Abbott vetoes demonstrate continued antipathy toward #cjreform, bootlicking toward police unions

My better half, Kathy Mitchell, posted this on Facebook about Gov. Abbott's criminal-justice vetoes, and since I hadn't written anything on the subject yet, with her permission I'm re-posting it here. For a more sanguine perspective on what Grits has called the worst Texas legislative session on criminal justice in the 21st century, see Marc Levin's column in the SA Express News summarizing everything that passed which reformers might consider a (small) victory. Rep. Pacheco's HB 385 may be the most important of the bills that made it through (congratulations to Terra Tucker, who shepherded it through on behalf of the Alliance for Safety and Justice). But even this was small potatoes, especially in the watered down form in which it passed the Senate, compared to major reforms in years past or even that passed the House this time.

By contrast, most of the big stuff never made it to the governor, and here's how Kathy described the reform bills Abbott vetoed:

The Governor's vetoes are a final punch in the nose for the bipartisan criminal justice reform movement, and a clear reminder (in case we forgot for a second) that the 87th from start to finish has been mainly about Abbott's re-election on a platform of "tuff" on the poorest and most desperate among us.

Abbott vetoed SB 237, predictably, after announcing that he was clearing out a prison to hold migrants arrested for trespassing by his promised army of troopers. That bill would have added criminal trespass to the list of Class B offenses for which an officer could (discretion only) issue a citation instead of arresting.

Abbott vetoed HB 686, juvenile "second look" after even Dan Patrick found a version he could live with. The final bill allowed a person who committed a violent offense as a kid to get a review and possible release (just the possibility, that's it) after serving at least 30 years. Hardly soft on crime, and a bill supported by the Catholic Conference of Bishops, TPPF, Goodwill, United Way and a host of others. Who opposed? Only Ray Hunt on behalf of the Houston Police Association. Hmmmm....

Abbott vetoed HB 1240, a bill with no formal opposition at all. That bill would have authorized fire inspectors to issue citations over fire code violations the way health inspectors do. Apparently now, you have to be a sworn police officer. A bill that would have empowered other public safety agencies to make the public safer without having to use police....Hmmmmm....

Abbott vetoed SB 281 that would have finally ended a police investigative technique from the 70s and 80s called forensic hypnosis. Which is pretty much what it sounds like. A "specially trained" police officer applies hypnosis to a witness or suspect and elicits, well mostly garbage. Because...hypnosis.

Finally, and this is the one that, for me, shows Abbott's hand. He vetoed HB 787 that would have allowed formerly incarcerated people and people on probation to get together (without violating terms of probation against fraternizing with criminals) for purposes of "(1) working with community members to address criminal justice issues; (2) offering training and programs to assist formerly incarcerated persons; and (3) advocating for criminal justice reform, including by engaging with state and local policy makers."

It appears that the voices of the formerly incarcerated were very effective this session, so we can't have any more of that.

I could not find any veto messages for these bills posted yet, just the fact of the veto listed on the Capitol website. So if the Governor has anything useful to say for himself, I'll add more later. For now, these vetoes kind of speak for themselves.

Just the (fake) facts, ma'am: Police unions promote alternative reality on new anti-reform site

Several police unions have joined together to create a new website called Texas Police Facts aiming to convince the Texas Legislature there's no need for police reform in 2021. Regular readers won't be surprised to learn the site elides core issues and misrepresents key facts.

Take, for example, the "FACT" they cite to say "claims that minorities are substantially more likely to be contacted by the police are inaccurate." As evidence, they point to this research brief from the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics, but even a cursory examination shows it doesn't back up their contention.

Check out Tbls 3 and 4 of the report: Turns out, black folks are overrepresented in police-initiated contacts; whites are over-represented in crime reporting. Further, "Blacks were more likely to be pulled over in traffic stops than whites and Hispanics." So the linked source directly contradicts their claim.

Another "FACT": "In Texas, law enforcement officers proven to be unfit for the job cannot jump from agency to agency," they declare, claiming TCOLE's F-5 report ensures agencies are "aware of previous misconduct."

In reality, according to the TX Sunset Commission, "the F-5 process has only resulted in nine license revocations in the last five fiscal years, despite TCOLE receiving notice of over 2,800 dishonorable discharges during the same time." The other 2,791+ officers could all get law enforcement jobs elsewhere in the state, and many did. A recent study of Florida police found 3% of officers previously had been fired from other law-enforcement jobs.

Here's another one: "FACT: In Texas, law enforcement agencies CAN get rid of bad cops." Somebody tell that to the San Antonio Police Department, where 70% of cops fired get reinstated through arbitration, including a guy who fed a sandwich made of feces to a homeless man as a "joke."

Another "FACT" presented was that "Police use force or threat of force in less than 2% of all interactions with civilians." But given that police have MILLIONS of interactions with the public per year, that's a lot of force being used!

On their "Resources" page, they point to a study claiming police exhibit no bias in shootings which was later retracted for inadequate methodology and overstated conclusions.

They include links to several data sources with which Grits readers will be familiar, but cherrypick information from them, including the Texas Justice Initiative on deaths in custody and racial profiling data from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

In particular, racial profiling reports have documented much more widespread use of arrests for Class C misdemeanors than police have admitted in the past. Unions for years claimed such arrests were extremely rare and only used on dangerous people. But we now know police arrested 64,100 people for Class Cs at traffic stops in 2019, meaning more folks are arrested for fine-only offenses in Texas than for marijuana possession!

Indeed, according to said racial profiling data, Houston police officers use force at traffic stops far more than other, comparable agencies - e.g., 18x more than their counterparts at the San Antonio PD.

Grits could keep going, but you get the point.

On Twitter, your correspondent opined, "This website and the police unions who sponsored it are using cherry-picked evidence as drunks use lamp posts ... for support rather than illumination. I hope our friends at the #txlege see through it."

More on union chief thwarting investigation into Austin PD racism complaints

Grits' post on the recently released report analyzing racism allegations at Austin PD deserves a followup. I won't restate all that was written there, but go read it if you haven't.

The Austin Police Association issued a press release yesterday deflecting blame from their president, Ken Casaday, whom the report revealed had informed Assistant Chief Justin Newsom of a confidential complaint against him, allowing him to retire before an investigation could be launched. According to the release, "The conversation regarding whether or not APA President Casaday can or should be punished for having a conversation with a dues paying member is laughable," and they "struggle to find a relevant general order that prohibits conversations between an association member and the association president."

Since they're struggling, let's help them out.

First, to review the issue, here's how Casaday's actions were described in the Tatum report:

In discussions with Detective Casaday, he commented on the fact that everyone in the Department keeps talking about “who snitched” and told AC Newsom about the complaint against him (Complaint 1), alleging racist behavior using text messages, enabling him to retire with a significant amount of accumulated leave pay. Detective Casaday acknowledged he became aware of Complaint 1 against AC Newsom and admitted he told AC Newsom about the anonymous complaint. Detective Casaday did not state how or when he became aware of Complaint 1 or exactly when he discussed Complaint 1 with AC Newsom. However, the consequence of the notification allowed AC Newsom to make the decision to leave the Department before an investigation could be initiated, making AC Newsom eligible to receive his full leave pay upon retirement.

According to the Tatum report, many current and former officers viewed this as improper:

Interviews with other witnesses, particularly other active and separated sworn employees, consistently shared their concern over AC Newsom’s departure with full benefits and no review of the allegations raised against him. There seemed to be an understanding of policy; however, the feeling of betrayal and an abuse of the system were quite prevalent.

Grits suggested that Casaday violated departmental rules because of Art. 16, Sec. 8 of the police contract, which says "Information concerning the administrative review of complaints against officers, including but not limited to Internal Affairs Division files and all contents thereof, are intended solely for the department's use pursuant to Sec. 143.089(g) of the Texas Local Government Code." I interpret that to include information about complaints, not just investigations.

As for the general orders, Sec. 900.3.1c may be the most on point: "Employees will not attempt to conceal, divert, or mitigate their true culpability in a situation, nor will they engage in efforts to thwart, influence, or interfere with an internal or criminal investigation." IMO, Casaday definitely thwarted and interfered with an internal investigation. By informing Newsom about the confidential complaint before the department could act, Casaday directly prevented an investigation from occurring.

To be clear, if Newsom had already been told about the complaint, he was allowed to consult with the union under Art. 17, Sec. 6 of the contract. But Casaday finding out through gossip channels and sharing information about a complaint with its target, by my reading, violates Art. 16, Sec. 8 of the contract and Sec. 900.3.1c of the general orders. I'm not an attorney (and neither is Casaday), but the plain language of those provisions seems clear.

More generally, Casaday had a duty not to tell Newsom under the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics, General Orders, p. 2, in which officers must swear "Whatever I see or hear of a confidential nature or that is confided to me in my official capacity, will be kept ever secret unless revelation is necessary in the performance of my duty." The code also states that an officer "shall guard against the use of his office or person, whether knowingly or unknowingly, in any improper or illegal action."

To the extent Casaday's actions were "a betrayal and an abuse of the system," as it was characterized by officers per the Tatum report, arguably both those provisions apply. With hindsight, it's hard not to describe what happened as "improper," since it thwarted the formal departmental investigation process.

Then, under Sec. 900.3.2a of the general orders (Acts bringing discredit on the department), we find a rule stating, "Employees will not commit any act which tends to destroy public confidence in, and respect for, the department or which is prejudicial to the good order, efficiency, or discipline of the department." Helping Newsom avoid a formal investigation by revealing confidential complaint information surely falls into that category.

Finally, the press release insisted, "if the department wished to investigate APA President Casaday, we are still within the 180-day period to suspend him for his conversation with then Asst Chief Newsom." Grits had written that we were past the 180-day point, but if not, perhaps this should be (quickly) considered?

APA is right that Chief Brian Manley is uniquely culpable for Newsom not being investigated and punished. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised or disappointed if Manley lost his job over it. But that doesn't change the fact that it was improper for Casaday to do what he did and his actions made the situation worse.

Podcast: Texas bail reform litigation, demagoguery on crime in Houston, and Grits' contribution to new TDCJ Hep C litigation

Here's the September 2019 episode of Just Liberty's Reasonably Suspicious podcast, co-hosted by Scott Henson and Amanda Marzullo. Special thanks to Scott Medlock, who's suing TDCJ over failure to adequately treat Hepatitis C. I didn't realize until he told me the idea from the suit originated from a Grits for Breakfast blog post several years ago! That's exciting. Here's this month's episode:


In this episode:

Top Stories

• Harris and Galveston County bail litigation - 1:40
• HPD Chief Art Acevedo demagogues on bail reform - 10:30
• Interview: Attorney Scott Medlock on TDCJ Hep C lawsuit - 14:45

Fill in the Blank

• TPPF on police union politics - 27:45
• Crime debates in Houston mayor's race - 32:45

The Last Hurrah (37:25)

• DPS stops patrols in Dallas
• Do Dallas police murder indictments signal changing attitudes?
• Oklahoma parole changes a model for Texas?

Find a transcript of this episode below the jump.

Media, unions hoped Dallas police staffing study would recommend more cops; instead it said 'manage your cops better'

The Dallas Morning News reported on a new staffing study for the Dallas Police Department prepared by KPMG. But the story is so focused on promoting the paper's ongoing agenda of encouraging the city to hire more officers, the coverage missed the forest while searching for a missing tree: they wanted the report to say how many additional officers the agency should hire, and KPMG failed to take the bait.

KPMG did identify DPD needs that could require more staff, but they suggested that staffing re-alignments and adjustment of strategies, tactics, and priorities could free up that capacity in lieu of the city hiring more officers. That thinking didn't make it into the Morning News story, even though it's the central reasoning behind the recommendations. Instead, the reporters scoured the 400-page report for hints at how many officers should be hired then called around to ask people if they thought the consultants should have given a hard number.

Indeed, the local police union just pretended the consultants had recommended hiring more officers and repeated the demand that a hard number be recommended for new hires:

Mike Mata, president of the Dallas Police Association, said he still hopes to hear an estimated number from top brass early next week. 

“What’s our goal? Even if it’s a broad goal,” Mata said. “I don’t think it’s healthy to just say we need more. There has to be a target or at least a range.”

In fact, KPMG recommended hiring a number of civilian positions as a higher priority than increasing patrol staff. Those were:

• Efficiency specialists
• Data science and optimization experts
• Technologists
• Change management specialists
• Project managers

They also recommended hiring civilian "investigations technicians," "crime analysts," "community support officers," and admin staff to support the Investigations division instead of just adding more cops.

KPMG argued that DPD brass should spend time re-organizing and re-prioritizing patrol functions to free up officer capacity, then evaluate how many officers should be hired when that process is finished. Right now, they said, the agency is completely reactive, with little in the way of a strategic planning process:

Based on our observations and interviews conducted over six months, it is evident that the DPD lacks a clear strategy and is more reactive to the issues of the day, rather than working towards a common long-term goal. While DPD has strategic priorities these have not been translated into a strategic plan that can drive action. This is particularly evident at the Patrol officer level, where staff appear unclear of the overall strategic direction and mission for the department as they receive conflicting direction from the department as to what the priority is, either response times or crime fighting.  

This is also apparent with respect to the Investigations Bureau, which lacks a clear crime strategy, which should be linked to the overall Department strategy that would allow for a flow down staffing model from priorities to execution. Staffing decisions are therefore made periodically and reactively. The DPD responds to both attrition of staff and the daily operational disruptions. The ideal allocation model would be based on a strategic crime reduction model, whereby staff is aligned by priority and actual workload and utilize data and intelligence to inform decision-making. The DPD has considerable work to do in order to achieve this ideal state in the Investigations Bureau. 

When staffing decisions are being made in a haphazard and reactive fashion, simply hiring more officers isn't a solution. The consultants recognized that, even if the Morning News and the police union can't quite accept it. DPD has some work to do before they could effectively use those staff, and the most important, immediate hiring needed involves civilian functions, not patrol officers.

Another interesting critique involved the agency's use of Compstat crime mapping software, which the consultants said contributes to the reactive nature of Dallas policing:

Recent research evidence suggests that Compstat is more likely to generate reactive crime control responses rather than more creative problem-solving responses designed to address the conditions that cause crime problems to recur (Dabney, 2010; Weisburd et al., 2003). In order to be effective the Police Foundation identified six key elements of Compstat that form a comprehensive approach for mobilizing police agencies to identify, analyze, and solve public safety problems: mission clarification; internal accountability; geographic organization of command; organizational flexibility; data-driven problem identification and assessment; and innovative problem solving (Weisburd et al., 2003). When compared to non-Compstat police departments, police departments that use Compstat have been found to be more likely to implement traditional crime control strategies rather than community problem-solving strategies to address crime problems (Weisburd et al., 2003). Willis, Mastrofski, and Kochel (2010) suggested a new form of Compstat that supports collective problem-solving, maintains accountability, and more fully embraces community policing. They observed that this may require diminishing the formality of the chain of command in crime control meetings to support more collaborative problem solving by a wider range of meeting participants. 

With this in mind and considering the recent increase in crime within Dallas, DPD may consider reviewing their current Compstat process to help ensure that the focus is not on reporting of statistics and reactive measures but considers proactive problem-solving initiatives so that the Compstat meetings add value towards the department’s crime strategy and are a productive use of time for all parties involved. 

The Dispatch functions in DPD similarly need to be rethought, say the consultants. Currently, every call gets the same priority. KPMG thinks they should stop assigning the first available officer, which takes cops off their beats and has them running around all over the city. Instead, they should enforce "beat integrity" and send the first-available patrol officer from that area. The wasted officer time driving around is one of the sources of freed up capacity the consultants hope to capitalize on to offset needs for additional hiring.

KPMG also praised the pilot program in Dallas which sends EMS and mental-health professionals as the lead responding to mental-health calls, using officers only for security. (The Austin City Council presently is considering whether to fund a similar pilot.) Not only does that lessen demand for uniformed officers, the consultants also praised the number of money saving hospital and jail diversions:

While DPD is making efforts in this area for example the establishment of the Rapid Integrated Group Healthcare Team (RIGHT) Care pilot program, which is a multidisciplinary team composed of a law enforcement officer with mental health training, a paramedic, and a behavioral health clinician, to answer mental health–related calls for service. This team is able to quickly mobilize and respond to people experiencing a behavioral health crisis in the community to divert people with complex health needs related to serious mental illness (SMI), when appropriate, from jail and emergency departments in order to decrease recidivism rates, better facilitate recovery, and more appropriately allocate community resources. Within the first year of the pilot the team affected 638 hospital diversions and 316 jail diversions.

In perhaps their most important and under-appreciated finding, Dallas PD has dramatically under-invested in civilian staffing across the board, the consultants concluded, and focused budget cuts on civilian an non-sworn positions instead of patrol. (That's one of the reasons the consultants recommended a clutch of civilian spots be filled first, before needs for additional police officers are assessed.) They wrote:

While the scope of the DPD staffing analyses was limited to the Patrol and Investigation Bureaus there were a number of opportunities identified to increase the use of civilian or non-sworn staffing within the Department. The DPD could benefit from the force-mix review of all functions within the department to help ensure that the right positions, with the right skills are performing the right roles. It was noted by DPD staff and leadership that during budget cuts the first positions to be unfunded are the civilian and non-sworn positions, however this can only serve to increase the burden on sworn staff and shift their focus from their core tasks.

Civilian staffing accounts for just 16 percent of total DPD staffing as of March 2019. When compared to the comparison cohort, this size of Dallas’s civilian workforce is the third smallest, with Dallas ranking ninth out of twelve agencies as civilians comprised only 17 percent of the workforce in 2017. As discussed in detail in the patrol report and illustrated in the graphic on the following page, the project team’s review of comparison agencies found that on average, 24 percent of their workforces were civilian staff.

Finally, DPD record keeping is such that some management evaluations couldn't be performed. The consultants gave detailed recommendations for improvements to record keeping, both practices and data points gathered, that they say will enable smarter decisions about how to deploy staff going forward. They don't say it, but one of Grits' favorite phrases comes to mind, here: You can't manage what you can't measure.

I don't understand why the Dallas Morning News feels the need to promote this hire-more-officers meme they've been hammering away at recently, but this report wasn't the platform on which to promote that narrative. The consultants didn't conclude that Dallas needs more cops, they said the agency needs to be better managed and re-organized.

That may not be the message Mike Mata and his local media bandwagon want to hear, but this study represents an opportunity for the Dallas press and, more importantly, local government, to pivot away from the simplistic meme that more cops are the only possible solution to crime. I hope they take it.

MORE: See DMN coverage of the city council briefing, and here's a DMN staff editorial struggling to come to grips with the fact that the consultants' analysis and recommendations fly in the face all prior DMN reporting and analysis on the topic. The editorial said the report's guidance was "sometimes confusing," but I didn't think so. They simply focused on more important management questions, whereas the Morning News' coverage has tried to boil down police-management issues to "how many more officers should we hire?," choosing between options of "a lot more" and "a whole lot more." The consultants showed that was a false choice that ignored pivotal issues facing the department that prevent more effective crime fighting. Hiring more officers before those problems are addressed puts the cart before the horse. At the briefing, "KPMG consultants repeatedly told city officials that there were strategic issues that needed to be addressed within the department before talking about overall department staffing numbers," the paper reported. IMO, any "confusion" stemmed from the News' wrong-headed coverage prior to the report's release. Grits thought the recommendations were quite clear and well-founded.

Fraternal Order of Police gain Texas foothold in H-Town

Police union politics in Texas could become even more radicalized now that the Houston Police Officers Union (HPOU) has joined forces with the Fraternal Order of Police, a police-union umbrella group and Trump-administration favorite that had not previously had a major foothold in Texas.

HPOU's president, Joe Gamaldi, was elected to FOP's leadership team, the Houston Chronicle reported recently. For many years, HPOU was affiliated with the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT). Then, it briefly teamed up in a sort of coalition with the Dallas police union and the Texas Municipal Police Association, CLEAT's biggest rival.

By bailing on TMPA and teaming up with FOP, Grits fears HPOU may have launched a race to the bottom. FOP is well known for backing firebrands and demagogues, and Gamaldi was already a shoot-from-the-lip kind of guy.

Grits read: Expect more outlandish statements and demagoguery from Joe Gamaldi, and expect the CLEAT and TMPA-affiliated unions to follow their lead and become more aggressive to try to match them. I hope I'm wrong, but this strikes me as unfortunate news.

How confused Texas Democrats killed #SandraBland legislation, twice; or, how police kill a civil-rights bill when legislators overwhelmingly support it

The death of HB 2754 (White) limiting arrests for Class C misdemeanors was the strangest bill ride in which Grits has ever participated. Readers will recall that this provision was stripped out of the Sandra Bland Act in 2017, so reformers came back this year for another bite at the apple. The bill has overwhelming support in the Texas House, but now it's dead.

Let's try to unpack what happened:

In essence, Democrats killed the bill twice: first because they didn't understand the legislation (or why current law allowed Sandra Bland to be pulled from her car), and then because a bunch of them left work before the big vote on Friday, so the rules couldn't be suspended to reverse the error.

For bill author James White, a Republican, it's evidence that no good deed goes unpunished. His HB 2754 was narrowed in committee to the Sandra-Bland language because Rep. Senfronia Thompson's HB 482 couldn't get out of the Homeland Security and Public Safety committee. Advocates believed they could count to a majority, but Democratic Homeland Chairman Poncho Nevarez wouldn't give Thompson's bill a vote. So, essentially similar language was substituted into White's HB 2754, which had been referred to Chairwoman Nicole Collier's Criminal Jurisprudence committee. Again, the bill had the votes, so she brought it up and voted it out. The bill found sufficient support to make it through Calendars and landed on the House floor with plenty of time to pass.

First Kill
Before the second reading vote on the House floor, Chairman Nevarez brought White an amendment from the police unions to let officers arrest if the offender failed to present identification. White declined to add it, and Nevarez did not press the matter. On the morning of third reading, however, the police unions brought the amendment to White directly. He added it under his own name on 3rd reading, and the bill passed the House 126-20, with Nevarez "absent."

Because it did not change current practice (officers currently ask for identification at traffic stops in order to write you a ticket and HB 2754 would not have changed that), the amendment was not clearly substantive. Instead, it was a "poison pill" designed by the police unions to change the conversation from overreaching police power to verification of identity at traffic stops - an issue covered by different laws not altered by HB 2754, poorly understood by most of the membership, and likely to gin up dissension. It worked.

After the bill passed, Democrat Shawn Thierry complained to White about the amendment, and in a rare move, he agreed to bring the bill back up and strip it off, even though HB 2754 had already passed on to the senate. Advocates had no idea he was planning to do this. And thus the bill came back up late Wednesday night after it had already passed in the lower chamber.

However, once the bill was brought back up and the amendment was off, Thierry began nitpicking at the rest of the bill in ways that fundamentally failed to comprehend either current law or the effects of the legislation. Currently, police can arrest absolutely anyone for any Class C charge and no other reason; the bill limited this power. But Thierry appeared to believe the bill expanded police authority rather than limiting it. 

Thierry dug in on an open-ended clause in the new limitations that would let police arrest if they had probable cause to believe someone wouldn't show up in court. This was compromise language demanded by law enforcement; certainly it was broader than Grits would prefer, and was the most open-ended exception. But requiring cops to have "probable cause" to believe someone won't show up is an improvement over giving them wholesale authority to arrest without any such justification. Taken as a whole, the measure limited arrest authority compared to current law. Thierry mistakenly believed it gave police new arrest powers.

Then, Nevarez, along with his roommate, Terry Canales, a criminal-defense attorney, stridently doubled down on Thierry's confused interpretation. Another Democrat even accused White of promoting racial profiling! In reality, the opposite is true: when policies compliant with HB 2754 were installed at Austin PD, Class-C arrests declined by nearly two thirds and racial disparities lessened.

House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee Chairwoman Nicole Collier, one of a handful of Democrats who stuck with the bill, tried to help White out with questions that clarified the language. But he became frustrated and called for a vote. Confused Democrats sided with the bill critics en masse, including some who were coauthors!

And with that, a black Democrat pursuing a misguided argument killed Texas legislation which, had it been law, would have prevented Sandra Bland's arrest. Ironically, on her Twitter page, Thierry includes the following quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. in her bio: "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will." I think, at this point, we can all agree on that!

As an aside, I bet Chairman White has learned his lesson about doing Democrats favors. The Republican committee chairman tried to accommodate them - first adding the police-union change that Nevarez had requested, then pulling it off when Thierry complained. As a result, a bill Democrats should all support was killed for his trouble.

Within about 15 minutes of the vote, the Democratic caucus understood they'd screwed up big time, with Nevarez, Garnet Coleman, Harold Dutton, Joe Moody, Nicole Collier, and others coming outside to tell supporters they were going to "fix this." By the next morning, the path was clear. Chairman White agreed to accept one amendment to repair the open-ended text related to failure to appear. Democrats agreed to come back en masse to vote "yes" because the concern had been addressed. Everyone had a path forward.

Second Kill
But it was not to be. Chairman White needed yet another vote, and could have tried to get it the following day when, under the rules, he needed a simple majority. The problem was the calendar: it was the last day that House bills could be heard on "second reading." Bringing a potentially contentious bill back up - one that had already had its day - would mean killing other legislation. With 20/20 hindsight, White should have bucked protocol and done it anyway. Instead, he waited.

So the motion to reconsider wasn't heard until the day after, when it required a 2/3 vote for suspension of the rules. Democrats asked for the bill to be brought back mid-afternoon. The speaker chose to wait until regular business was complete, which frankly Grits thought was reasonable considering we were asking for what amounted to an extremely rare 5th reading vote!

About 6 p.m. Friday - not a late hour for this time of session - the Speaker recognized Garnet Coleman for his motion to reconsider. Initially the rules suspension seemed to pass. But opponents called for vote verification, and 20 Democrats who voted FOR the bill the first time and should have been there to vote for it again had already left the building. (see listing of absent members; excused and unexcused is a procedural difference.) The bill failed to get the 2/3 needed to suspend the rules by just two votes.

One absent Dem that we know of had legitimate reason not to be there: Donna Howard's husband had a medical emergency. But why would Austin's Eddie Rodriguez not show up? Members from Houston, San Antonio, and other drive-able locales went home early for the weekend instead of staying to vote.

If just two of them had cared more about preventing what happened to Sandra Bland than leaving work early to start their weekend, this bill would be on its way to becoming law.

Honestly, why bother seeking election to the Legislature if you're not going to show up on big votes to do your job?

It's possible an amendment vehicle will be found and HB 2754's provisions can be revived. At this point, the bill is supported by a wide majority of House members and opposed by only a few. Just 26 people voted against the bill on third reading, and 37 voted against the motion to reconsider.  So the votes are there if a vehicle is found.

It's easy to blame all this on legislative incompetence. Thierry's failure to understand the bill was the pivotal error that caused everything to melt down. Even if the line she complained about had not been fixed, the bill would have radically limited existing police power to arrest for Class C violations. And blowing a vote so important to core Democratic constituencies because members wanted to get home for Mother's Day weekend is about the lamest outcome possible. All of those absent members should hear about the issue during the next primary.

But at the end of the day, the "poison pill" strategy was promoted by the police unions. They're the behind-the-scenes force ultimately responsible for the loss, however satisfying it may seem to blame confused or absent legislators. That's certainly who I blame.

And that, my friends, is an example of how powerful interests can kill a bill opposed by only 37 out of 150 House members through confusion and misdirection. I've got to hand it to them; their strategy worked.

See related MSM coverage:

• Texas Monthly
• Texas Observer
• KERA
• Texas Tribune

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Police union reps sit down with reform advocate for post mortem on Austin-police-contract fight

On December 13, 2017, a contract negotiated between the Austin police union and city management was voted down by the city council in response to a large community uprising led by the Austin Justice Coalition. After nearly a year-long standoff, the sides came to an agreement in November, with the union agreeing to significant new reforms and $10 million per year less than in the previously negotiated contract.

On December 4th, police union representatives Ron DeLord and Chris Perkins sat down with Chas Moore of the Austin Justice Coalition in Grits' dining room to discuss the 18-month-long struggle to install accountability measures in the Austin police union contract. Excerpts from the discussion were included in a segment in Just Liberty's December 2018 Reasonably Suspicious podcast, but here's the full, 38-minute conversation:

For more background, see these prior, related blog posts and podcast segments:

• Union contract fight gave Austin advocates leverage to improve police oversight
• Austin's police contract among worst in nation from accountability standpoint, says Campaign Zero co-founder
• Podcast: Police unions, collective bargaining and accountability (three segments)
• Interview: Campaign Zero's Sam Sinyangwe
• A primer for police union leaders on 'making the guilty innocent' after high-profile incidents
• Interview: Ron DeLord on the Ferguson Effect, police pensions, and why he considers Saul Alinsky a major influence

Find a transcript of our conversation below the jump.

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

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

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

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

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


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

Opening: Pythons as stocking stuffers?

Top Story

• Principles for progressive prosecutors

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

Home Court Advantage

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

The Last Hurrah

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

Find a transcript of the show below the jump.

Union contract fight gave Austin advocates leverage to improve police oversight

Austin Justice Coalition's victory over police union
brings to mind history's greatest upsets

(Updated with background links, photos, and an addendum.)

Although the local media has reported that the Austin police contract was finally approved and activists were happy with the result, only one local TV station report that I saw attempted to parse changes in the contract from a police accountability standpoint.

Advocates' year-long battle resulted in savings of $10 million per year compared to the contract rejected last December, as well as achieving greater transparency about police misconduct, the ability of the Police Monitor to accept anonymous complaints, and an end to the practice downgrading violations after a period of time so that they disappeared from public view (and couldn't be considered by the Chief in the event of future misconduct.)

Activists didn't get all they wanted. Of the six items in Campaign Zero's wish list for accountable police contracts, for example, the Austin Justice Coalition (AJC) and its allies only won one of them. That said, there were other accountability items specific to the Austin contract (e.g., downgrading violations over time) that weren't on Campaign Zero's list, and they were important, too.

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

Compromises notwithstanding, this was a major police-accountability victory. To my knowledge, no police-union contract in the United States, before this one, had been rejected by elected officials because of concerns over police accountability. From the moment the contract was defeated last December, it gave Chas Moore, his AJC compatriots and their allies tremendous leverage; more than police reformers in Austin have had at any time in living memory.

Before the contract defeat, AJC could get no traction for reforming oversight. In the months before last December's marathon hearing, at which the proposed union contract was finally voted down, AJC and allies presented eight reforms to both the City and the police association. The association never sat down with reformers, and the city failed to introduce the ideas into the negotiation process.

But after the entire city witnessed Moore and AJC standing over the defeated police union like Ali looking down at Sonny Liston (shouting "Give us police oversight!" instead of Ali's "Get up and fight, sucker!"), their voices could no longer be ignored.

Campaign Zero's Deray McKesson with the
Austin Justice Coalition policy team in Grits' living room.

The union swapped out their president for a new, co-lead negotiator, who in turn reached out to reformers. With strong, continued interest from council offices, the city rolled the reform proposals into the negotiation and discovered that hanging tougher brought rewards. In the version of the contract finally approved, the oversight mechanisms were moved to a city ordinance and the contract includes a more limited list of issues that required police association buy-in. That not only meant a lower cost. It also put the city council back in control of police oversight instead of giving the police union veto power.

As it happens, my wife was heavily involved in AJC's efforts to influence the contract and create a new oversight system for Austin. In the most recent episode of Just Liberty's Reasonably Suspicious podcast, she outlined the changes made and what comes next. Since the details of the new oversight system have received so little attention, I decided to pull out those comments as a stand-alone segment for anyone interested. Give them a listen:

Next month, both Chas Moore and Ron DeLord, the lead negotiator for the police union, have agreed to a joint interview/conversation on the podcast to describe the process and lessons learned from it, so I'm looking forward to that.

MORE: Chris Harris of Grassroots Leadership posted on Twitter this helpful graphic showing the impact of grassroots advocacy on the police-union contract and civilian oversight in Austin. The left-hand column was the old contract; the middle column is the one rejected by the City Council after a populist uprising last December; and the right-hand column is the new, final contract. Quite an improvement, huh? Especially on the price tag!

For more background, see these prior, related Grits posts:

• Austin's police contract among worst in nation from accountability standpoint, says Campaign Zero co-founder
• Checking in on opposition to the Austin police contract
• Overtime for police court appearances a growing cost driver at Austin PD
• Critiquing Austin's police union contract
• Podcast: Police unions, collective bargaining and accountability (three segments)
• Interview: Campaign Zero's Sam Sinyangwe
• A primer for police union leaders on 'making the guilty innocent' after high-profile incidents
• Snippets of opposition to Austin's police contract
• Uncharted territory: Rejected police union contract leaves open many questions
• Journalists failing to call out official lies in Austin police contract debate
• More one-sided coverage of Austin PD retirements
• Interview: Ron DeLord on the Ferguson Effect, police pensions, and why he considers Saul Alinsky a major influence
• Austin police oversight ineffective, says audit; local media silent on narrative-busting analysis
• Austin police union overplaying its hand by rejecting accountability measures

Austin police union overplaying its hand by rejecting accountability measures

After their President was last seen screaming at city council members for not signing a contract with the Austin Police Association, the union this week rejected all accountability measures proposed by the city, the Austin Statesman reported. 

Their lead negotiator, Ron DeLord (founder of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas and a friend of the blog), told the paper the union wants more money without any new accountability measures, declaring:

“We are in a position once the city makes a financial offer and gives us some idea of what they want in oversight (that) I think we’ll get a deal or no deal next week,” DeLord said. “That could change, but if the city brings a money offer and we can accept it, I think we’ll reach a deal. If we can’t, there may be no contract, or we’ll continue bargaining.”

This is posturing. The city already told them what oversight measures they want, and DeLord rejected them out of hand. Why in heaven's name would the city pony up more money if the union won't agree to any of the measures they requested? The status quo suits the city just fine.

In years past, the big threat was that the union would oppose city council members in low-turnout municipal elections in which they were a big player. But having moved elections to November and switched to single-member districts, that advantage has largely evaporated. Looking at the various council races on the ballot this fall, reformers are likely to end up with even more City Council support, while no competitive candidate of whom I'm aware is championing the police union's message.

Austin police officers are already the highest paid in the state. There's little danger many will quit to go work for less elsewhere. The rich contracts larded on the union for the last two decades will inevitably, effectively serve as golden handcuffs for the foreseeable future. The union president may be angry, but not angry enough to quit and take another job paying tens of thousands of dollars less.

In other words, the union has no leverage. Police administrators have tried to claim, with their usual "sky is falling" tone, that changes to promotions practices which reverted to state law when the contract fell apart somehow justify giving the union extra money. But the fact is, some 70-plus other civil service cities around Texas operate under the state-law provisions. Even if sub-optimal, it's hard to argue those state-law provisions are some huge problem.

The council members most worried about these human-resources issues are mainly focused on expanding diversity at the department. But if that's the concern, they're barking up the wrong tree, anyway. The old provisions weren't some great diversity panacea! (Witness the police-chief finalist list: one white guy.) If the city wants to improve diversity in its police force, it needn't look to the contract. Instead, the city should focus on changing recruitment practices and setting higher and better hiring goals outside the contract. At current salary levels, APD is a good option for any college graduate who wants to settle down here.

Bottom line: There's nothing the union has that the city needs except acquiescence to the reform proposals that they just flatly rejected. If they want a wage hike, or for that matter if they want their stipends renewed that ceased when the contract ended, union negotiators must accept the accountability changes proposed.

The alternative isn't to get the money without agreeing to any reform measures, it's to go home with nothing, like they did last year. That should play well at the next union leadership election.

Scam soliciting money for fallen officers in wake of Dallas shootings

Grits just got a scam robocall from something called the National Police and Troopers Association, which apparently has an affiliation with the national AFL-CIO' International Union of Police Officers, trying to collect donations in the wake of the shootings of two Dallas police officers, one of whom has now died. But there's almost no way any of that money would never end up in the hands of dead officers' families. A blogger who checked the group out a few years back found that:

for the year ending March 31, 2012, the union and its outside fundraisers collected $8.2 million and kept $7.7 million for fundraising fees and expenses, leaving about $500,000 for other purposes. That’s a fundraising efficiency of 6%–less than one-tenth the 65% threshold that charity watchdogs consider the bare minimum for a legitimate operation. 

But it’s really stinks even more. According to the tax return, out of that last $500,000, the union handed out charitable grants–scholarships, and a death benefit for one officer in Indiana–totaling just $35,000. That rounds to just 1/2 of 1% of the money raised.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see the group on the the Texas Attorney General's list of registered organizations licensed to do this sort of law-enforcement themed fundraising. Correction: They're listed as an AFL-CIO affiliate, and spend 77% of their earnings on fundraising, according to the AG.

Grits has railed against these law enforcement themed charity scams for years, but this is a new low. Sleazebags.

For the record, if you want to give a donation which will actually go to the Dallas officers' families instead of a bunch of scam artists, this is the link to use, via the Dallas Morning News.

Interview: Ron DeLord on the Ferguson Effect, police pensions, and why he considers Saul Alinsky a major influence

Recently, Grits interviewed Ron DeLord, the founder of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas and a lion of the Texas police union movement. An excerpt from our conversation (about pensions) was included in the latest Reasonably Suspicious podcast, but I wanted to post the full interview here.

We discussed whether the "Ferguson Effect" really exists, the ongoing fiscal crisis surrounding police pensions, and DeLord's lifelong promotion of the teachings of Saul Alinsky, whose philosophies and tactics have overtly animated his writing and political strategies for decades. Give it a listen:


Find a transcript of our conversation below the jump.

Reasonably Suspicious Podcast: Why Mein Kampf is okay but The Color Purple is banned at TDCJ

Check out the January edition of Just Liberty's Reasonably Suspicious podcast, covering Texas criminal justice policy and politics. You can listen to the latest episode here, or subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, or SoundCloud.

If you haven't subscribed yet, take a moment to do so now to make sure you won't miss an episode. Topics this month include:

Top Stories

• Banned books in TDCJ (featuring Lauren McGaughy): Why Mein Kampf is okay but The Color Purple is banned.
• Alleged interference at State Counsel for Offenders: Did TDCJ board dictate defense strategies?

Interview

• Ron DeLord, founder of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas on police pensions, predicts defined benefit pensions for police will vanish within the next couple of decades.

Errors and Updates

• Harris County magistrate judges sanctioned for bail SNAFU
• Austin police union declines to re-enter negotiations after contract rejected

Interview

• Richard Whitaker: Father of a death row inmate, who is also one of his victims, asks the governor, parole board to spare his son's life.

The Last Hurrah

• Latest Dallas exonerations based on prosecutor misconduct
• Quick results from drug-law change in Oklahoma
• Twin Peaks biker cases soon headed to trial

Find a transcript of the podcast below the jump.

Snippets of opposition to Austin's police-union contract

A local Austin activist posted on YouTube some of the testimony from December at the Austin City Council against the police-union contract. (See Grits' writeup after the event.) Your correspondent was one of the speakers in opposition, and I post my testimony here mainly to show off Grits' favorite shirt:

Since Grits had earlier interviewed Campaign Zero's Sam Sinyangwe and highlighted his research on Austin police contract, let's also post his testimony from the same hearing.


And here's Chris Harris, a super-bright, young activist from Grassroots Leadership, who like many others that night did a great job, but who in particular made some excellent, data-based points that the local media have avoided over the many months this contract was being debated:


Go here to watch more testimony from the hearing.

Austin press coverage of police contract still sucks, and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends that deserve readers' attention even if I haven't had time to turn them into full, independent blog posts:

Austin press coverage of police contract still sucks
The Austin press continues its one-sided coverage of the City Council's rejection of the police-union contract, larding their articles with quotes from contract supporters and minimizing the views of critics without fully explaining them. In an Austin Chronicle story published yesterday, for example, contract supporters were given a platform for predicting doom while contract critics were dismissed as know-nothings (e.g., my wife was dubbed a "gadfly"). According to reporter Nina Hernandez, council members who voted against the contract (all of them) "hadn't exactly considered the consequences of their decision," though there's no sourcing, much less factual basis offered for that opinion. Later, appearing to contradict herself, she complained that the council was "suffering information overload," which hardly jibes with her earlier calumny that they hadn't sufficiently studied the topic.

The truth is, MSM reporters in Austin appear as a class to have misunderstood and misreported this entire debate from the get go. Ms. Hernandez now says she recognizes that, as one council member instructed her, "the Council's vote was more about the money" than the oversight piece (which means the press were the only ones in the room that night who didn't understand what they were watching). But no one in the local media is yet reporting on the most important implications of the scuttled contract: Freeing up around $10 million that the city council can spend in the current fiscal year over and above their current budget. How and when to spend that money is where the actual debate has moved at city hall, as well as among the activist players involved. But the press continues to flail, having missed the story and spun false narratives for so long that they don't now know how to begin to catch up. It's as though there's an almost willful decision by the local Austin press corps not to publicly report on what these debates are actually about.

Texas law mandates bad bodycam policies
Note to reporters who want to localize a story about police bodycams based on the Leadership Conference/Upturn recommendations, like this recent SA Express News story: Texas' law is the source of the most important bad practices, like letting officers accused of misconduct review video before they're questioned, or erecting barriers to accessing video under open records. Increasingly more departments, most recently Arlington and Plano, are purchasing body cameras for their officers. MORE: Here's a new academic piece on body cameras from Seth Stoughton for the to-read pile.

Private prison company gets rep on Windham task force
One of the governor's new appointees to Texas' task force on "Academic Credit and Industry Recognition" at the Windham School District (which operates educational programming at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice) works for a private prison company, reported the Longview News Journal.

Maybe time to tone down the 'war on cops' meme
The number of police officers killed in the line of duty in 2017 was the second lowest total in 50 years. While every death of an officer is a tragedy, this low total doesn't comport with the "war on cops" meme that's been prevalent for the last couple of years. Suicides and traffic deaths remain the more significant killers of sworn police officers.

Analyzing 2017 shootings by police
The new report from Mapping Police Violence is a must-read. By their count, 1,129 people were killed by police in America in 2017. MPV researchers "were able to identify officers in 534 cases. At least 43 had shot or killed someone before. 12 had multiple prior shootings." Also, "Most killings began with police responding to suspected non-violent offenses or cases where no crime was reported. 87 people were killed after police stopped them for a traffic violation." The number of those killed who were unarmed was 147. Notably, "Police recruits spend 7x as many hours training to shoot than they do training to de-escalate situations." FWIW, the Washington Post came up with a slightly lower number for Americans killed by police; Grits doesn't yet understand why the difference. It's remarkable that the number of people shot and killed by the government isn't tracked more closely than this in an official capacity. This should be a number we know.

Why long sentences matter
Too much of 2016 and 2017 was spent debating Prof. John Pfaff's position that long sentences weren't a significant driver of mass incarceration. He was wrong. This 17-minute podcast from the Urban Institute lays out the problem of too-long sentences and shows why reducing them is key to ending mass incarceration.

Healthcare spending reduces crime, violence
In the big picture, the observation from the Brookings Institute that health care spending prevents crime makes loads of sense. That's particularly true where health and crime specifically intersect - like drug abuse and mental illness, where treatment and related social-service supports can prevent crime both directly and indirectly. One study they cited "found that an increase in the number of treatment facilities causes a reduction in both violent and financially-motivated crime. This is likely due to a combination of forces: reducing drug abuse can reduce violent behavior that is caused by particular drugs, as well as property crimes like theft committed to fund an addiction. Reducing demand for illegal drugs might also reduce violence associated with the illegal drug trade."

Trump DOJ rescinds anti-debtors prison guidelines
The decision by the Trump DOJ to rescind guidance on minimizing debtors-prison practices was ill-conceived and a disappointment. But it was only ever guidance, and rescinding it in and of itself changes nothing. What has always mattered more is what state and particularly local actors choose to do on the ground, and that remains an open question. Texas legislators in 2017 took long-awaited first steps toward confronting the problem of arresting poor people over fines, but there's much more to be done. It remains to be seen whether - much like the push to reform asset forfeiture laws - movement conservatives continue to push for reform in spite of the Trump Administration staking out a more regressive agenda.

More one-sided MSM reporting on Austin PD retirements

Grits had earlier cited reporting by local journalists over projected retirements by Austin police officers in the wake of the city council rejecting their police-union contract as an example of the local press acting as a mouthpiece for proponents of the contract. The spin before the contract vote was that up to 300 officers could retire if the council didn't approve it, a number Chief Brian Manley amended to up-to-160 on the night of the city-council vote, after touting the higher number for weeks. 

Now, the real numbers are out and KXAN-TV has published the most misleading report yet, again without letting contract critics correct the spin. It turns out, only 33 officers are retiring this month before the new contract terms take effect, or about 5% of the highest, earlier estimates being touted in headlines and TV news stories. Reported KXAN in their lede:

The number of Austin police officers leaving the department spiked this month, nearly doubling the year’s total up to this point. 

At least 33 city police lieutenants, sergeants, detectives, corporals and officers have left the Austin Police Department this month in the wake of City Council’s decision to reject a new union contract two weeks ago. In the first 11 months of the year combined, 43 officers left the department.

So 76 officers will  retire this year, including perhaps a couple of dozen extra retiring at the end of the year because of the rejected contract. How should we judge whether this is significant? From Grits' earlier post on the topic:

So, since we can't expect local reporters to do it, let's go ahead and answer the question, "Is 25-50 retirements significant?" It turns out, according to the annual report from the Austin police officer retirement system (p. 133), 56 officers retired in 2016, and 71 retired in 2015. So even minimalist reporting, checking the most basic facts about the topic in easily accessible public sources, would show that these numbers of retirements aren't really a big deal at all.

From a statistical perspective, this is entirely within normal range, with just five more retirements than in 2015. Yawn!!

Yet at KXAN, this merits the headline, "APD sees big spike in retirements after council rejects new contract"! This, to me, seems almost like intentional bias, promoting sky-is-falling arguments from one side of a public debate while ignoring both data from public sources and credible alternative voices. Could they really be this bad accidentally? I guess it's possible, but ...

Christmas and the Surveillance State: December Reasonably Suspicious podcast

Check out the December edition of Just Liberty's Reasonably Suspicious podcast, covering Texas criminal justice policy and politics. Two great interviews this month - one with reporter Brandi Grissom Swicegood about the alleged abuse and turmoil at the Gainesville State School, and another with Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the national Innocence Project, regarding forensic-science reform. You can listen to the latest episode here, or subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, or SoundCloud.


If you haven't subscribed yet, take a moment to do so now to make sure you won't miss an episode. Topics this month include:

Top Stories
US v. Carpenter: SCOTUS appears likely to require a warrant for cell-phone location data.

Interview

Brandi Grissom, discussing the staff-on-youth sex scandal at the Gainesville State School.

Home Court Advantage

Evaluating a sharply split decision from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upholding a first-degree felony drug conviction in which a police officer stole the product and laced sheetrock with less than a gram of cocaine to frame the defendant. (See prior Grits coverage.)

Interview

Peter Neufeld of the national Innocence Project, discussing forensic science reform.

Errors and Updates

• Forensic hypnosis
• Austin City Council rejected police union contract
• DNA mixture evidence

The Last Hurrah

• TDCJ prison understaffing and staff safety
• Death penalty use declining: A first for Harris County in 40 years
• Dallas pilot program de-escalates mental-health calls by sending medical staff instead of cops

Find a full transcript of the podcast below the jump.