Houston Mayor's Policing Task Force Recap, Part 3: Mental-health first response, What counts as diversion?, the 'all-purpose panacea promoted by people who oppose policy change,' and other stories

Here's Part 3 of Grits' tripartite, annotated analysis of the new report from the Houston Mayor's Task Force on Policing Reform. See Part 1 and Part 2.

Mental-Health First Response
In Austin, Dallas, and elsewhere across the country, one of the approaches to displacing police from non-law-enforcement tasks has been mental-health first response, where many clients do not ask for a law-enforcement presence and end up in involuntary detention, more often than not, because police don't know what else to do with them. Adding insult to injury, when cops drop them off at the emergency room, they get credit for a "jail diversion"!

The Task Force found that "Diversion of mental-health-related 911 calls at the call center level is the earliest point of diversion before any law enforcement involvement. Since the beginning of the [counseling] program, CCD [Crisis Call Diversion] diverted more than 4,902 calls from law enforcement response and saved the equivalent of 7,353 hours of police time (March 2016 to May 2019)." The Task Force recommended funding 24/7 counselors to boost the diversion rate, as well as boosting the number of Mobile Crisis Outreach teams (civilian medical folks who respond to MH crises in the field), and tripling the number of HPD's CIRT teams, which are police officers teamed with mental-health practitioners.

The Task Force endorsed a legislative proposal folks in Dallas and Austin have been clamoring for as well: Amending state law (Chapter 573 of the TX Health and Safety Code) to allow health care professionals to handle decisions related to emergency detentions. Right now, only police can do so, and that law is a barrier to removing law enforcement from the equation in non-criminal mental health calls.

Mental health cases are a growing part of HPD's case load, as they are all over the state. In an article on CIRT teams, the Chronicle mentioned that, "In Houston, encounters between police and people with mental illness ballooned over the last decade from 23,913 mental-health calls in 2009 to 40,884 in 2019." That means that the Crisis Call Diversion handles a rather paltry 3.8% of calls.

Importantly, the CIRT teams are not actually "first responders," but "secondary responders" similar to the EMCOT program in Austin, which also appears to go to relatively few calls (10.5%.). What happens to the other 86% of mental health calls? It appears they get the nearest police officer regardless of training. That's both a big waste and heightens the chance that people in mental-health crisis get shot.

What counts as diversion?
The Mayor's task force claims HPD's CIRT teams focused on mental-health cases has a 95.9% rate of "diversion from jails." But that's a miseading figure. Fewer than one in four calls are resolved at the scene; in all other instances, somebody is taken away, usually against their will, and sometimes against the wishes of their parents, guardians, or care givers.

The data shows that more than a third are dropped at hospital emergency departments because area psych hospitals had no space. Since these patients may not have insurance, and ERs are not set up to handle behavioral health issues at any significant scale, this has been a source of complaint for years in many jurisdictions, not just Houston. 

It's time for H-Town to challenge itself to substantially increase the share of mental-health calls met with a non-police response. A major goal should be boosting that "resolved on scene" number from less than 25% to 2/3 or more, reserving "emergency detention" for situations where a person poses a danger to themselves or others. Those criteria may include abusive behavior toward family and there may be good reason to detain any given individual (so spare me the parade of anecdotes in the comments, I get it). But in a huge number of cases there is not; too often, cops take someone based on a "better safe than sorry" logic. After all, the hospital/ambulance bills aren't going to show up in their mailbox months later.

Domestic calls: Do all of them need a cop?
The Task Force endorses a pilot program at HPD for intervention with high-risk domestic violence victims called DART (Domestic Abuse Response Team), which pairs officers with a victim advocate nurse. The pilot has been ongoing since January 2019, operating three nights per week (7pm to 3am) in three HPD districts. No information on how much it would cost to expand.

For that matter, I'd love to see any outcomes or research based on this pilot, comparisons to control groups, etc.. When I searched on the HPD website regarding the program, I only found one responsive web page: This flyer. If it's been going for nearly two years, one would think there'd be something out there.

When agencies do pilots, Grits believes they should always budget a research and data collection component. Domestic violence policies and police responses have always been all over the map. Maybe this is a great program; maybe other approaches would be better. When experimental programs are tested, somebody should be tasked with reporting on what they're doing, including any relevant metrics. Even better: Evaluating the program compared to a control population. That doesn't appear to be have been done yet for DART.

Regardless, Grits remains unconvinced that police need to go to every domestic disturbance call, even as security, as described in the DART program. There must be a response, and if a cops are needed, they should be called. But once the cop engages in violence or pulls their gun, that trumps clinicians' authority or decisions. Sending them only when needed reduces the chances that happens.

Indeed, one can make an argument that cops are simply the wrong messengers on this topic, as our pal Jessica Pishko recently reminded:

Other studies have found that police themselves are often the perpetrators of domestic and sexual violence, rendering them undesirable as a source of help, particularly for women of color who experience much greater rates of violence, including sexual violence, from police. Interactions with the police can also exacerbate existing conditions, like economic instability or trauma.

Pishko quoted law prof Aya Gruber expressing a sentiment your correspondent has held for some time: "victims may be making a rational choice when they decline to testify against their abusers. 'Domestic violence prosecutions have little benefit to women and in fact can harm them,' she explained, 'but the prosecutors are very convinced they are saving women’s lives.'"

Task Force: Decriminalize prostitution! But make them work in criminalized environs.
Grits didn't foresee the Mayor's Task Force recommending that prostitution be decriminalized. That said, they weren't exactly suggesting the re-establishment of the city's red-light district: They still think the state should to prosecute "pimps, brothel and illicit massage parlor owners and managers, sex tourism operators, and sex buyers." But right now, they declare, "Law enforcement is arresting the wrong people."

Here's the oddity: Clearly they consider most prostitutes victims who deserve protection. Different folks feel differently about that, including sex workers, and I'm not trying to launch that debate. But I do question the virtue of claiming to "decriminalize" prostitution and then criminalizing everything about the industry except service provision.

In the age of the internet-personal ad, many prostitutes operate individual sole proprietorships without a formal "pimp" or brothel. For them, the Task Force's distinction doesn't make a difference.

If we're now going to express sympathy for prostitutes, then let's be clear: The biggest dangers they face all stem from the government banning their services and forcing members of the Oldest Profession to provide their wares in a black market. The sole proprietor of the liquor store may rely on police for protection; the sole-proprietor prostitute seeking security must turn to a pimp, which is an inherently unhealthy partnership.

Training: The all-purpose panacea promoted by people who oppose policy change
Look, I'm all for good police training. Indeed, much of what I've learned about police practices (and jailers, and prosecutors, and defense lawyers, and district judges, and appellate judges, and forensic analysts, etc.) has come from attending their professional training sessions, conferences, and CLEs over many years and/or reading training materials (plus chasing down items from their footnotes) from those events. While, between my illness and COVID, 2020 has been a dry spell, in the past I might normally attend several such events per year, including many that put me in rooms filled with police officers. Frankly, I've never had a bad experience doing that and highly recommend it.

That said, having worked on police reform now for more than 25 years, here's Grits' view: "More training" is the first thing reform opponents suggest whenever substantive reforms are proposed. It's always the first "reform" suggested and, as soon as it's implemented, reform opponents push hard to stop there. Every time. Some of the trainings on implicit bias and racial equity in particular appear to have little effect on outcomes. Grits didn't consider it good enough a quarter century ago and it's certainly not good enough now.

Yes, change your policies, train on the improved ones, and consistently, effectively punish officers who fail to follow them. That's how you change departmental culture. But training alone won't help.

Reflections on Mayor's Task Force Recommendations
Having now gone through the entire report, what to make of it as a whole? There are moments where it is bold, for example, recommending changes to the 180-day rule and insisting officers suspected of misconduct should be questioned at the beginning of the investigation process. And I was excited to see the recommendation that un-redacted bodycam video should be released, though I don't agree to limiting that to critical incidents.

Similarly, the suggestions that 1) Houston PD create a complaints database and 2) publish an annual report on disciplinary actions against officers, would constitute a major leap forward in transparency for the department. But it falls short of what's needed: Police departments also need to begin publishing data and detail about use of force incidents in online databases where researchers and the public can access them. Grits knows for a fact legislation requiring that statewide will be filed during the 87th Legislature, and the an executive order from Donald Trump mandated creation of a national database documenting "instances of excessive use of force."

Texas already has good data on police shootings and deaths in custody. That's the next step.

Grits remains less than confident they've figured out the right way to keep Houston cops from shooting people on mental-health calls or domestic disturbance calls. I'd prefer to see them working to expand the subset of those encounters at which police are absent entirely. They can always be called in if needed.

Other suggestions seem more like half measures that don't really get at the problems they hope to solve - redesign a website, issue a report on diversity efforts, etc.. All perfectly reasonable stuff the government must think about, but boring and unlikely to be decisive in addressing the problems.

Finally, I don't believe they've identified the right model for the Independent Police Oversight Board, potentially designing it to perform a fruitless, Sisyphean task that leaves them set up to fail. The Task Force acknowledged that the all-volunteer IPOB needs significant staff to do its job, and that more staff are needed to process complaints, both from the community and from officers themselves. Why not follow Austin's lead and create a full-blown Police Monitor to manage that staff, add value through regular reporting, and to advise the Mayor and Council on issues related to departmental conduct, discipline, and culture from an independent perspective?

Grits sees these Task Force recommendations as the beginning of a conversation, not in any sense the final word on what reform in Houston might look like. If all of them were implemented tomorrow, it would be a Banner Day for Criminal-Justice Reform. And yet, it would be insufficient. In just a few years, many of the same problems would arise.

This report had a great deal of crossover with recommendations from several city council members earlier this week, and was in a sense even more aggressive. Between them, they're a good conversation starter, but now the conversation must move forward. 

States' rights Trumped: An ode to forgotten federalism

Okay, we've heard a lot about federalism and states' rights from Governor Greg Abbott over the years. So will we now hear an outcry from the governor after ICE agents showed up at a Texas state district court and arrested an undocumented domestic violence victim who'd just received a protective order from an elected Texas judge? See the details here.

Nine percent of Texas' workforce are illegal immigrants. That's a lot of people, and a lot of women and kids, to boot. Will other undocumented domestic violence victims now resist reporting their abusers to authorities because petitioning a Texas court for protection could mean they'll be arrested? Won't kids who are physically or sexually abused face the same hesitation to report serious crimes? Think about it: Is that a good idea?

Having ICE agents show up at Texas state courts is a slap in the face to the state from a President for whom it voted overwhelmingly. It's just plain disrespectful of state court processes and the concept of federalism for the feds to arrest someone the moment after a Texas state court gave out a protective order.

Grits won't hold my breath for Governor Abbott to stand up and defend states rights in this context. His endorsement of those principles has always seemed opportunistic and I don't expect him to stand on them when they fly in the face of a Republican president's policies. Party seems to matter a lot more than principle in politics these days. But a true protector of state's rights would have something to say about the feds undermining the state of Texas' ability to effectively fight crime by driving crime victims into the shadows. Maybe one day Texas will elect one.

The case for treatment in domestic violence cases

Dallas Judge Roberto Cañas authored an op ed in the Morning News (Oct. 26) on family violence prevention, calling for expanded use of treatment programs for abusers in lieu of incarceration. Here's a notable excerpt:

No ironclad evidence exists to prove that intervention and prevention classes are the miracle cure for domestic violence. But treatment can make a difference — and the judicial system would be smart to require this rehab of as many offenders as possible.

A new study by the University of Texas at Dallas found that Dallas County abusers who were sent to the classes were less likely to commit another act of domestic violence than those sentenced only to time in a cell.

The 2,000-plus misdemeanor cases the UTD team analyzed involved first-time offenders and less-violent crimes. The rehab-over-jail approach seems particularly effective here: Catch the problem — and work to correct it — before behavior is ingrained in the psyche.

Instruction starts with educating the culprit on what actually constitutes abuse as well as the basics of leading a nonviolent life.

That might sound way too elementary to many readers, but remember that the destructive behavior usually grows insidiously — impatience and harsh teasing turn into name calling and cold shouldering, then into denigrating emotional abuse. At some point, the blows turn physical.

Successful anti-abuse education also must persuade the class that violence is a choice. Why would you punch a spouse in anger when you’d never think of cutting loose on your boss or cable guy?

The best way to accept lessons like these is shoulder-to-shoulder with other abusers. Accountability within the group and a commitment to check in with one another over the long haul are key.

Support for anti-battering education doesn’t mean kicking the judicial system out of the picture. Classes work only if partnered with the courts and law enforcement.

Focusing on treatment instead of incarceration may also persuade more victims to cooperate with law enforcement instead of protecting their partners if they think they might get help instead of being jailed as a result of their participation in the case.

Obviously this isn't a prescription for every case - especially the more extreme ones - and there's evidence that some domestic violence treatments aren't necessarily effective. But Judge Cañas is probably right that society's punitive mindset toward abuse prioritizes punishment over behavior modification in a significant number of cases where more could be done to change the family dynamic rather than simply punish, grandstand, and move on.

In which states are men most likely to murder women? (TX ranked 16th)

In the wake of a national frenzy over the video of an NFL star punching his wife, we learn that Texas ranked 16th in the number of females murdered by men in single victim/single offender homicides, according to a new report by the Violence Policy Center titled, "When Men Murder Women" (pdf, see Appendix 1, pp 9-10). Alaska topped the chart at 2.57 such murders per 100,000 women, followed by South Carolina (2.06), Oklahoma (2.03), Louisiana (1.92), and Mississippi (1.89). The lowest rate was in New Hampshire at .30 per 100,000 women.

Based just on the raw numbers in this report, Texas had the second highest total number of such killings after California, which makes sense since they're the two most populous states. In 2012, California had 18.4% more women murdered by a single male offender than Texas - 212 compared to 179. But because the Golden State's population is so much greater, California's per-capita rate is lower - 1.11 per 100,000 women in 2012 compared to 1.37 in Texas (i.e., Texas' per-capita rate is 23% higher than California's, which was tied for 27th).

Sixteenth isn't great - New Jersey is ranked 33rd, for example, and the per-capita rate there is only .90 per 100K. But this is one list where I'm relieved to find my home state isn't leading the pack.

Via the Texas Legislative Reference Library.

Good idea in Dallas on domestic violence prevention, but few resources to implement it

Here's an interesting, proactive approach to family violence being pursued in Dallas, following the lead of a successful, similar program in New York City: Home visits following up on high-risk domestic violence episodes. Reported the Dallas News ("Dallas police consider home visits to prevent domestic violence deaths," Nov. 23):

Right now, many domestic abuse victims don’t hear from police beyond the initial response to a 911 call. Victims of felony offenses receive a follow-up with an investigating detective, but even then, police involvement ends once the case is handed over to the district attorney’s office.

[Maj. Robert] Sherwin said he wants home visits to fill the gap during the eight to 10 months it can take for the case to reach a result in court.

The plan is already working well in New York City, where police respond to about 250,000 family violence incidents a year. Dallas police respond to about 13,000 domestic abuse incidents annually.

To deal with its large caseload, NYPD assigns about 450 officers to conduct home visits with the most vulnerable victims: children, elderly and people police suspect will be abused again. They go on a “high propensity” list and must be visited at least once a month, said Chief Kathleen O’Reilly, who oversees the domestic violence unit.

On their visit to New York, the Dallas officers joined their NYPD colleagues on a visit to a Harlem public housing complex, where they navigated dark, narrow hallways and knocked on doors. The officers chatted with victims, looked for signs of further abuse and helped create a safety plan — putting Social Security numbers, credit card information and other necessities in one place in case the victim needs to leave in a hurry.

Though the program has existed for years, O’Reilly said, her unit re-emphasized the visits after the city saw a spike in domestic violence murders a few years ago. Now, family violence homicides have fallen and, O’Reilly added, “We don’t know how many lives we’ve saved just by showing up.”

Problem is, Dallas wants to implement the program without assigning extra resources.

the biggest challenge is deciding how to choose which victims to visit. Sherwin said police are considering using the lethality assessment program, criminal background checks on the abuser and knowledge of previous assaults on the victim.

The success of the program would likely hinge on such a filter system.

“That’s kind of the sticky wicket,” Sherwin said.

This is a good idea but it flies in the face of the current policing model where patrol officers rush from 911 call to 911 call without an overarching strategy. Thanks in part to more than 10% of police calls responding to false burglar alarms, there's little extra patrol power to assign to this sort of proactive approach. Make me philosopher king and I'd pull the plug on home-burglar alarm responses, implementing a verified response system and using the extra manpower for more of these sorts of targeted, risk-based policing tactics. But it's become clear that, certainly in Dallas, verified response is "good public policy" but "bad politics," as former Dallas police chief David Kunkle has said.

You can't get something for nothing in this world and that includes extra police resources, even if it's to implement a good idea. Policing, like every other government function, involves trade-offs. Not everything can get done in a world of limited resources. I'd rather see officers following up on high-risk domestic violence cases than chasing after thousands of false burglar alarms, but between the public's ignorance and the alarm industry's political clout, in the near term the trade-off will almost certainly continue to prioritize the latter over the former.

MORE: From Texas Monthly.

Dallas PD Family Violence Unit shelved hundreds of cases without investigation

One lazy or apathetic cop can cause a lot of woe; an entire unit of them can wreak havoc. In Dallas, reported the Morning News (Aug. 19), an investigation into the Family Violence Unit discovered:

hundreds of unworked offenses, mostly from the latter part of the last decade through 2011, ranged from dozens of simple misdemeanor assaults to stalking cases and felony child abuse or sexual assault cases.

The unworked cases represent additional evidence of widespread problems with the Police Department’s family violence unit. Since an embarrassing incident in late 2009 where thousands of cases were discovered in another detective’s garage, the department has improved supervision of investigators, implemented an automated case-tracking system last year and increased the number of detectives.

Paige Flink, executive director of The Family Place Shelter, said she’s confident that police now have the right leadership and reforms in place to prevent something similar from occurring again. But the discovery that hundreds more pleas for help from victims went unheeded because of the two detectives is disheartening, she said.

“I’m almost speechless that people who thought the police were going to help them didn’t get help,” Flink said.

After more than a year, internal affairs investigations into [Shawn] Wash and [Durman] Johnson were recently completed. It is unclear what discipline, if any, they will receive. Wash is assigned to the property room and did not return a request for comment. Johnson declined to comment. He is answering phones in the crimes against persons division.

Many of Wash and Johnson’s mishandled cases are from the same era in which Detective Mickey East failed to properly pursue thousands of cases. East retired in February 2012 after a 2½-year investigation. He said he took the cases home when he was overwhelmed by the workload.

Police officials say Wash and Johnson exhibited many of the same tendencies as East, such as repeatedly failing to properly document what they did and did not do on their cases.

“There’s not a whole lot that they can do that we can’t catch them on now,” said Deputy Chief Sherryl Scott. “It’s all about making sure that our domestic violence victims are getting the service that they need from our detectives.”

What a gross failure of supervision! That one cop could defraud the unit's supervisors might be viewed as an isolated incident. That three did so (at least) means the unit essentially was unsupervised and if any investigations were performed, it was only due to the diligence of the individual detective assigned the case. The supervisor clearly wasn't keeping tabs and the culture of the unit apparently encouraged such behavior.

Grits must also object to the practice of assigning bad cops to the evidence room, as was done with Officer Wash, instead of firing them.  Historically police department considered the property room essentially unimportant, a notion that the era of DNA exonerations and property-room thefts should have by now dispelled, especially in Dallas which leads the state in exonerations. That the department still uses the property room as punishment instead of staffing it with committed professionals indicates the agency has not learned all the lessons it should from Dallas-area innocence cases.

MORE: From the Dallas News (Aug. 20):

Dallas Police Chief David Brown fired five police officers Tuesday, including two former family violence detectives who failed to work hundreds of cases.

One of the fired officers, Bryan Burgess, was booked into Dallas County Jail on Tuesday night on a charge of criminally negligent homicide in connection with the death of a bicyclist who collided with his squad car in April.

Police officials said they are referring another criminal case against Burgess to a grand jury to consider whether he tampered with evidence at the scene of the accident.

Tarrant specialty court focused on family violence by youth on 'nonintimate' relatives

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has an article ("Tarrant County court program helps youth in trouble with the law," Nov. 27) describing a special family violence court called:

Youth Offender Diversion Alternative, or YODA, [which] is aimed at addressing the rise in Tarrant County of family violence cases involving people ages 17 to 25 and nonintimate relatives such as mothers, fathers or siblings.

A combined effort of Judge Jamie Cummings' court in Tarrant County and the University of Texas at Arlington's Center for Clinical Social Work, it is funded by a $92,000 grant from the Amon G. Carter Foundation.

That's the first time I've heard of the specialty court concept aimed at this particular offender cohort. Of defendants assigned to the court,

Most have clean records but have other problems, such as with school, work or family relationships.
Nearly two-thirds are male, and most of their assaults involved either their mother (43 percent) or sister (17 percent). Of the young women assigned to the program, most involved assaults on a sister (25 percent) or their father's partner, such as a stepmother or girlfriend (19 percent).

The program accepts people up to age 25, but more than two-thirds are 17 to 19. If they complete the program, the charge will be erased from their record as if it never happened.

So far, their aggregate outcomes appear positive, though the programs barely been operating more than half a year so far:

Since the program began in March, 54 participants have been diverted into the program, including eight who signed on last week. Nine have been removed from the program, largely for poor attendance in one-on-one counseling.

A preliminary evaluation of the program after about six months shows that participants who completed the program decreased their aggression and abuse of alcohol and drugs, and increased mental health, resilience, hope and their ability to find solutions to their problems. None of the 20 people who completed the program have committed another offense.

The program was begun with outside grant funding:

YODA is part of the Innovative Community Academic Partnership, or iCap, which is funded by grants from the Carter Foundation.

"It occurred to me that we needed to find a different way to address the violence in the community," said Sheila B. Johnson, a director of the Carter Foundation and granddaughter of Amon G. Carter. "They really were basically OK kids but they didn't have a chance."

The program is funded through December, and tentative funding has been lined up to extend the program through 2012.