Majority of Texas middle and high school students suspended or expelled

Here's the text of a press release received this morning from the Council of State Governments Justice Center revealing some startling trends in Texas school discipline:

Majority of Texas Middle and High School Students Suspended or Expelled: Repeated Suspensions Predict Later Involvement in Juvenile Justice System

CSG Justice Center Releases New Report on How School Discipline Relates to Academic and Juvenile Justice Outcomes

New York—In an unprecedented study of nearly 1 million Texas public secondary school students followed for more than six years, nearly 60 percent were suspended or expelled, according to a report released today by the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center in partnership with the Public Policy Research Institute of Texas A&M University. Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement features these other key findings: Of the nearly 1 million public secondary school students studied, about 15 percent were suspended or expelled 11 times or more; nearly half of these students with 11 or more disciplinary actions were involved in the juvenile justice system. Only three percent of the disciplinary actions were for conduct in which state law mandated suspensions and expulsions; the rest were made at the discretion of school officials primarily in response to violations of local schools’ conduct codes. African-American students and those with particular educational disabilities were disproportionately disciplined for discretionary actions. Repeated suspensions and expulsions predicted poor academic outcomes. Only 40 percent of students disciplined 11 times or more graduated from high school during the study period, and 31 percent of students disciplined one or more times repeated their grade at least once. Schools that had similar characteristics, including the racial composition and economic status of the student body, varied greatly in how frequently they suspended or expelled students. “We hope these findings strengthen efforts underway in Texas to improve outcomes for students, and help other states’ policymakers in examining school discipline practices so they can enhance students’ academic performance and reduce juvenile justice system involvement,” said CSG Justice Center Director Michael Thompson. “This report reflects an impressive commitment among Texas leaders to developing state-of-the-art electronic record-keeping systems and then using the data to answer important questions. Such data-driven policymaking should be the goal of state officials everywhere.” The analysis considered in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, Disciplinary Alternative Education Program (DAEP) placements, and Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program (JJAEP) placements.  In-school suspensions ranged from a single class period to several consecutive days, and out-of-school suspensions averaged two days per incident.  Students assigned to DAEP were there for 27 days on average; JJAEP students were off the school campus for an average of 73 days. Informal actions (e.g., detention, parent/teacher meetings) were not reported to the Texas Education Agency and were therefore excluded from study. “One of the most important takeaways from the report is learning that the school a student attends largely influences how, when, or if a student is removed from the classroom for disciplinary reasons,” said Senator Florence Shapiro (R), chair of the Texas Senate Education Committee, and one of the lawmakers who supported the study. “The data suggests that individual school campuses often have a pronounced influence over how often students are suspended or expelled.” This study, made possible in part through funding from the Atlantic Philanthropies and the Open Society Foundations, relied on more than 6 million school and juvenile justice records (for every student who was in seventh grade in a Texas public school in academic years 2000, 2001 and 2002), even tracking those that moved from one school to another within the state. “The report tells us that more than one in seven Texas middle and high school students have been involved with the juvenile justice system.   We should ask whether teachers and principals, rather than police officers and judges, are best suited to discipline kids who commit minor infractions.” said Texas Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson, who is convening a meeting today in Austin to discuss the study’s findings. This study is unprecedented in that it tracked not just a sample of students, but all seventh graders in the state for six years.  Using multivariate analyses to control for more than 83 variables, the study was able to isolate the relationships between such factors as race and school disciplinary actions, suspensions/expulsions and juvenile justice contact, and discretionary actions and academic success measured by being held back a grade or dropping out. Senator John Whitmire (D), chair of the Texas Criminal Justice Committee, said, “We need to maintain realistic expectations of what educators alone can accomplish in today’s challenging classrooms.  At the same time, this report demonstrates that if we want our kids to do better in school and reduce their involvement in the juvenile justice system, we in the legislature need to continue looking into how teachers can be better supported and how the school discipline system can be improved.” The CSG Justice Center plans to convene a group of leading experts and opinion leaders to discuss recommendations for policymakers and practitioners. This follow-up effort is meant to reach consensus on approaches across various public systems to address the study findings and build on the strong foundation of work by academics and professionals in the field. The full report and an FAQ about the study findings can be downloaded at http://justicecenter.csg.org/resources/juveniles. MORE: See a reaction from the ACLU of Texas.

After all, how many Steven Rodriguez's could there be?

Thanks to a helpful reader for pointing out yet another "innocence" story, this time out of DeWitt County, that luckily didn't end up requiring years in prison or a grant of habeas relief to sort out ("Victoria man arrested by mistake; charges dropped," Victoria Advocate, July 15). The wrong Steven Rodriguez was arrested in front of his wife and four year old son for drug trafficking based on a warrant approved by a local Justice of the Peace. He was taken to jail and required to post bail (including $5,000 non-refundable to the bail bondsman) then lost his job after his name and his picture was disseminated to the media. It was three weeks before authorities figured out they'd picked up the wrong guy. Reported the Advocate's Sonny Long:

[Rodriguez's attorney George Filley III] said in a telephone conversation with DeWitt County Sheriff Jode Zavesky, the sheriff acknowledged that the investigation and arrest was an error and expressed regrets over the matter.

"The whole problem is Steven's drivers license was used to identify him, and that photo released to the news media," Filley said. "How in the world did that happen?"

Filley, who had 30 years experience in law enforcement and is also a former Victoria County district attorney, said part of the problem is that evidence is not reviewed thoroughly before a warrant is issued.

"In some of the outlying counties, the district and county attorneys do not review the complaints or applications for warrants before the warrant is issued," Filley said. "In this case, this is a direct filing. An officer swears out a complaint before a magistrate and based on what the officer swears to, the magistrate issues a warrant. That's frightening. That could be any one of us.

"It's never been reviewed by the prosecutor. Never been reviewed for sufficiency of evidence. That's how you can get into mistakes. In this particular case, it resulted in a terrible miscarriage on justice."

[Sheriff] Zavesky was apologetic.

"The DeWitt County Sheriff's Office deeply regrets the arrest of Mr. Rodriguez. There was a misidentification of Mr. Rodriguez during our investigation and as soon as we were made aware of the situation, all charges were dismissed. Actions have been taken to correct process and to assure that it does not happen again."

Another man named Steven Rodriguez continues to be sought in connection with the undercover investigation.

One wonders how often this occurs and how frequently authorities figure out the mistake? The same thing happened to a two separate defendants in the Dallas jail earlier this year and they were both released after a week or so. But one of the Dallas DNA exonerees, James Giles, was initially arrested because he had the same name as the actual suspect in a similar, Kafka-esque identity mix-up that cost him ten years in prison and another 14 as a registered sex offender before his name was cleared. Some of these identity mixups take a lot longer than one to three weeks to sort out.

There really is no such thing as a free lunch

Not in Lubbock, anyway. At least if you can't afford a commercial kitchen.

Indigent defense costs 50x higher for capital cases in Nueces County

The Corpus Christi Caller Times had an article over the weekend about the high cost of paying for indigent defense in capital murder cases ("Spotlight on Spending: Capital murder cases," July 17). The story opened:

It cost Nueces County 50 times more on average to pay for court-appointed attorneys in capital murder cases last year than other types of cases.

For the last fiscal year, the county paid about $119,000 to defense attorneys in five capital murder cases. That's an average of about $24,000 a case. Court appointments in other criminal cases cost the county an average of $480 a case that year.

But capital murder cases are rare compared with the thousands of other cases in which indigent defendants require court-appointed lawyers. Lawyers can be appointed in many situations including in criminal cases for adults and juveniles, mental health hearings, Child Protective Services cases, guardian and probate cases and appellate cases.

The sheer volume of those cases is what made up the bulk of the $3.9 million the county spent last year in appointed attorney fees.

The real secret behind Texas' economic boom: Drug trafficking

Brilliant observation, and true: What's the secret ingredient to Texas' much-ballyhooed job creation boom that you'll never hear from Rick Perry on the presidential campaign stump? Drug Trafficking, says Joe Tone at the Dallas Observer's Unfair Park blog, offering this quote first reported by Tina Rosenberg in New York magazine:

Jack Schumacher, a recently retired Texas-based DEA agent, says that at least half the drug shipments coming from Mexico stop and offload in Texas. The product is repackaged in small units and resold at a considerable markup, with a share of the gross staying in the state. Even some of the money that gets expatriated to Mexico winds up back in Texas, laundered through Mexican currency exchanges. The state's relative security is the draw. "If you have a few million," says Schumacher, "would you invest in a war zone or a bank in San Antonio?" The DEA warns that traffickers are cleaning up their proceeds by buying businesses in South Texas. They also spend on guns, warehouses, security guards--and on luxury cars and houses. "In San Antonio, a high-dollar trafficker can buy a $2 million or $3 million place and exist for a long time," he adds.

Further, adds Rosenberg:

Mexicans in Texas are hardly new, but in recent years it’s middle- and ­upper-class families in Mexico’s north who have also made the exodus, bringing their savings and businesses with them. While most seem to be fleeing the kidnapping and extortion back home, one observer has a different take: “Some people, including me, suspect that some of these people come with funds from the drug trade,” says Michael Lauderdale, a professor of criminal justice at the ­University of Texas.

After all, picking up your money on the Texas side means avoiding the border checkpoints and customs officials altogether. The US-side infrastructure of drug cartels is a subject that seems almost willfully ignored by policymakers and the media. The Texas Department of Public Safety has maintained for years that "command and control" of much so-called Mexican cartel activity is actually on the US side of the border, and so is much of their money. Not just cartels but also mid-level distributors set up front companies that lose money as a practical matter but serve as vehicles through which they can launder drug cash, making it a lot easier to distribute either back to Mexico or to other stakeholders in the US. This is happening today on a fairly widespread basis and it means a lot more marginal businesses stay afloat - how many, no one can tell - to perform what amount to retail-level money laundering functions.

Then there's just the fact that rich people spend more money, including Mexican cartel thugs and others getting rich from drug money. Tone adds that "Last week's drug bust demonstrated some of that on a smaller scale. Dealers in Fort Worth ran a body shop with the proceeds, owned several homes and dumped truckloads of cash into their local bank (in just-low-enough amounts not to attract suspicion). Dallas's kingpins kept multiple residences, rented a storage space and, presumably, shoveled down copious tacos after doing hand-to-hands in the Lupita's parking lot."

It requires almost nothing to create a legal business structure in Texas - pay $15 for a DBA at the county courthouse and you can open a bank account and start to make cash deposits. Apply for a federal tax ID number and you can put employees on the payroll. Setting up a corporation requires only slightly more paperwork. Multiply that process by hundreds or even thousands of businesses backed by billions in liquid cartel capital, and it's no wonder the state's economy looks so much better than the rest of the country's.

There's an ironic sense in which it's a good thing for Texas' economy that "winning" the drug war is a senselessly impossible task - at least banking solely on a prohibitionist law-enforcement strategy. If it were ever actually possible to eliminate the flow of illegal drugs, our state economy would be like the dog who caught the car - lucky if not dead, much-disfigured, and walking forward into the future with a permanent limp.

Police misconduct roundup: Speed traps, fish stories and contempt of cop

Here are a few news items related to police misconduct that caught Grits' attention recently:

Sheriff's Captain acquitted of property room theft, convicted on other gun charges
A former Cleveland Police Department officer and Liberty County Sheriff's Office captain was convicted and sentenced to a year in federal prison for, among other things, using his law enforcement credentials to purchase restricted equipment for a third-party buyer. However, reported the Houston Chronicle, "At the same time, the jury found there was insufficient evidence to convict [Captan Harry] Kelley of the most serious offenses they were considering — illegally selling more than a hundred weapons taken from the Cleveland police and sheriff's property rooms. Kelley had been a detective and custodian of the evidence room for Cleveland police until his supervisor there, Henry Patterson, was elected sheriff in 2009. Patterson hired Kelley and made him a captain and allowed him access to the property room there." I know no more about the case than was reported after the verdict, but one wonders: If this guy didn't take the guns from the property room, where did they go? OTOH, as the nation was reminded with the Casey Anthony verdict, not guilty can mean a lot of different things.

Lying cop causes drug cases to unravel
Reports the SA Express News, "A judge has thrown out the no-contest plea of a San Antonio man who alleged that a Bexar County sheriff's deputy lied to get a warrant for a raid that netted cocaine and marijuana." The charges "stemmed from a sworn search warrant obtained by Charles A. Flores, a deputy who has since been fired and is being prosecuted for allegedly lying to get a search warrant in an unrelated drug case.
Sierra's lawyer, Scott Sullivan, argued that Flores also lied to get the warrant in Sierra's case, and the District Attorney's Office agreed, Sullivan said."

What does it take to get fired from the Dallas PD?
Robert Wilonsky at the Dallas Observer looks at recent DPD dismissals to answer that question, and also reports on the arrest of a DPD officer for family violence.

Does public need to know basis for police chief's suspension?
Zavalla police chief Jim Hodges has been suspended with pay but city officials won't disclose why.

'Proof of nothing'
Jordan Smith at the Austin Chronicle examines the often fuzzy distinction between the charges of public intoxication and contempt of cop.

Jogger arrested for encouraging obedience to speed limit
Speaking of "contempt of cop," a jogger in El Paso was arrested for notifying drivers of a looming speed trap. Given that the functional reality of telling drivers there's a cop just over the hill is to make them obey the speed limit, it's hard to understand why police would be upset about that if it weren't for a "gotcha" mentality. The cop in the speed trap would rather people break the law because it justifies his paycheck. Like the tree falling in the forest which supposedly makes no sound, if a speed trap is set and no one is ticketed, does the cop involved really exist?

FBI was paying "big fish" cartel leaders ATF wanted to arrest
This line from the LA Times about Operation Fast and Furious - the undercover gun deal where the feds sold guns to Mexican cartels and made me laugh out loud: "The ATF and congressional investigators learned later that those agencies apparently were paying cartel members whom the ATF wanted to arrest." Ain't it a bitch when a federal law enforcement agency wants to arrest somebody and it turns out they're another agency's employee? They're supposed to be running these undercover operations through so-called "deconfliction" centers to avoid stepping on one another's toes like that, but this whole mess sounds like an episode of Reno 911! relocated to the border.

Trouble tracking heavy hitters in Dallas justice system

The feds have been looking into unspecified and possibly unrelated public corruption allegations involving Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price and Dallas DA Craig Watkins, according to various media reports. FBI agents from the public corruption unit visited the DA's offices this week, and Price was the subject of a recent search warrant seeking evidence related to alleged theft from programs receiving federal funds, a nonprofit with seemingly shady financial records, and other possible offenses. Reported the Dallas News:

The warrants [for Price], written by veteran FBI corruption-unit agent Don Sherman, address possible violations, including:

•  Theft or bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds.
• Attempt to evade paying taxes.
• Fraud and false statements.
• Structuring transactions to evade reporting requirements.
• Money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
• Engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity and conspiracy to commit the same crime.

The warrants also said agents are seeking computer data and other evidence dating back to 2001.

Supposedly investigators found more than $100,000 cash in Price's home, which his attorney insists can be explained. There's also been speculation the investigation could relate to Price's role as a power broker on the county bail bond board. Or to his serving as "handmaiden to the Perot family" in opposing a job creating inland port in his precinct. Without question the feds are investigating how it is the commissioner owns more than a dozen luxury/classic cars, many of which were acquired from inmates or otherwise obtained under under odd and questionable circumstances.

The investigation at Craig Watkins' office hasn't been nearly as high profile as that of Price, but the luster has clearly worn off the Dallas DA's rising star. Certainly the Dallas News won't be naming him "Texan of the Year" again (2008) anytime soon, and his days as a Golden Boy among Dallas pols clearly are now clearly behind him, largely for reasons of his own making. Most recently, before the FBI sent their public corruption unit to his offices last week, the former bail bondsman DA had come under fire for failing to collect up to $35 million owed to the county by bail bond companies whose clients never showed up for court. (The amount actually collectible may turn out much lower than that.) But a story today on the public portion of the Dallas News site relates a longer litany of complaints which have been simmering for the last several years, which I won't bother repeating since many of them have been aired on this blog. Watkins rarely appears in public these days, by all accounts, and has cut off contact completely with the Dallas News and most other media to the point that prosecutors are no longer allowed even to confirm the spelling of their names to reporters. Complicating matters, Watkins' top lieutenants all departed the office in recent weeks, an event  more or less coinciding with the oddball decision to stop communicating with the media.

Price is the point person on the commissioners court for the county jail and a heavy hitter in the bail bond business, while Watkins, obviously, is the county's top prosecutor, so these are two of the most important figures in the Dallas criminal justice system who both appear to be in for an awfully rough ride over the next couple of years.

A 'split-second decision' to be a sadistic jerk

Reports the Houston Chronicle, Houston police officer "Angela Horton, 36, wants the public to remember that police officers have to make split-second decisions in ever-changing and dangerous situations," according to a statement from her attorney. Fair enough. So what was the "split-second decision" made during an ever-changing, dangerous situation that she fears might be misinterpreted? Punching a handcuffed suspect who had already been subdued by other officers. Here's the video captured by a TV news crew:



This wasn't a split second decision and Officer Horton was in no danger whatsoever. There are absolutely instances where officers must make judgment calls regarding use of force in the spur of the moment that deserve the benefit of the doubt. There are also situations where officers behave like sadistic assholes, and Officer Horton has sullied the reputation of her colleagues by pretending that her penchant for the latter deserves the deference merited by the former.

MORE: From Simple Justice.

Facility closure fallout

A small Intermediate Sanctions Facility housed at the Liberty County Jail will close in September thanks to budget cutbacks at TDCJ, emphasizing the reality that a) few real cuts were made at the agency and b) those cuts the Lege did adopt reduced funding for probation and diversion programs. Grits has argued that diversion programs like ISFs should have been expanded with reductions coming from more expensive, long-term prison beds.

Meanwhile, closure of several TYC facilities means changes for those that remain. This article describes new kids and staffers arriving at the Corsicana State School from other, mothballed facilities around the state. "The staff members are moving from Crockett, Mart, Beaumont, Brownwood and Austin. The first new employees arrived Tuesday, and more will continue until about mid-August."

Victim rights, restorative justice and the death penalty

Jeff Gamso tells the story of a hate-crime victim who was shot in the face - the lone survivor from three shootings by the same white supremacist nutjob who was shooting middle easterners in retaliation for 9/11 - who is now seeking to engage in victim-offender mediation with the man who shot him. The hitch: He's scheduled to be executed next week, one of eight men scheduled to be killed by the state in the next couple of months.. So the victim, Rais Bhuiyan, has launched a campaign to have Mark Stroman's sentence commuted to life without parole. (See his website, including a petition to the Board of Pardons and Paroles.)

Texas created its victim-offender mediation program as an homage to restorative justice principles, but normally - because usually the victim is dead - death-row offenders don't participate in the program. That said, the mediation was created for the benefit of the victim, not the offender. It's supposed to provide closure, information, and an opportunity for forgiveness and healing. Should the victim of a terrible hate crime be denied that opportunity? On what grounds?

Writes Gamso: "Texas, of course, ... is deeply committed to ensuring the rights of crime victims. Their voices will be heard. Their needs will be met.  They will be offered support and comfort and help. As long as they seek vengeance. The rights of victims don't extend to seeking mercy." Ain't that the truth!

MORE: The Texas Tribune has a story on a lawsuit filed by Bhuiyan seeking to stop the execution. AND MORE: From Patti Hart at the Houston Chronicle.

Minority drivers in Austin searched more than twice as often as whites

Here's a notable excerpt from the latest annual report (pdf, pp. 20-22) from the Austin Police Monitor arguing that racial profiling at traffic stops isn't driven by officers choosing to pull over more drivers of a certain race, but rather what happens at the traffic stop after the officer has detained them:

In March of 2011, APD published its 2010 Racial Profiling report. In this report, APD stated that Blacks/African Americans were stopped 28,949 times; which is 12% of all traffic stops and, therefore, fairly in line with this group’s representation of the total Austin population. But, in that same report, it is noted that Blacks/African Americans were searched 4,356 times, or 22% of all searches. Based on the APD report, Blacks/African Americans were searched one out of every seven times a member of this group was stopped.

This same report shows that Hispanics/Latinos were stopped 68,327 times, or 29% of all traffic stops. This percentage of stops is actually slightly less than this group’s representation in the population (35%). Still, this group was searched 8,140 times, or 42% of all searches. Based on the APD report, Hispanics/Latinos were searched one out of every eight times a member of this group was stopped.

Caucasians (“White” in the table below) were stopped 127,661 times, or 55% of all traffic stops. This percentage of stops is actually slightly higher than this group’s representation in the population (50%). Caucasians were searched 6,724 times, or 34% of all searches. Based on the APD report, Caucasians were searched one out of every nineteen times a member of this group was stopped.

The APD has long held that it does not pull people over based on their race/ethnicity. This assertion holds true when looking at the data on stops. Despite this, the data does indicate that after the stop, a clear disparity emerges. This disparity is not who is being stopped nor in the number of stops, but rather what occurs after the stop. Blacks/ African Americans are almost three times (2.71) as likely as a Caucasian to be searched while Hispanics/Latinos are over twice as likely (2.37) as a Caucasian to be searched.

APD calls the finding of some form of contraband a “hit.” Again, looking at APD’s 2010 Racial Profiling Report, it can be seen that searches of Caucasians yielded a hit in 27% of searches. For Blacks/African Americans, the hit rate was 32% despite being searched almost three times as often as Caucasians. The hit rate for Hispanics/Latinos was 28% despite being searched over twice as often as Caucasians. Even with the disparity in search rates, there is actually a slight difference in the amount of contraband found as a result of a search.

These numbers clearly show that searching Blacks/African Americans and Hispanics/Latinos more often does not yield a significantly higher hit rate; therefore, the practice seems futile and calls any justification of it into question.

That's a remarkable disparity, and to think it was even worse before Austin PD began requiring written consent at traffic stops. Even after that reform, Hispanics and blacks are still searched at traffic stops in Austin one out of seven and eight times, respectively, compared to one in 19 times for white folks. Given there's no significant difference in the "hit rate" for finding contraband, those ratios are difficult to explain away with a race-neutral interpretation. Can you think of one, or is this a case of systemic discrimination?

See prior, related Grits coverage:

• Time to implement written consent at traffic stop searches
• Dutton: Require written or recorded searches at traffic stops
• Written consent protects Texans' rights and prosecutors cases
• House vote count on written consent
• 'Strange coalition' backs SB 1195
• NYPD to require written consent for traffic and home searches
• Searching for consent at Texas traffic stops
• Don't mind if I take a look, do ya?
• Police oversearching not all about race
• Austin drivers refuse searches when they know they can
• How often do drivers refuse consent searches?

Tragic accident should spur evaluation of police pursuit, speeding policies

Yikes! Reports Matt Ledesma at the Wichita Falls Times Record News, "a Wichita Falls police officer was driving nearly twice the posted speed limit before a wreck that killed two teenagers June 30." Further, "The report indicates [Officer Teddy] Whitefield made no attempt to brake or avoid hitting the victims' Pontiac Grand Am." And "Sgt. Joe Snyder, police spokesman, said in the days following the wreck he did not believe Whitefield was responding to a police call at the time of the wreck. Whitefield, 29, a six-year veteran with the department, was still recovering Thursday from an arm injury suffered in the collision."

According to a preliminary report (pdf) on the incident obtained by the Times Record News under the Public Information Act, "Evidence at the scene also showed that the driver of (the police car) took no evasive action when a reasonable person would have." The driver of the other vehicle - an 18-year old pregnant girl with a 13 year old passenger - didn't have a driver's license, but it sounds like she's not the one who caused the accident.

Wichita Falls ain't that big a town. Like it or not, this heartbreaking accident will haunt the department and  help shape the public's opinion of WFPD officers for a decade or more. Town officials should ask themselves, when the episode is over, how will residents think about the city's response? Will they remember the chief or even the mayor blaming the dead girls, or will they remember officials who took responsibility and did everything in their power to make sure something like this never happens again? You don't get a second chance at a first impression and how officials respond in the next few weeks will shape how the public thinks about this tragedy for years to come.

As such, if I were the Wichita Falls police chief I'd be scrubbing departmental policies and penalties on dangerous driving and upgrading them if they aren't already strong enough to forcefully discipline the officer in this instance. For starters, WFPD needs to create or enforce, as the case may be, a policy that all officers wear seatbelts. Neither Officer Whitefield or the deceased teenagers were wearing them, the paper reported. And we know this is a common contributor to officer deaths.

What's more, especially if Officer Whitefield wasn't in pursuit but even if he was, there should be policies in place limiting speed, disobedience of signage, etc., to situations where it's objectively safe to do so. There are plenty of examples from other departments which have confronted the same issues if WFPD decided to improve theirs.

Should the officer be fired? I'm interested in readers' views. I don't myself have a strong opinion either way without a lot more facts than were presented in this article. But it's sure a horrifying tragedy and a cautionary tale for other agencies which may not have modernized their policies on high-speed chases and officers' responsibility to safely operate city vehicles.

'Borderline Paranoia': Did visions of 'spillover' cause pointless border shooting?

Grits has argued repeatedly that, despite the raging cartel wars south of the Rio Grande, the concept of "spillover" violence into the United States fundamentally misunderstands what's happening at the border. Yes, there have been examples of drug loads dumped into the river following high-speed chases, and even one or two shootouts across the river as US law enforcement pursues escaping smugglers. But as a practical matter, the real "spillover" violence almost all happens in the other direction, with US gangs crossing the river into Mexcio to work as hit men in the cartel wars, murdering hundreds if not thousands in Juarez and elsewhere.

By contrast, towns on the US side of the border - particularly El Paso, sister city to the site of Mexico's worst cartel-related blood bath - ironically boast among the lowest crime rates in the state and are far safer places to live as a practical matter than, say, Houston or Dallas. That could just be because cartel leaders are smart enough not to s%*t where they sleep: According to Steve McCraw, head of DPS and formerly the Governor's top homeland security adviser, "command and control" of feuding Mexican gangs for the most part operates on the American side of the border.

At the Texas Observer, though, Melissa del Bosque describes another type of "spillover" that crime stats don't account for ("Borderline Paranoia," July 13): The spillover of irrational paranoia that's come to surround right-wing nativist thinking about immigration and border security. Her recent blog post opened:

It was an early morning in mid-May. Norberto Velez, 55, and his son Norangel, 32, were driving through ranchland in far West Texas. They were looking for a piece of property to buy near the U.S.-Mexico border in remote Hudspeth County.

The Velezes made a wrong turn onto a road  that apparently led to private land, and were met by an armed, 52-year old rancher named Joseph Denton who yelled, “Get down. Get down! I’m going to kill you!” Denton then quickly fired a rifle several times, Norangel Velez told El Paso’s KTSM-TV after the incident. “He never said freeze, he never gave us a warning, he never came out in front of us and say what we’re doing here, just boom, boom, boom,” Norangel said. Norangel was shot once. His father, Norberto, jumped on top of his son to absorb the brunt of the gunfire. The older man suffered three gunshot wounds.

The shooter has yet to publicly explain his actions, but the victim thinks they were mistaken for illegal immigrants, though "I’ve lived here all my life,” he told a local TV station. Del Bosque concludes:

The shooting comes amid growing panic in the area about “spillover violence.” Nearby El Paso was recently named the safest city of its size in the nation. Hudspeth County has seen only one murder in recent years. Yet Sheriff West has advised ranchers in the area to arm themselves in case of spillover from the drug war raging just across the border. “You farmers, I’m telling you right now: Arm yourselves,” he said during a crowded town hall meeting last year. “It’s better to be tried by 12 than carried by six, and I don’t want to see six people carrying you.” Denton may have just tested that frontier wisdom.

It's terribly sad and ironic that the main "spillover" violence seen in Texas so far results from Americans shooting Americans. And nobody seems to care about the real spillover violence from US citizens committing violence in Mexico. Stopping that should be the Number One US law enforcement priority from the local to federal levels, but giving preference to that strategy would run counter to the politically convenient if tactically simplistic "spillover" myth, which holds that we only need worry when the killing crosses the Rio Grande and that Mexican violence has nothing to do with Americans. As yet, nobody in officialdom seems willing to buck that false, counterproductive narrative. (Grits believes that providing more on-the-ground detail on the drug war would protect journalists, who are among the main American "spillover" targets to date, but that idea has yet to catch on.) Eventually politicians and their MSM enablers must move beyond culture war rhetoric and confront the grim, messy realities of border corruption and violence, at least if they want to do something about the problem instead of just grandstand and demagogue about it. Despite the massive deployment of security personnel along the border, it's not entirely clear to me that's the case.

Travis County fails to report more than half of cases to state criminal database

For reasons I've never understood, Travis County perennially has a terrible time accurately uploading crime information into the state database. Tony Plohetski at the Austin Statesman reports that in 2009, less than half of crimes were recorded, and that's actually an improvement from recent years. (In 2005 and 2006, just 16% of cases were uploaded into the state system.) Plohetski reports that:

Travis County officials said they have long been aware of the problem, which has persisted for years. They blame a mix of clerical errors and chronic technical glitches within the county and said it also is likely that many of the county's criminal cases have not yet been resolved, making it impossible to report final outcomes to the state.

Yet another reason for the county's dismal compliance appears to be that no single elected official or county office is responsible for entering information or ensuring that it makes it into the state database. The task is splintered among clerks and prosecutors, meaning no single person has sole oversight of making sure the system works.

"We are very close to having this solved," said Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir, who is one of several county officials responsible for the effort and whose office must submit the final outcome of misdemeanor cases. "We want to get this information to them. We don't want to be a problem child."

Yet despite the passage of time and prodding from the Legislature, the Texas Department of Public Safety, which administers the database, said Travis County remains among the state's lowest-ranked in keeping the database current with essential criminal information. Not only does it lag behind the state's other major counties, it also underperforms some of the state's most rural areas, where technology is often less advanced.

With respect, Dana DeBeauvoir has been saying this problem is nearly fixed as long as Grits has been aware of it, which is now many years. As evidenced by this chart, Travis County still has the lowest completion rate among large jurisdictions:

It's not just that crimes committed might not be recorded. The flip side is that when criminal cases are filed, dismissals or acquittals might not later be updated in the system, leading to unjustly imposing collateral consequences or even causing false arrests. Retarded and/or incomplete data entry causes problems across the board.

Bottom line: Nobody in Travis County has made this a true priority and since there are no real consequences to not reporting, Travis simply wallows in failure instead of improving its performance. For that matter, it's astonishing that other large counties besides Harris fail to report 24-35% of their cases. By comparison to Travis they look pretty good, but that's damning with faint praise.

See related Grits posts:

• Travis among worst in state at updating crime data
• DPS crime database too shoddy for thorough background checks
• Dallas County data entry errors could lead to more wrongful arrests like Walter Rothgery's
• Failure to update state crime database affects employment options for the unconvicted
• Improper access to Texas criminal records common, unchecked

Dallas County may never see $35 million owed by bail bond companies

The Dallas News has been covering the local bail bond industry lately, honing in on tens of millions in unpaid judgments owed to the county that bail bondsmen never paid and possibly never will. An editorial this week ("Dallas County still lacks answers in bail bond debacle," July 12) opened:

Questions about the $35 million in uncollected judgments racked up by local bail bondsmen continue to stump Dallas County officials.

How much of that money is actually owed by attorneys who write bonds? The county can’t say.
How much of that sum is collectible? That seems to be a moving target.

Who owes what? The county will have to get back to you on that.

Of course, the $35 million question is: How did Dallas County get in this mess? That’s followed closely by: And how will this be fixed?

Incredibly, beyond disclosing the staggering sum of $35 million that the county has failed to collect, officials have few answers about this money or the people who should have paid up.

A Dallas Morning News investigation reveals that a haphazard approach to tracking bond forfeitures, coupled with an antiquated computer system, has allowed millions to go uncollected.

Part of the problem traces back to bail bond companies that failed to pay judgments when criminal suspects they’ve gotten out of jail did not show up for court.

Some of this is owed by attorneys, but most of it is attributable to regular ol' bail bond companies. The county may hire a law firm (taking a 25% cut) to collect the debt, but many people think the bulk of the amount owed cannot be collected, for a variety of reasons. Much of the fault lies with the obscure board tasked with oversight of bail bond practices, said another News editorial:

The county’s bail bond board hasn’t sought or received regular reports detailing collections, outstanding bonds or other relevant information. And while the board has the power to yank a company’s license when it fails to pay, that hasn’t happened even once in recent memory — perhaps because board members haven’t been alerted to delinquencies.

Incredibly, no one person or department within the county bureaucracy has been tasked with tracking this high-dollar function.

There's also an issue of attorneys who can themselves issue bail bonds for their clients but who in practice are relatively unaccountable.

These stories by the Dallas News are not just important for Big D, they can and should be replicated by media in other jurisdictions and I'll bet reporters who did so would find similar results. The arguments against more aggressive use of personal bonds become weaker if it turns out bail bondsmen often don't pay up after their clients skip. If other jurisdictions show similarly poor payment performance on defaulted bail bonds, that could change the terms of debate significantly among judges and county officials regarding best practices for pretrial release.

Cold case solved in Houston via testing rape kit from HPD backlog

The Houston Chronicle has a story today ("Evidence in teen's 1995 rape leads to new charges," July 13) about a cold rape kase solved by testing a previously untested rape kit among the sizable backlog possessed by the county, making may people wonder if other rapists may have avoided prosecution because of the backlog, which stretches back literally for decades. The article by Anita Hassan opens:

In August 1995, a 16-year-old Houston girl was awakened in the middle of the night by a strange man standing in her bedroom doorway.

He walked over and put a pillow over her head. As she wept, he raped her, ordering her not to make a sound or he would kill her. Then he stole some money and left.

After calling police, the teen underwent a sexual assault examination. That rape kit evidence was placed in the Houston Police Department property room — and that's where it sat, untested for 12 years.

Last month, after a Houston Police Department investigator re-examined the case and requested the evidence be tested, the identity of the alleged rapist was uncovered: Roland Ali Westbrooks, 36, convicted and sentenced in 1997 for raping another Houston woman.

Westbrooks, serving a 28-year sentence in a Texas prison after pleading guilty to the 1997 rape charge, was charged Monday with aggravated sexual assault of the 16-year-old, according to court records.

This is the first such case to come to light since the Houston Chronicle reported last month that almost 4,000 sexual assault kits — some dating to the 1990s — sit in an HPD property room freezer awaiting testing.

HPD crime lab officials have said the slow process in testing the evidence is due to a lack of resources. In the past, HPD officials have declined to comment how the evidence is being processed by their crime lab personnel in cases that are considered to be active investigations.

State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, on Tuesday said the Westbrooks case is an example of how the backlog of untested evidence by HPD's crime lab can and has delayed justice for rape victims.

"What if they (HPD) had done their proper test in 1995?" said Whitmire, who has spoken on the issues concerning untested sexual assault evidence for years. "Maybe the 1995 (case) would have been solved in a timely manner and the 1997 (case) would have never occurred."

After HPD submitted the sample for testing to the Department of Public Safety, it took nine months for a DPS crime lab to get around to testing it. That really is too long and speaks to a general lack of capacity and an overwhelmed crime lab system.

Sen. Whitmire said at the end of the article that "There may be thousands of other scenarios like this one," but that may be overstating things. According to testimony give to support a bill last session by state Sen. Wendy Davis that encourages testing rape kit backlogs, when Tarrant County tested their entire backlog they identified five serial rapists by matching the results to CODIS. All the others were inconclusive or didn't  result in a match. According to the Texas Observer, "the state estimates some 22,000 untested kits are collecting dust on shelves in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio law enforcement offices alone." My own belief is that a thorough vetting of those cases would reveal additional innocent people falsely convicted as well as guilty people never identified.

There are several separate but related dynamics at play right now concerning untested rape kits in Texas. For starters, Sen. Royce West's SB 1616 will require new rules to be established at DPS about biological evidence retention, storage, etc., that will apply to counties with populations of 100,000 or greater beginning January 2013. Simultaneously, Sen. Wendy Davis' SB 1636 encourages DNA testing of backlogged rape kits and requires law enforcement agencies by October 15 to "submit to DPS a list of the agency's active criminal cases for which sexual assault evidence has not yet been submitted for laboratory analysis." Meanwhile, in Houston their much berated crime lab has received a grant to analyze their rape kit backlog to determine why those particular cases were never tested and to recommend criteria for how to determine whether testing is needed. In just a couple of years, we'll know a lot more about rape kit backlogs and will have new rules in place governing biological evidence preservation in larger jurisdictions.

So we're in an incredibly dynamic period in Texas regarding retention and testing of biological evidence, with a lot of folks presently thinking about the problem. But most suggested solutions require money nobody immediately has to hand. This cold case solved in Houston is a fine thing, but for that outcome to be replicated, testing old rape kits will need to become a greater priority that supersedes competing demands. At least until 2013 when the Lege meets again and likely not even then, state general fund revenue won't be available to tackle rape kit backlogs, leaving grants from the Governor or the feds, or else local expenditures, as the only way to address the situation in the near term.

See related Grits posts:

• Bills encourage testing, proper retention of rape kits and other biological evidence
• The DNA's over there, right next to the jelly
• Bill would probe rate kit backlogs, encourage testing
• Senate bills encourage retention, testing of old rape kits, DNA evidence
• Houston gets DOJ grant to analyze why rape kits went untested
• Backlog of DNA cases complicates Houston crime lab's bias problems
• Large backlogs for DPS forensics testing
• Unanalyzed evidence held by law enforcement agencies
• Test possible innocence cases among Bexar DNA cache
• Reducing forensic backlogs a source of rare agreement at hearing
• Security theater vs. crime fighting reality in an era of tight budgets
• Pilot collaboration on DNA testing could presage regional Harris County crime lab

Prosecutors: Texas law would have offered lots of non-capital murder options for charging Casey Anthony

Texas state Sen. Chris Harris has said he'll file legislation to enact "Caylee's Law," which would make it a felony for a parent not to report their missing child, a proposal being pushed via a petition launched on Change.org, an ostensibly liberal outfit which has latched onto the Casey Anthoney case as a list building tool and been heavily promoting the "Caylee's Law" petition, which has garnered more than a million online signatures (the group's main business is selling access to emails they compile through petitions such as this one).

But the truth is there are plenty of things Anthony could have been charged with already under Texas state law if the crime had occurred here. Instead, in the Anthony case prosecutors thought it more important to grab headlines and "send a message" by charging things they couldn't prove in court instead of settling for convictions for crimes a jury might accept. Let's assume for a moment, along with the rest of the country, that Casey Anthony really is guilty of something. Sans concrete evidence of capital murder, the question is guilty of what?

Over at the Texas District and County Attorneys Association' user forum, Williamson County DA John Bradley asked his fellow prosecutors: "So, let's say you have the Casey Anthony case. And, since you have visionary powers, you already know that a capital murder charge will not get a conviction. What would you charge under Texas law? Be creative." A prosecutor wrting under the handle "LH" replied:

I haven't figured out why they charged capital murder to begin with. That's an awfully high bar to reach in a child homicide case. It's an interesting dynamic that I've seen happen several times over the years in child abuse cases--some jurors just don't want to believe that any parent would INTENTIONALLY kill their own child.

Under Texas law I would have probably charged Injury to a Child and alleged all 4 culpable mental states. Abandoning or Endangering a Child under P.C. 22.041 would also be a consideration. 2nd Degree Tampering With Evidence under P.C. 37.09 might also fit based upon the disposition of the body.

Another prosecutor, frequent TDCAA user forum commenter Martin Peterson, opined that:

One with visionary power should certainly be capable of creativity. Since the Anthony indictment never even identified the manner of death involved, it seems basically a foregone conclusion that proving Casey acted "from a premeditated design to effect the death of Caylee" was likely doomed to failure. To me, proof of intent to kill under Texas law might have been a bit easier, but still no piece of cake, without a more precise theory than "suffocation somewhere, somehow." The second allegation, "did knowingly or willfully cause" serious bodily injury seems more reasonable, but even alleging willfully would likely just cause confusion and you still need a manner of death or good idea about the nature of the conduct. The third theory: "did by culpable negligence fail or omit to provide with the care, supervision and services necessary to maintain health," seems difficult to prove also, when you cannot identify what was necessary.

I know it is possible to prove culpability even without proof of exactly how someone died or was killed. But, frankly, I am not sure how you say proof of recklessness is any easier than knowingly when the nature of the conduct remains a mystery. But, I somehow think it would be harder to defend against a reckless allegation. So, my vote would be for manslaughter, or to make it more case specific, reckless injury to a child. Tampering with evidence would be a worthwhile choice if you gave up on proving who or what caused the death.

Judging from these comments from Lone Star prosecutors, Texas law doesn't really need any new crimes created to cover situations like Caylee Anthony's, despite Sen. Harris' good intentions. Prosecutors just need to make smarter charging decisions than their counterparts in Florida and avoid pandering to the media, overreaching to allege crimes they cannot sufficiently prove.

Roundup: The Brain on Trial, and other stories

Here are several items I noticed this week that may interest Grits readers:

• Bob Libal: "Secure Communities makes our community less safe." See more on the subject from the Texas Observer.
• Paul Ruffins, "Freeing the Unjustly Imprisoned" who argues that "students of the Innocence Project (IP) ... [have] a strong claim to be the most successful example of student activism since the Civil Rights Movement."
• David Eaglema, "The Brain on Trial."
• Here are several interesting stories on possible international fallout from last week's execution of murderer/rapist Humberto Leal, which the UN and others say violated international law; Governor Perry played a pivotal role, which some have attributed to political motives.
• From the "You knew this was coming" department, Texas state Sen. Chris Harris has said he'll file legislation to enact "Caylee's Law," which would make it a felony for a parent not to report their missing child.
• Finally, Steve Blow at the Dallas News poses this provocative question about parole decisions to close out a column (behind the paywall):

Why should crime victims be so involved in this process at all?

What about those victims who don’t mount a campaign because it’s simply too painful? Or because they’re too overwhelmed trying to scratch out a living? Or because they prefer to forgive and forget?
Should their perpetrators get a pass to earlier parole?

On the other hand, should a massive letter-writing campaign automatically mean more time for the perpetrator? And should 100 letters translate into more prison time than 10 letters?

These just don’t seem like useful factors in deciding when someone is ready to be released from prison.
We might wish there were no parole at all. I get that. But the economic reality is that we can’t build enough prisons to hold inmates for entire sentences. And on a practical level, parole motivates prisoners to behave, maybe even to improve themselves while behind bars.

I say let’s give crime victims the chance to write one letter expressing their desires about parole. Put it in the file and leave it there. If their feelings change, they can write again.

But crime victims shouldn’t have to mount repeated anti-parole campaigns. They shouldn’t feel it’s on their shoulders to keep perpetrators behind bars.

Being a crime victim shouldn’t be a job.

TDCJ statistics snapshot

How much of an inmate's sentence will they serve before release? In FY 2010, on average prisoners released from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice had served 58.3% of their sentences, down slightly from 60% in 2006. A story in the Wichita Falls Times Record News ("Many inmates don't finish time," July 11) interprets these and other data from this 2010 TDCJ Statistical Report (pdf), which has been a source for prior Grits posts. Tidbits pulled from the report include:

The most common sentence was three to five years in prison, with more than 16,000 new entrants sentenced to that.

During the 2010 fiscal year in Texas, 247 people were sentenced to life, 85 to life without parole and seven received the death penalty.

One caveat to the story: TRN reporter Ken Fibbe misstated the average sentence served. While it's true that "the average sentenced length was 19.2 years for all inmates," that includes inmates kept for very long sentences. The 58.3% is the amount of time served by the cohort released in 2010. Of those prisoners, their average sentence length was 8.2 years and the average time served was 4.3 years. Looking further through the document, I thought it worthwhile to mention several other interesting tidbits that jumped out.

A sizable 21.6% of the active parole population (>17,500) has been under supervision five or more years.

Texas' probation population has trended slightly downward in recent years, with 419,920 under supervision in FY 2010, down from 430,840 in 2006. Of FY 2010 probationers, 247,102 were under felony supervision, with 172,818 misdemeanor probationers.

Violent offenders made up 51.2% of TDCJ prisoners onhand, but just 20% of prisoners released in FY 2010. By contrast, drug offenders made up 17.8% of prisoners onhand but 32.6% of all releases. Similarly, property offenders accounted for 16.6% of prisoners onhand but 28.5% of FY2010 releases. Hence the state is releasing drug and property offenders at higher rates in order to keep violent offenders locked up longer, which to be fair is probably what most folks want them to do.

Here are the 10 Texas counties with the most prisoners onhand in TDCJ at the end of FY 2010, accounting for 56% of all prisoners:

1. Harris: 28,995
2. Dallas: 18,205
   
3. Tarrant: 10,911
4. Bexar: 9,958
5. Travis: 5,177
6. Hidalgo: 3,173
7. McLennan: 2,569
8. Jefferson: 2,551
   
9. Lubbock: 2,530
10. El Paso: 2,419

Overall, TDCJ released slightly more prisoners in FY 2010 than it took in. Total "receives and admissions," i.e, inflow: 73,596. Total "releases and departures" (outflow): 73,842.

One 'root cause' of El Paso crime lab woes: 'analyst's significantly flawed deductive reasoning capabilities'

The report from ASCLD/LAB, the national accrediting body, which caused the El Paso PD crime lab narcotics division to be placed on probation is available here (pdf). In particular, the group complained of incompetent analysts; inadequate supervision; overstating the thoroughness of testing; failure to follow their own laboratory policies; failure to base laboratory procedures on known standards; inadequate intensity on their mass spectrometer; failure to document testing/calibration of instruments; improper access to the lab by police officers and other department personnel; and failing to require a written test to determine labworker competency.

Apparently at least one labworker simply wasn't competent to work there. "Flawed analytical deduction" by one of the lab's employees was declared a "root cause" for some incorrect results. Ouch! The report doesn't name names, but that's gotta make for some harsh gossip around the water cooler. Indeed, according to ASCLD/LAB, "The root cause for this [deficiency] was clearly the analyst's significantly flawed deductive reasoning capabilities. Furthermore, corrective action taken by laboratory management to address the flawed proficiency did not include suspension from performing casework, retraining or competency testing." Translated from bureaucrat-speak, that means one of the labworkers was blatantly incompetent and nobody at the police department took sufficient "corrective action" before the accrediting body called them out. Tough stuff.

Don't be surprised to see El Paso defense attorneys figure out in short order which labworker the report is referencing and potentially demand retesting in many if not all of his or her old cases. What a mess!

RELATED: El Paso PD drug lab put on probation by accrediting agency.