See a copy of his federal indictment (pdf).

* * *

The training episodes follow a common theme: Training was reported that officers never received. Intentional fraud like that would be hard to catch via after-the-fact auditing procedures, particularly at smaller agencies. In some ways, such oversight lapses are understandable. Delivery of training is highly decentralized, there are more than 2,600 law enforcement agencies in the state of Texas, and TCLEOSE doesn't remotely have the staff or resources to provide comprehensive oversight. The failure to catch Ramirez's felony conviction in his background check, though, is harder to justify.

Looking at legislation filed related to the agency, no bills pending at the Texas Legislature would address the questions raised by these episodes, though both the House and Senate budgets include six more FTEs (full-time equivalent staff) than the agency had in the last biennium, bringing the total number of employees to 43.6. Perhaps the additional hands on deck will help TCLEOSE get in front of some of these problems.

MORE: A commenter points out that the Panola County Sheriff, a former TABC agent elected last year, was arrested in March for allegedly using money from a confidential informant fund to pay for his attendance at a new sheriffs school after the county refused to pay for the expenditure. Not exactly a TCLEOSE oversight issue, but related enough to mention.

AND MORE/CLARIFICATION: On Tuesday, TCLEOSE executive director Kim Vickers offered clarification regarding two of these cases. Grits commenters had asked why the Freestone Sheriff was indicted but the Bell County Sheriff was not. Vickers said the allegations in Bell County involved administrative violations stemming from the training coordinator allowing officers to do take-home tests instead of proctored exams. In Freestone, though, TCLEOSE has alleged straight up fraud, asserting that the Sheriff added names to lists of trainees who never participated in training at all. That's why the cases were handled differently, he said.

On Capt. Ramirez out of Starr County, the McAllen Monitor reported that TCLEOSE had improperly granted him a license despite a prior felony for which he'd received deferred adjudication. But Ramirez was licensed in 1999, said Vickers, and until 2001 when the law changed, officers could be licensed with a deferred felony conviction on their record. He said he'd seen other instances where he'd scratched his head and wondered how an officer was licensed but in this case there would have been no bar to making Ramirez a peace officer at the time he was commissioned. (Either way, given his guilty plea for taking drug-cartel bribes, his badge-wearing days are now over.)

Vickers also mentioned another case out of Alpine last year where a training coordinator based at Sul Ross University had allegedly assisted officers with exams, resulting in five currently pending felony indictments. He said that episode taught the agency that training coordinators should not also be proctors during testing.

Small-town chief on paid leave for allegedly falsified documents

A small-town police chief allegedly was caught falsifying documents and was given a two-month paid vacation as a result, reported KWTX-TV:

Buckholts Police Chief James Blackmon was suspended with pay for 60 days ... after he was [arrested] on [a] misdemeanor charge of falsifying a government document.

After 60 days, a city spokesperson said the police chief could return to work, be permanently suspended or his suspension could be extended until the close of the investigation.

Officers representing the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Education and Milam County deputies arrested Blackmon at around 4:15 on July 5 at the Buckholts Police Department on the warrant charging falsifying a government document, which is a Class A misdemeanor.

TCLEOSE, which is charged with certifying peace officers in the state, said they initiated the investigation that led to the arrest after receiving reports that Blackmon carried more than a dozen officers on his roster when there were only three actually working at the department.

The extra officers were listed as members of the town's police force so they could qualify to do private security jobs, according to TCLEOSE.

TCLEOSE said Blackmon has been a police officer for 24 years and 11 months and during that time has held 22 different jobs.

Remarkable: 22 different law enforcement jobs in 25 years. That's almost the definition of a "gypsy cop."  It's notable that TCLEOSE initiated the investigation only after receiving a report. The agency could and arguably should proactively ensure (or at least spot check) that officers listed as employed at local agencies are actually drawing a paycheck. I bet this isn't the only jurisdiction carrying extra officers on the books so somebody's buddy can get a security job.

Central repository for TX racial profiling reports now online

Here's something cool: For the first time in a decade since Texas' passed its racial profiling statute, all the racial profiling reports from local agencies have been compiled in one place and put online. This is long overdue. For a number of years before the state created a central repository for this information, I helped analyze the data at the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, where Molly Totman performed yeoman's service to compile information on a nonprofit basis that really should have been a government function. Now, finally, thanks to a floor amendment to Sunset legislation by Sen. Royce West in the waning days of the 81st legislative session, the public can access this information in one spot online. Brilliant!

The formatting of the reports isn't the easiest to interpret and isn't always consistent from department to department, but there's a lot of data here. Often the most important racial disparities show up not in the proportion of driver stopped but in what happens after the driver has been pulled over: Take Austin PD, where black folks made up 12.4% of all traffic stops (roughly the same as their proportion of the population), but 22.3% of people searched at traffic stops.

For that matter, agencies exhibit widely disparate patterns in how they approach searches in general, particularly how frequently so-called "consent searches" are used. At the Austin PD, for example, just 5.7% of searches conducted were consent searches, while at Houston PD they made up 30.4%. At some agencies it's much higher. In Irving, a majority (55.8%) of searches were consent searches. When I have more time, I may look more closely at disparities in how frequently consent searches are used. Some departments seem to be pushing them pretty aggressively.

West's amendment also added a new datapoint - whether the officer new the race of the driver before they pulled them over - that appears to vary widely from department to department, for reasons I don't fully understand.

The reports would be a lot more probative if data on searches were correlated by race of the driver, particularly breaking out consent searches (i.e., searches where an officer has no reasonable suspicion to search and is required to ask permission). Then you're specifically analyzing circumstances where officers are exercising discretion, whereas the reporting now conflates categories in a way that makes it impossible to draw firm conclusions about whether disparities are structural or volitional.

One thing that having a state agency compile the reports brings to the forefront that was obvious when compiling the reports in years past: Some agencies aren't complying with the law, don't compile racial profiling data, or at least are unable to produce their required annual report upon request. By region, the compliance rate among departments required to report ranged from 68% in the Panhandle to 100% in Northeast Texas. All told, 383 agencies required to report didn't do so.

Maybe now that the data doesn't require hundreds of separate open records requests to compile (!), we'll see more academic interest in analyzing the data. This statute provides a lot of ground-level data about what officers are doing on the street that, while initially gathered for purposes of assessing racial profiling, implicates quite a few pressing Fourth Amendment questions and other non-race related issues as well. Texans spend a lot money on law enforcement, and these reports provide lots of raw, department-level information for analyzing police practices that wouldn't otherwise exist.

These reports were always meant for locals to be able to easily access data on traffic stops by their local law-enforcement agencies, so it's gratifying that, for the first time, they're available to everyone instead of just to a few insiders who took the time to hunt for the information.

Merging public safety oversight agencies a pointless exercise

Here's another budget cutting suggestion that to me amounts to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Reports Brandi Grissom at the Texas Tribune:

A money-saving proposal to combine state agencies that oversee police and firefighter training and local jail operations has public safety officials statewide worried about their future.

After Gov. Rick Perry’s budget proposal to fold the state's Commission on Jail Standards, the Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education, and the Commission on Fire Protection into one agency, state Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, filed a bill last week that would do just that. The individual agencies would be abolished, and a new agency, the Public Safety Licensing Commission, would be formed to take over their roles.

What a pointless exercise! In the scheme of the state budget, these agencies' budgets barely qualify as a rounding error: About $6.5 million per year, between them, with $3.25 million going to TCLEOSE, $2.25 million to the Commission on Fire Protection, and just $1 million to the Commission on Jail Standards. And as others pointed out in Grissom's article, they all have quite different functions. You might save two or three administrative FTEs from HR or budget folks, but in short order I bet the need for middle management to patch over the competing missions under a single administrative structure would in practice make the project a wash, budget-wise. I doubt there's a million dollars in savings to be had, total, even if the merger could be accomplished on such short order with so little notice or planning.

Meanwhile, such a merger amounts to fiddling while Rome burns. The needless complexity of reorganizing these agencies - not as a result of a Sunset recommendation or any formal process but just because the Governor tossed the idea out - is too much of a distraction between the budget, redistricting and everything else that's going on.

Want to save money on public safety? Figure out how to actualize the Governor's recommended $786 million in cuts at TDCJ without gutting treatment and diversion programming. Make the proposed $363 million in cuts at DPS a reality without reducing numbers of troopers or lengthening waits at the driver license offices. It can be done, but not if state leaders spend their time chasing down penny ante rabbit trails like this one.

Charles Sebesta's career as a police trainer

Working off a lead she garnered from the comments of a Grits post, she informs me via email, Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg offers up a terrific piece of reporting on Charles Sebesta, the District Attorney accused of prosecutorial misconduct by the US 5th Circuit and a special prosecutor, Kelly Siegler, in Anthony Graves' wrongful capital murder conviction. Falkenberg hones in on Sebesta's post-prosecutorial career as a trainer for sheriffs' departments, discovering that he misrepresented his credentials on his website:

the disgraced former Burleson County district attorney has been traveling the state, and the nation, he says, advising law enforcement organizations and teaching courses to peace officers.

The negative publicity over a case that even Gov. Rick Perry has called a "great miscarriage of justice" hasn't cost Sebesta a single client, he claims: "I've got as much as I can do."

Kelly Siegler, the special prosecutor in the case who has accused Sebesta of, among other things, manipulating witnesses, fabricating evidence and misrepresenting facts to the jury in the Graves case, called his current teaching role "disgusting."

"The last person you want telling your guys what to do at 3 o'clock in the morning is Charles Sebesta," Siegler said.

Not only is Sebesta teaching, but he's been passing himself off as a state-certified instructor and the staff "training coordinator" for the Sheriff's Association of Texas. The title appears on Sebesta's online bio, and, before I began asking questions, on the association's website. Sebesta told me this week he's the coordinator who "signs the papers."

When I called the sheriff's association, Executive Director Steve Westbrook said Sebesta was not the coordinator and wasn't even on staff. Westbrook said Sebesta was just a contractor who, for a decade or so, has taught two, maybe three courses a month across the state.

"He may call himself the training coordinator, but he's not," Westbrook said. "I don't know if Charles gave himself that title. Maybe it sounded better."

Ouch! There's a "gotcha" moment, beefing up his resume with a phony job title! Even worse (or better, for those indulging in schadenfreude), it turns out he's not even certified as an instructor by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education (TCLEOSE). He insists it's a recordkeeping error, but neither TCLEOSE nor him can produce any documentation. Wrote Falkenberg:

When I called the commission, the director of education and credentialing, Kim Vickers, maintained it wasn't his job to raise concerns. It's the responsibility of each organization's training coordinator to hire qualified instructors, he said. 

Vickers also disputed that Sebesta is the coordinator, saying he knows the real one and it ain't Sebesta. He added that, like most instructors, a training coordinator is required to be certified.

Sebesta maintains that he is certified, and at least one county that hired him believed he was. It's not hard to get a certificate: you just have to pay $25 and pass a 40-hour course.

But state records show Sebesta has no such certification.

Double Ouch! A professional fraud! And this is the guy who's attacking Anthony Graves', Kelly Siegler, and Pam Colloff's integrity! Falkenberg concludes with such a strong statement I cannot improve upon it:

It's not surprising that Sebesta's story doesn't mesh with the others. He seems to have always had trouble with the facts. When the evidence against Graves wasn't there, he apparently made it up.

When he was told over and over again by different parties that Graves was innocent, he continued not only to prosecute but to seek death.

Sebesta has no business instructing anybody on the law. Even a class on civil process would require him to give guidance on good judgment and ethical standards, two things Sebesta doesn't seem to know the meaning of.

There may be only one course Charles Sebesta is truly qualified to teach: How to steal 18 years of an innocent man's life and get away with it.

If a fiction writer created a shameless sleazebag District Attorney like Sebesta as a character in a novel, it would be viewed by critics as over-the-top caricature. He and Mike Nifong ought to start a club.

See related coverage:

• Who wants to help Anthony Graves get compensation?
• Can Governor Rick Perry Pardon Anthony Graves?
• Bittersweet exoneration stories
• Texas Monthly vs. Charles Sebesta
• Legislature should limit immunity for sleazebag prosecutors like Charles Sebesta
• The Anatomy of a Frame-Up: More on Anthony Graves
• Governor: Graves case shows system works (just not Texas')
• Flurry of media surrounding Anthony Graves exoneration
• Anthony Graves: Innocent and free 16 years after unfounded death sentence
• Progress and its Discontents - or, What I learned from an article in Texas Monthly (guest post by Jeff Blackburn)

Central repository created at TCLEOSE for racial profiling data

Here's a happy tidbit I'd missed that the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition's Ana Yañez Correa tells me was amended to the TCLEOSE Sunset bill (HB 3389) in the final days of the session:

Texas finally created a central repository for compiling and comparing local racial profiling data gathered by police officers at traffic stops. TCLEOSE will create rules and data reporting standards so we'll no longer have this bizarre situation where every department, conceivably, can have its own definitions of all the terms they're supposed to report.

The last-minute amendment to HB 3389 added several reforms long sought by those of us who've used the data up close and personal, but the Lege refrained from expanding reporting beyond stops where traffic tickets are issued, and they still won't require most departments to gather data on whether vehicle searches yield contraband.

That said, it's a big deal that they centralized reporting, created penalties for non-compliance, and that reporting by local departments will become standardized over time as a result of TCLEOSE rulemaking. That's all good news and something that's been needed for quite awhile. I thought for sure this deal was cut in 2005 but it fell through by the end of session.

I heard through the grapevine the Texas Municipal Police Association lobbied the Governor to veto the TCLEOSE Sunset bill because it included the central repository: It's possible the reason Rick Perry didn't oblige them was that Sen. West and other supporters took half a loaf on strengthening the data collection requirements. Quien sabe? I'm glad they got as much as they did!

The legislation relieves the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition of its long-time de facto role as Texas' central repository of racial profiling data. For years Molly Totman gathered the information annually through open records requests; she and statistician Dwight Steward compiled a database that has now served that purpose for many years. I'll bet Molly will be happy to see that TCJC function retired and passed along to a state agency, which is where the responsibility arguably should have been in the first place. Though I could swear on a stack of Bibles they were always super-straight with the data, some police departments were suspicious of results even though they could doublecheck them from their own reports. A state agency's numbers will inherently be more trusted.

Next session, the Lege should consider moving the data elements about contraband and arrests into the "mandatory" section of the law (CCP 2.132) and eliminating the other "optional" data elements (required only of agencies that don't have video in their patrol cars that did not receive funding in a long-ago bond election).

Having evaluated this data closely for what it can and cannot usefully show, I think the contraband hit-rate information is vital for giving police supervisors, civilian officials and the public a clear idea of whether consent search tactics are a good use of police officers' time and focus.

When Austin PD first compiled that data, they discovered police were seeking consent searches from black drivers more than five times as often as whites but were finding contraband on white drivers twice as often as black drivers who were searched. As a result, the city ultimately moved to requiring written consent for all searches at traffic stops where officers don't have probable cause. The number of searches declined dramatically, but there's no evidence that's caused some new uptick in crime.

That contraband data is still "optional" for agencies that have in-dash video in their vehicles (in fact, Austin PD quit reporting contraband hit-rate data), but that's the most interesting and probative aspect of this information, by far - both for the public to understand the impact of departmental search policies and for supervisors to measure the productivity of how their officers are spending their time. If departments must gather and report so-called "racial profiling data," anyway, we may as well get the most possible bang for the buck.

In the meantime, congrats to state Sen. Royce West and his staffer Kelvin Bass who've been pushing for this central repository now for many moons.

TCLEOSE needs more power to investigate police corruption

The Sunset Commission and the Texas Legislature should take to heart two recommendations from the agency staff report (pdf) the Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Education (TCLEOSE) to improve police accountability and oversight statewide.

First, TCLEOSE asked for its investigators' authority to be expanded (p. 84):

Peace officers of TCLEOSE are empowered to investigate and enforce violations of the Occupations Code 1701, but no other provisions of the Penal Code, which includes such violations as official misconduct, and impersonating a peace officer. ...

Limiting TCLEOSE investigators to violations of 1701 means that, when TCLEOSE investigators discover penal code violations, violations of the Private Security Act 1702, or any other violations of the law other than violation of 1701, TCLEOSE investigators must solicit and obtain timely cooperation from a fully empowered peace officer. Many peace officers find these requests from TCLEOSE troublesome because they have their own priorities and demands, and some do not like the idea of investigating fellow officers. Regardless of the reasons, TCLEOSE investigations and investigators are left with the task of convincing other officers of the importance of investigating their own profession.

It's surely absurd that investigators at the state peace officers' licensing agency cannot look into criminal allegations themselves but must rely on "convincing other officers of the importance of investigating their own profession." Indeed, it's precisely because local cops "do not like the idea of investigating fellow officers," which after all is a pretty common phenomenon, that TCLEOSE investigators should be empowered more broadly.

Similarly, I was encouraged by TCLEOSE's suggestion that the Legislature should create an "integrity unit" to investigate police misconduct in Texas (p. 87):

Because the State of Texas licenses peace officers and jailers, many Texans are of the impression that the state investigates complaints of integrity and alleged wrongdoing. When they look at the state government, they often call, write, or e-mail TCLEOSE with their allegations. If it is an allegation for which we have jurisdiction, i.e., for potential violations of the OC Section 1701, then we investigate, determine the validity, and provide feedback to the complainant. If we do not have jurisdiction, we refer the matter to other agencies such as a local district attorney, a sheriff’s department, a local police department, the DPS rangers, etc. Unfortunately, we find that many of the complainants have already spoken to local authorities and were dissatisfied or found themselves ignored. Perhaps Texas should have an “umbrella” integrity unit at the state level to investigate allegations of police corruption.

I think both these suggestions are good ideas. In an era when revelations about police corruption related to drug crime and Mexican cartels have become a weekly occurrence in Texas, it's time for the state to address the problem of police corruption more directly. Not only would doing so reduce crime overall, if Texas doesn't take this steer by the horns IMO it will be impossible to ever seriously threaten the operation of multinational drug cartels. I recently saw a new law review article making the same point about corruption while arguing for prosecution of so-called police "testilying," arguing that:

the collateral benefits of such increased policing of the police far outweigh the drawbacks. In fact, increased policing of the police would not only have the collateral consequence of reducing crime across the board. It would also benefit the police themselves by leading to safer and better policing.

Let's hope the the Legislature accepts these two TCLEOSE recommendations and beefs up the agency's authority to investigate police corruption in 2009. One imagines the police unions will fight the idea (as they have in the past), but it's really in their interest to clean up the profession - the vast majority of good officers out there don't benefit from protecting bad cops.

Criminal Justice Agencies Under Sunset Review

The Sunset process (a once every 12 year evaluation of individual state agencies) is in full swing this year for a handful of Texas criminal justice related agencies, including:

• Department of Public Safety (staff report) (sunset recommendations) (public comments)
• Jail Standards Commission (staff report)
  
• Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education (staff report)
• Juvenile Probation Commission (staff report)
• Youth Commission (staff report)

DPS, obviously, is furthest along in the process, having already held a hearing a couple of weeks back to discuss the staff evaluation. (See Austin Statesman coverage of the hearing). The TCLEOSE review should be nearing completion, while the reviews of the Jail Standards Commission, TYC, and the Juvenile Probation Commission began in May and will conclude in the fall.

TYC is an unusual case, having gone through the Sunset process last year. They were required to endure the vetting again because of the hoopla over sex abuse allegations in West Texas and the resulting political fallout and legislative reforms.

I'll take a look through some of this material myself in the coming days and perhaps highlight some of the major items that jump out. Until then, here's a good summary for how the public can get involved from the Sunset Commission website:

How Can the Public Participate in Sunset?

Members of the public who participate in the review process can provide valuable information to the Sunset Commission about how well or poorly an agency performs its functions. Individuals and organizations usually participate by identifying potential issues for study and by commenting on proposed changes to the agency. The public can participate in the review of an agency by:

• Input with Staff. The staff seeks input during the review at which time interested persons and organizations may voice their concerns about the agency. Please submit your input on the feedback form and send us your comments.
• Reviewing Sunset Documents. Sunset documents, including reports and decision materials, are made available to the public on a regular basis to keep the public informed on the progress of the review.
• Testifying at Public Hearings. The Commission holds public hearings on each agency under review. These hearings offer the public an opportunity to testify on the agency and related recommendations. Multiple agencies are considered within one meeting and many interest groups, professional trade associations, and members of the public may attend and provide testimony to the Commission. If you would like to testify before the Commission, witness affirmation forms are available at the meeting.
• Taking Part in the Legislative Session. Generally, if an agency is to be continued, a bill must be passed by the Legislature. The public can participate in the same way as with any other legislation.