Open Records Next Step On Dogwood Trails Task Force

Some days it's hard to have faith in public servants. The Anderson County District Attorney promised to send requested information about the 72 people arrested in a rural East Texas county, but it never came. So I'm filing a request under the Texas Public Information Act to demand the material.

I was told by the Anderson County District Clerk that these documents were all still “sealed,” and that I must get them from the DA’s office. DA Doug Lowe referred me to an employee who he said would help us. That DA’s employee verbally promised to copy the indictments and mail them to an address I provided. (He pled a lack of labor resources to copy them immediately.) The DA’s office did not send that material as promised.

The same employee said Dogwood Trails Task Force Commander Curtis Bitz had all the other information I requested, and only he could release it, but Bitz refused to supply that information when contacted by a reporter from The Texas Observer.

Since activists elsewhere may find the open records tactic useful in investigating drug war abuses, I thought I'd let folks know for what I'm asking.

From the District Attorney/District Clerk, I'm requesting copies of all the indictments, search warrant probable cause affidavits, arrest warrant probable cause affidavits, and court documents related to asset forfeiture claims by the county. These are the basic documents any investigative reporter would start with to pursue the story. In particular, search warrant affidavits are often the best source of information about such cases before they go to trial, because to get a judge to issue a warrant prosecutors must reveal a certain amount of detail about the investigation. In Texas, arrest warrantscannot be sealed after execution -- we don't have sneak and peek searches here -- so it was improper for the DA and District Clerk to withhold them from me (link is to a bill passed in 2003) .

From the Dogwood Trails Narcotics Task Force, I'm requesting the "case log books," where the task force chronologically records details of each bust. These case log books were used by former Texas Observer editor Nate Blakeslee to document racial profiling by the Chambers County Narcotics Task Force north of Houston. Since that time, several members of the task force have been indicted. The Texas Attorney General has ruled these case log books are public records, and they provide the best way to document patterns of racial targeting and irregularities in task force drug investigations.

Obviously, I'll let readers know what we find.

Grumpy about local elections Part 2

The fiasco over Austin's local voting machines just makes me sick.

The machines are unaccountable because they don't have verifiable paper ballots. County clerk Dana DeBeauvoir says systems are in place to audit votes, but the problem is that if the electronic information gets put in wrong, all the audits are self confirming. It's like hitting refresh on an Excel spreadsheet without changing any of the numbers. The totals all come out the same.

Worse, DeBeauvoir has known this for many, MANY months thanks to the Texas Safe Voting Coalition and the Cyberliberties Project of the ACLU of Texas. She bitterly fought efforts to fix the problem before the vote. Now that it's too late to fix, DeBeauvoir has acknowledged the system "isn't perfect," a dramatic understatement, and says she'll look at it again after the election. Well, goody for her. It must be nice to get to knowingly behave irresponsibly and then claim credit for mildly acknowledging error after the fact.

Worse, it now turns out the new systems have user interface problems as well. In essence, the "e-slate" machines have the same problem as the "butterfly ballots" that caused all the trouble in November 2000 Palm Beach, Flordia: People who thought they were voting straight ballot Democrat have accidentally voted for Bush.

Given the unaccountable system and predictable user interface problems (didn't anybody run any test voting on the damn things?), these machines should never have been purchased, much less used in the most important election in living memory. But the Democratic Party hopes to deflect criticism from DeBeauvoir, claiming that the source of the problem isn't the machines but human error. That's completely moronic. The little old ladies in Palm Beach made errors too -- after all, the butterfly ballots COULD be filled out correctly. But when 300 people got it wrong it changed the outcome of the election.

(So far everyone who reported the problem caught the error before they voted, but of course some people inevitably won't catch it, and in that case, like the little old ladies in Palm Beach, they would never know to complain till it was too late.)

With close local races for the statehouse in play, this mess could easily change vote outcomes.

DeBeauvoir's failure to ensure the integrity of Austin's elections should earn her ouster. She had a chance to fix this before it became a problem. Her hubris has brought us to this unhappy place.

Grumpy about local elections Part 1

I'm growing increasingly grumpy about our local Austin elections. For starters, the Capital Metro referendum on so-called "commuter rail" counts as another crappy, ridiculous boondoggle. As always, it's shoved down the community's throat by saying we have no choice or the reactionaries will keep us from having ANY public transportation at all.

That's our "green" city council's standard modus operandi on nearly everything. We have to sell out control of the public hospital to the Catholic church or we'll have to raise taxes. We have to subsidize sprawl and build roads over the aquifer or they'll sue under novel legal theories and make us do it. Basically, we can't have a backbone or someone might break it.

I remember Danny Dollinger at the famous June 7, 1990 Barton Springs uprising criticizing the untenable position city council let special interests put us in. He said he had a dream where Jim Bob Moffett threatened a golden-cheeked warbler (a local endangered species for you non-Austinites) , declaring, "Let me pee in the pool or I'll kill the bird." That's the kind of choice we get on every major local issue.

Why do city officials always agree to do something bad to keep something worse from happening? Just for once, why can't Austin local government do something because it'd be a good thing to do and the community supports it?

Sometimes these threats and supposed dangers are outright ridiculous: We have to gut civilian oversight of police or the union won't agree to accept pay hikes we promised them in exchange for campaign support!!! Well, who gives a shit?!

This go-round we're being asked to accept a public transportation system that goes nowhere near any major destinations or employers, but we're told that if it's not approved we'll never get public transport at all. That's no damn choice -- transportation nobody will use, or nothing.

I'm one of the few Austinites who actually lives within a few blocks of a proposed stop, but for the life of me I can't find anywhere on the proposed map I'd like to go.

Kerry's lame and I'm voting for him, but that's the only half a loaf I'm accepting this election cycle. I'm voting no on the Capital Metro referendum.

Lethal "non-lethal" weapons must go

Couldn't agree more with comments from The Fat Guy about the Boston PD's deadly use of pepper spray "pellets" -- WTF! This "non-lethal" weapon killed a woman when police tried to disburse a jubilant crowd after the final Red Sox victory over the Yankees last week. Ironically, though some revelers were breaking windows and engaging in post-victory vandalism, by all accounts the dead woman was not.

I'll give them this: Boston police took responsibility and are replacing the weapons with lower velocity versions. That would never happen in Texas.

Crazy, drunk AR task force cop prompts ACLU lawsuit

ACLU of Arkansas sued after White County Deputy Sheriff Britt Simpson, a local drug task force member, shouted racial slurs at several black people in a drunken fit.

KATV News reported, "A Searcy police officer accused Simpson of stealing a Brinkley officer's gun and threatening black men with it and using racial slurs. The state ACLU said it has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Simpson." The White County Sheriff is up for re-election, and the incident has become a campaign issue.

Siva V on copyrights and wrongs

An old pal from UT who I knew from working together at The Daily Texan, Siva Vaidhyanathan gave an interesting interview on the Internet copyright wars, a subject about which he's published two books.

I'm pretty much 100% with Siva on the broad outlines of this subject, but I must say I found his points about polarization of debate over P2P file sharing a bit wrong-headed. He complains of "rabid rhetoric" by consumers and "extreme moves" by the big corporations, but to me, he paints a false picture to equate the two and call for "middle ground." In Siva's words, "To both the big music companies and my students, we are talking about fundamental values: commerce vs. freedom. Neither side concedes the slightest point to the other."

In the introduction, though, interviewer R.U. Sirius pointed out that downloaders are up for a reasonable compromise. Sirius noted, "the 'free music' debate has been rendered at least partly moot for one individual: me. It may sound terribly unhip, but I’m getting more satisfaction from a certain subscription music site than I have ever received while navigating the vagaries of the chaotic file-sharing universe. This is, of course, the point that file sharers have been making forever — that if the music industry would just get its shit together and offer better services at a reasonable price, they wouldn’t need to go stomping all over the p2p (peer-to-peer) crowd."

The examples given in the interview for this alleged polarization belie the equation of "extremes" Siva alleges. The link giving an example of "extreme moves" by corporations references efforts by a powerful industry lobbyist pushing for radical legislation in Congress. The link portraying "rabid rhetoric" leads to a post in the comments section of a blog by "Toiletman" commanding readers to "Fuck the RIAA." It doesn't take a social scientist or cultural historian to see there's a fundamental distinction between the two -- the corporate lobbyist has a decent shot of getting what he wants, while Toiletman, however over-the-top his rhetoric, couldn't influence Congress to pass gas.

Sirius' attitude expressed above conforms more to my own experience -- most Internet users aren't unreasonable or looking to "steal." We're just tired of being stolen from, and what's being stolen is our First Amendment right to free expression. In the big picture, Siva agrees, as indicated by such insightful comments as "Copyright is the most pervasive threat to free speech in America." Who owns those copyrights, though? It ain't Toiletman.

What's really happening on this topic is that corporations are rolling over us all, with most folks having little or no real recourse to combat them. The "rabid rhetoric" expresses frustration at powerlessness. The "extreme moves" are mere expressions of the prerogatives of power. In that context, "middle ground" just means whatever concessions can be wrung out of the big companies -- I'm not even sure what it would mean for consumers to seek middle ground, since right now they're afforded no turf at all.

Thankfully Siva and a lot of other good folks are working hard to protect the rights of consumers against these media giants, however one frames the debate. Check out his latest book, The Anarchist in the Library, if what you see in the interview interests you.

Texarkana Sheriff candidates differ on drugs

One of my deepest frustrations with drug policy is that the terms of public debate are circumscribed to remove most solutions from the table before discussion even begins. The terms of debate are changing, though, and in Texas we're starting to have discussions about whether the criminal justice system can resolve the state's drug problems, really, for the first time.

The two candidates for Bowie County sheriff in Texarkana typify these slowly shifting terms of debate, offering quite different approaches to the drug war in Thursday's Texarkana Gazette.

The Republican challenger Mike Landers, presently works as deputy sheriff and DARE officer in the department. He appears to view law enforcement as essentially an opportunity for generating revenue, as though it were a business. He proposes restarting the county's defunct drug task force "to enhance revenues by taking drug money from dealers," and he wants to use a county corrections facility to house out of state prisoners for profit. Naturally, he thinks the failed DARE program should be continued, and wants uniformed deputies staffed in the schools.

(Perhaps no one told Deputy Landers that the man atop his Republican ticket, President Bush, tried to eliminate funding for drug task forces each of his four years in office. John Kerry egregiously supports their full funding.)

By contrast, the Democratic incumbent sheriff, James Prince voiced surprisingly reasonable views on the subject for an East Texas law enforcement official in the middle of an election. He too "attributed most crimes to the ongoing illegal drug trade. 'Drugs cause a majority of these crimes,' he said." ... "'But just arresting the drug users and putting them in jail isn't the answer,' Prince said. 'We will have to do more and we will.'" He also proposes greater focus on domestic violence and abuse cases.

Just five years ago, amigos, no Texas politician would ever utter the phrase "just arresting the drug users and putting them in jail isn't the answer," and certainly not during an election season. For thirty years that's been the only answer Texas law enforcement had for combatting drug addiction. Sheriff Prince takes a big risk here by indulging in what the Bush administration calls "reality based" thinking, while his opponent demagogues for more of the same, failed strategies. Here's hoping Bowie County voters reward the Sheriff's good sense on the subject with a second term.

TN task force agent stole drug buy money

DRCNet recently reported the following drug task force scandal from Tennessee:

"A Tennessee drug task force member was arrested October 1 and charged with felony theft after being accused of ripping off task force funds. Cpl. Jeff Tabor of the Sullivan County Sheriff's Department and the 2nd Judicial Drug Task Force had admitted to taking $888.61 out of the task force drug buy fund for personal use, the Johnson City Press reported. He approached his superiors in a bid to pay back the money, but instead was suspended in September and then arrested and charged last week."

Falwell's values shape candidate

An earlier post provided details and links about the Askew family's long relationship with Moral-Majority founder Jerry Falwell, who came to Austin last week to campaign for their son, Alan. His father is on the board of Falwell's Liberty University and his wife actually worked as Falwell's receptionist. Askew's opponent, Patrick Rose, is a middle-of-the-road Democrat. Here's another barely poetic offering in Mr. Askew's honor.

School days at Liberty U

When Alan Askew went to school he studied at the knee
Of Reverend Jerry Falwell at the U of Liberty.
While his wife screened calls from journalists
And brought the Rev his tea.

There they taught him values, like shame and bigotry
Sang odes to Phyllis Schlafly, Gary Bauer, and Alan Keyes
His thoughts, okay, a bit askew
But so-named, it must be.

Now Falwell wants the voters of District 45
To hand the reins of power to this scion of the right.
He must think they're crazy,
I hope that he's not right.

10-23 additional note: I have to apologize for an error -- a commenter pointed out that Askew's wife, not his mother was Falwell's secretary. I misread the Statesman clip to say it was his father's wife, and since the post was in jest I failed to adequately fact check. I regret the mistake, and have since edited the poem to account for it.

Kerry better b/c he won't cut drug task forces: Iowa AG

The Iowa Attorney General endorsed Kerry on the grounds that Bush wants to cut Byrne grant funding for drug task forces and Kerry doesn't.

It's amazing that Bush is so bad on everything else that his drug task force position doesn't matter to me, even as we see endless strings of crappy oucomes like the case in Palestine. Ending the Byrne grant program may be the only major item on which I agree with the incumbent president.

Ugh. Sadly, Kerry's task force stance lets us know that even if he turns out to be better on Iraq (and that's far from assured), on the drug war, to quote quite a different Byrne, we get the "same as it ever was," no matter who prevails on November 2nd.

Nuther Alan Askew Limerick: Why not?

Another homage to Alan Askew, Jerry Falwell's gift to Texas House District 45.

Alan Askew dodged the debates.

When Rose showed up he showed up late.
He looked for a sign,
Asked God, then declined,
But when Falwell came he kept the date.

If you like that, check out the earlier Askew posts here and here

95% of Anderson County busts Palestine residents

The statistical improbability of the recent Dogwood Trails drug task force bust grows and grows. The Lufkin newspaper reports that 95% of the 72 indicted in the recent drug bust were residents of the city of Palestine!

Pete at Drug War Rant estimated from federal statistics that perhaps 165 crack users lived in all of Anderson County. But Palestine's population is around 17,731, while Pete's estimates were from countywide data. Using the high end of federal crack-use-rate estimates, one finds that the total number of crack users at any time in Palestine might be around 71. In other words, they've arrested as many people as there likely are crack users in the whole town, and called it a "crack distribution ring." It's an Orwellian twist to refer to a "distribution ring" as including the end-of-the-line users to whom the drugs are distributed. But could it be otherwise?

Kansas task force dissolved after scandal depletes staff

This Byrne-funded drug task force in Kansas dissolved after its ranks were 100% depleted from various disciplinary episodes.

The El Dorado Times reported earlier, (no longer available for free),

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation "launched an investigation in September at the request of the El Dorado Police Department and the Butler County Sheriff's Department.

"Butler County Sheriff Craig Murphy and El Dorado Police Chief Tom Boren requested that the KBI conduct an investigation involving the El Dorado police detective sergeant and his son, a detective with the sheriff's department.

"The detectives, who are both members of a drug task force in the county, were not accused of illegal drug activity. They were both placed on paid administrative leave by their respective departments, and remained so for four weeks.

"Murphy said the task force now consists of just one officer from El Dorado and one from the county. It was formerly more multijurisdictional, said Murphy, but Augusta dropped out and the force dwindled to two." [ed note: the two left were the suspended father and son.]

And then there were none.

Hopefully the disgrace of the whole system will take all the Byrne drug task forces down. Not personally tending toward schadenfreude, watching them go down one at a time over familiar, repeated scandals becomes painful and a bit demoralizing.

Complainers about high taxes take note

Even as Dallas learns that sloppy or malicious police practices typify their local drug enforcement strategies, the Dallas Morning News reports that overenforcement of low-level drug and vice crimes have forced the county to re-open a mothballed detention facility at a cost of $300K per month.

Crackdowns on prostitution and homelessness have filled up the local jail, the paper reports, and will fill up the re-opened detention facility in a week. Those additional arrests add to an ongoing problem of a small army of defendants arrested for "low-grade" drug offenses, many of whom languish in jail needlessly at taxpayers expense.

Virtually everyone in the Dallas County jail will get out in the short to medium term, so the protection of the public aspect here is minimal, and anyway we're talking nearly exclusively about nonviolent offenses causing the overpopulation problem. If anyone can justify such policies with an argument based on the public good, I'd sure like to hear it. It looks to me like the public is paying through the nose to damage large numbers of lives via incarceration, then financing a growing police state to shield the public from the ever-increasing bad consequences of that policy.

Complainers about high taxes take note.

Dogwood Trails busts white folks, too

The Dogwood Trails drug task force based in Palestine, Texas participated in a massive sweep of small-time meth labs in East Texas, trumpeted in the media as the "Methbusters" campaign. Here's the DEA press release from that sweep earlier this year. (Dogwood Trails was not the only or principal investigative agency, as they are in the new case where all 72 busts are in Anderson County.)

I wish I needn't mention that most "meth labs," so scarily portrayed with skull and crossbones symbols over the shoulder of the local TV newscaster, are typically lone addicts making meth in their kitchen sink in user-only quantities. But because, of course, they have to make it, they're charged with "manufacturing," which has the same penalties as sale and delivery.

The fury over "meth labs" is the latest scare campaign by politicians to convince the public, or at least rural voters in red states, they still need the drug war. Ironically, it also may become the drug war's last (and still not credible) defense against charges of racial profiling. Why the sea of free market conservatives out there can't see that legalization and regulation would keep this stuff from being manufactured in neighborhoods or sold to kids is beyond me.

DOJ reports the Dogwood Trails task force seized no assets during fiscal year 2002. Then the city of Jacksonville dropped out of the task force, meaning they had to come up with the extra $26,000 previously mulcted from Jacksonville taxpayers. They thought they'd make up the money by merging with another area task force, but couldn't work out the politics. With these recent busts, it now becomes clear where Commander Curtis Bitz intends to get the extra cash.

Adieu Askew

Liberty University graduate Alan Askew's father, also his employer (he "manages" his father's ranch), is trying to buy the Texas House District 45 race with a $200,000 loan to buy television ads. Liberty University founder Jerry Falwell was one of Askew's earliest donors, and came to the district to speak on Askew's behalf last week. Askew's father sits on the Liberty University Board of Trustees. Askew's wife literally used to be Falwell's receptionist! Incumbent Patrick Rose from Dripping Springs is a centrist Democrat.

With these facts in mind, I offer this limerick in Mr. Askew's honor,

Adieu Askew

Alan Askew’s Dad paid his due

All through college at Liberty U

Jerry Falwell and Dad

Bought his TV ads

Like Rick Green, with a Swaggert-toned hue.

Well his cowboy hat looked so gay

But right-wing ties gave him away.

Tell Falwell to go

Where the sun never shows

And vote Rose on election day.

(If you like this you might like my earlier post on Askew.)

Dogwood Trails TF shoots marijuana suspect

The Dogwood Trails Narcotics Task Force -- the same task force that busted 72 black people in a single rural county last week, claiming they were all part of a crack distribution network -- now hopes to file kidnapping and attempted capital murder charges on a 22-year old man who fled in his car because he feared arrest for an outstanding marijuana posession warrant. Task force officers shot the driver who fled into the woods and was hunted down with dogs. The attempted capital murder and kidnapping charges are almost assuredly bogus, the kind of thing typically trumped up to penalize suspecs for fleeing. The kidnapping charge stems from having two "unwilling" passengers, though when you're charging the driver with murder it's hard to imagine anyone admitting they were "willing." Certainly no one claims the two were kidnapped before they got in the vehicle.

I'm reminded of the subtitle to Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point: "How little things can make a big difference." Here this kid is wanted on a penny-ante marijuana charge, a Class B misdemeanor with a max penalty of six months in jail and likely probation -- and now he could spend the rest of his life in prison for a stupid, juvenile mistake that hurt no one but himself. Talk about a needless drug war casualty.

Meanwhile, it's completely unacceptable police practice to shoot at a car with three unarmed people in it, if that's what happened. The article confusingly claims both that police shot out a tire, that a blown tire caused the driver to wreck, then seems to imply that police didn't shoot until after the car was stopped. This video from this incident gets added to the open records request I'll be filing with this task force on behalf of ACLU of Texas in the near future.

"The problem of prison rape is real"

"The problem of prison rape is real and we're committed to solving it," said Carl Reynolds, the head of Texas Department of Criminal Justice, in response to ACLU of Texas' lawsuit about which The New York Times reported on October 16 (registration required). An ACLU client was used as a sex slave by prison gangs despite repeated complaints to prison officials. Human Rights Watch, reported the article, has identified six additional, similar cases. Without question that's just the tip of the iceberg.

My college buddy Jorge Renaud was one of the most talented writers and poets I knew in my peer group in school. Tragically, he is currently doing time for armed robbery, but he wrote about TDCJ's attidude toward sexual assault in his excellent and highly recommended 2002 book, Behind the Walls: A Guide for Families and Friends of Texas Prison Inmates. As Jorge tells it, TDCJ "does not admt to any sexual assault within its walls," so the above admission takes on new import. (He points to the massive attempted suicide rate as evidence that prison rape occurs, arguing that is what the suiciders are trying to get away from. According to Jorge, "Free-world journalists have asked and been told the numbers aren't "readily available." Yet each TDCJ unit has, in its infirmary, rape kits to collect evidence of sexual assaults." If nothing else, this ACLU suit has now pried away more data, reported in the Times article, though judging from Jorge's estimates it's still way underreported.

Jorge describes how weak inmates are forced to "ride" to survive -- to "ride" is to essentially become a sex slave in exchange for protection from beatings and other mistreatment. Latino gangs ban together to protect Latinos, especially from "riding" with blacks, Jorge reports. However, "on many units, the Blacks and Latinos vow that 'all white boys must ride,' so an Anglo who fights back will face regular beatings by increasing numbers, until he is broken, moved, stabs someone and is put in ad/seg, or somehow convinces the other inmates to leave him alone." What a nightmare.

If you're not aware of this landmark Texas prison rape case, please take a look at the Times article. If, as Dostoevsky said, the degree of civilization in a society may be judged by entering its prisons, Texas remains an uncivilized place indeed.

Hush, Alan Askew

Central Texans may have read that Republican Alan Askew's parents loaned him $200K to buy television ads in his hotly contested race with Democratic incumbent Patrick Rose in Texas House District 45.

In Askew's honor, I offer up this rendering of an old standard, to be sung to the tune of the lullaby, "Hush, little baby." Enjoy.

Hush, Alan Askew

Hush, Alan Askew, don't make a peep,
Papa's gonna buy you a legislative seat.

Daddy really needs you to win,
So you can pay him back from your lobbyist friends.

You'll be like your friend Rick Green,
Bought and paid for, and far right wing.

So hush little Alan, don't make a peep,
Papa's gonna buy you a legislative seat.

Palestine defendants all black, state records sealed

I drove up to Palestine, Texas with reporter Dave Mann of The Texas Observer to check out the massive drug task force bust I reported on Sunday. While by agreement for his help I won't scoop him on certain items, I can sadly report that the case fulfills many stereotypes about how these drug task forces function.

First, all 72 defendants are black -- every last mother's son and daughter of them. In Tulia only 39 of the 46 were black. In Palestine, they've made it unanimous. While I wasn't given a complete list, a DA's employee showed me the full list while he was copying by hand the names he would give me. I had enough time to read down the race/gender column on both pages twice, just to make sure -- the list said B/M or B/F on every last one, including the names that weren't checked as releasable to me.

Second, many of the defendants have no significant criminal record. Although an assistant district attorney (who it turns out, went to my high school in Tyler) assured me that "these are people we see in and out of the system all the time," and that "we know these people," that wasn't true for the majority for whom we checked criminal records. More detail on that later from Dave Mann.

Third, the records were still sealed, even for those already in custody!, including both the indictments and search warrant affidavits (which are supposed to public after they're executed except in "sneak and peek" searches by federal spooks). Neither the DA nor the drug task force would reveal information about the three residences and other property they claim to have seized. The DA's office promised to mail copies of all the indictments later this week, but it will probably take another trip or an open records request to get the other stuff.

Fourth, the prosecutors we talked to were careful to not say all these people were "selling" crack. Instead they'd say they engaged in drug "distribution." Without having seen the documents, that tells me they're splitting hairs to include people as "dealers" who may not have profited from the transaction.

Fifth, as was the case in Tulia, the task force targeted multiple members of particular families. Alan Bean of Tulia Friends of Justice tells me that some of these family names, but not the same individuals, were included in another large Dogwood Trails task force bust in 2001.

Finally, in an ugly media moment, large chunks of the Palestine Herald-Press article quoted in my Sunday post turn out to have been reprinted nearly verbatim from the Dogwood Trails Task Force own press release. Uugh. And we wonder why the public lays down and lets this stuff happen! (I'll post a side-by-side of the two pieces later this week when I get a chance.)

Meanwhile, the Tyler paper covered the arraignment of a handful of the defendants in federal court yesterday. I'm going to be in Tyler soon to visit my father, so I'll get a look at that federal material in depth then, but they did reveal a few new items worth mentioning.

• Although one of the five federal defendants was caught with large amounts of coke and crack, at least one other was only charged with distributing less than a gram. That's a rare federal charge. That person was released on bond because of health problems.
• The US Attorney is tacking on a "conspiracy" charge to the drug charges.
• The case started when the task force busted someone with a large amount of crack on Highway 45, which runs up near Palestine from Houston. Instead of arresting that person, they sent him on his way with the crack as a confidential informant, and apparently chose to let crack continue to be distributed into Anderson county through "various sources" since November 2002!
• ALL those indicted are from Anderson County, so what they didn't do was track the drugs upstream to the source of the drugs. They only cared about little, local fish.
  

Off to Pal-uh-steen

Driving up to Palestine, TX (pronounced "Pal-uh-steen") later today to follow up on the 72-person drug task force bust in Anderson County I reported on earlier. I'll spend tomorrow nosing around and know more of the backstory on that bizarre case later this week.

In a nice plug for Grits, the blog D'Alliance pointed out that both candidates for Anderson County sheriff -- D and R -- support expanding jail space and continued prosecution of low-level offenders. Business as usual, in other words. Since I first published this YESTERDAY, two bloggers, D'Alliance and Drug War Rant, both followed up adding new information to the mix. That's really cool. Thanks guys.

Houston Chronicle: No more Chuck Rosenthal

The Houston Chronicle just endorsed Reginald McKamie over the incumbent Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal! Hurrah! For the uninitiated, Rosenthal makes the drug czar look like a liberal, and is perhaps the most reactionary figure in Texas politics, which is saying something.

Here's McKamie's minimalist web site; help him any way you can. Come on, Reggie!

Above the law

Unreal! An Indiana drug task force commander pled guilty to SIX felonies -- five counts of forgery, one count of theft -- but on Friday received only community service as punishment. He was forging confidential informant payment vouchers then pocketing the money, but apparently that's not enough to get you jail time in Kokomo, Indiana.

Must be nice, huh?

AP reports the task force commander is the sixth officer from that department to resign over criminal allegations in the last four years.

LULAC: Tough on crime doesn't work

This column from the Fort Worth Star Telegram deserves the widest possible play. My friends Ana Correa and Ann del Llano authored the report on which the column is based, and I strongly recommend it for anyone interested in the drug war or criminal justice reform.

The Texas Legislature reconvenes for the 79th time in January 2005, and the issues laid out in this column constitute the crux of criminal justice reforms demanded by Texas community groups, including a lot of the folks in my links section. Last session we had some success convincing the the Republican Legislature of these arguments, but hopefully LULAC's report and their series of local town hall meetings statewide will push this meme over the top, transforming views like this columnist's from iconoclasm to conventional wisdom.

Oct. 17, 2004

How about 'just the facts'?

By Richard Gonzales
Special to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Texas tall tales abound when it comes to fighting crime. Notions on how to reduce criminality have held political sway in the Lone Star State too long over scientific studies of "what works."

Politicians, who should know better, have pandered to fears that crime runs amok in the streets. The results are counterproductive "get-tough" policies that exacerbate crime, break up families and cost taxpayers billions.

In a criminal justice policy brief that the Texas LULAC state executive office released in August, researchers show that since the 1990s, Texas has tripled the number of prisons and has a 51 percent higher incarceration rate than any other state.

The Legislature gives the Texas Department of Criminal Justice about $5 billion each biennium. TDCJ spends 90 percent of the money on prison beds and 10 percent on treatment and probation programs.

Part of the reason for the hefty spending is that Texas felony sentences are double the national average. Yet 70 percent of the prison admissions each year are for nonviolent crimes. About half of the prisoners are serving time for drug convictions of possession of less than one gram.

The interest of the League of United Latin American Citizens in Texas crime and punishment stems partly from the over-representation of Latinos and blacks in prison. The Justice Policy Institute found that even though 40 percent of Texans in 2003 were black and Latino, 70 percent of the prison population was minority. LULAC projects that at the current Latino imprisonment rate, one out of six Latino men born in 2001 will serve prison time.

LULAC cites studies claiming that racial profiling by police departments and drug task forces results in more searches of Latinos than whites. To accommodate the millennium prisoners, LULAC predicts, there will be a need for 2,000 new prison beds each year.

Texas also has the distinction of having the largest on-probation population in the United States, mainly because of its long probation terms for nonviolent offenders.

The study found that probation officers have too large a caseload for them to respond adequately to probationers' needs. Although probationers can successfully meet the terms of probation for years, one slip-up may land them back in prison.

The average prison term on a revoked probation is 4.3 years. In 2001, this cost the state $470 million. Despite the money, probation terms and hard time, Texas crime didn't decrease more than any other state's. Instead, the crime rate is 24 percent higher than the national average, according to 2003 TDCJ data. Imprisonment of the heads of households also takes its toll on the family and community.

The LULAC study claims that the children of imprisoned parents tend to make lower grades, drop out, become delinquent and increase their chances of following their parents into prison. Removing the significant male adult from a child's life leaves a void difficult for the mom and grandparents to fill. The absence of fathers in a community devalues the importance of males and places increased child-rearing burdens on women.

The report also found that imprisoned parents owed $2.5 billion in unpaid child support. A cycle of intergenerational poverty and crime is set in motion, abetted by tough policies that punish criminals and families.

LULAC says that "tough on crime punishments simply do not work on most offenders." In a state looking for quick and easy solutions to crime, "lock-'em-up" blocks our chances to teach nonviolent felons internal restraints and different thinking patterns.

The U.S. Department of Justice found that punishment increased criminal behavior; psychological treatment and cognitive skills programs decreased criminal activity the most.

The study found that "what works" are job training, drug treatment, and peer and family support. That kind of treatment is meant not to mollycoddle criminals but to provide a way out of self-defeating thoughts and actions.

LULAC is traveling across the state to raise awareness in communities that evidence-based alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders save money, time, families and communities. It recommends that the Legislature reduce nonviolent, small-quantity drug use from felony to misdemeanor status.

Texas legislators should stop the bravado crime-fighter shtick that does little to reduce crime and instead rely on "what works" studies.

Texas needs fewer Robocops and more Joe Fridays. "Just the facts" will do fine.

Richard J. Gonzales is an Arlington resident and free-lance writer. Rgonz37034@aol.com

72 charged in Tulia-style long-term bust in E. TX

Most of what's wrong with drug task forces may be summed up by examining a recent, massive drug bust in Anderson County, TX by the Dogwood Trails task force that netted 72 defendants -- 56 charged in state court and 16 in federal court. Here's the DoJ press release bragging about it. That number dwarfs the 46 arrested in Tulia. It's so many they can't even fit them all in the county jail.

I grew up two counties over from Anderson in Tyler, TX, and can relate to readers that Anderson is quite a rural place. The notion that 72 crack dealers live there simply is absurd -- there's barely enough population density to support seven of them. (The blog Drug War Rant calculates that the entire Anderson County crack market, judging by federal statistics, totals about 165 people!)

Here's what the Palestine Herald Press wrote about it (no longer on the web):

Authorities bust crack ring 10-13-04

By PAUL STONE Palestine Herald Press Associate Editor

Local, state and federal law enforcement authorities began serving warrants on 72 drug defendants throughout Anderson County early this morning, culminating a two-year investigation into a crack cocaine ring.

At 7 a.m. today, authorities from multiple agencies began descending on residences throughout Anderson County to serve the warrants. "We're looking for 56 state defendants and 16 federal defendants," said Curtis Bitz, commander of the Dogwood Trails Narcotics Task Force, at 8:15 a.m. today. At that time, Bitz said authorities were in the process of seizing three residences. Four search warrants - two in the Palestine city limits and two in the county - had been executed, he added. ...

Last month, an Anderson County grand jury returned indictments charging 56 defendants with various drug trafficking charges. Also last month, 16 other defendants were indicted by a Tyler federal grand jury. The investigation, early morning arrests and searches were led by the Dogwood Trails Narcotics Task Force and the Tyler office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. ...

Today's arrests marked the final phase of a two-year investigation which began in November 2002. Two years ago, the Dogwood Trails Narcotics Task Force initiated an investigation into the sale and distribution of crack cocaine in Palestine. The investigation has been linked to suppliers and distributors of illegal narcotics in Dallas and Houston.

Court documents indicate several of the defendants were involved in building a crack cocaine distribution organization in Anderson County. Conspirators utilized various suppliers to acquire quantities of crack cocaine to sell and then recruited others to distribute the drugs. If convicted, many of the defendants could face a maximum sentence of life in prison. Other federal defendants face between 40 and 300 years.

If "several" defendants were involved in distributing crack, according to the article, how does that justify indicting 72 people? By definition, the majority of defendants in this case must be, at most, drug users, not dealers, since there's simply no market to support 72 different dealers in Anderson County.

These long-term "investigations" follow a pattern -- the undercover operative befriends non-dealers in the black community and after a while asks for assistance purchasing drugs. Most people netted never profited from any drug sale, but either referred or acted as a go-between for someone they thought was a friend. That doesn't matter to the drug warriors, though.

Of course, that scenario assumes some of the cases aren't utterly trumped up to begin with. In Tulia and Floresville, TX, drug task force undercover cops actually set up innocent people. In the most famous of the Tulia scenarios, a young woman was able to prove she was cashing a check in Oklahoma City at the time the officer claimed she sold him drugs in Tulia.

With 72 defendants in Anderson County, it's not out of the question something similar happened in some of these cases. The 2-year investigation focused exclusively on crack, meaning virtually all the busts involved black folks (powder cocaine and meth are more common among E. Texas whites, but obviously they're not the drug task force's focus). That's sadly no surprise. In Texas, 70 percent of those entering prison for drugs in Texas are black (see footnote 22 of this report) even though studies show all races use drugs at about the same rate. A whopping 1 in 20 Texans are in prison, on probation or parole.

It costs about $15k per year to house prisoners in Texas -- more than that for the feds. The notion that taxpayers will foot the bill for these folks for as many as 40-300 years makes little sense. Even assuming all 72 defendants are actually drug dealers -- almost certainly a false assumption -- it'd be cheaper, and probably more effective, just to pay each of them $10-12K per year not to deal drugs! At least then they could pay taxes on the income and be available to support their families. But prisons are the largest employer in the area (see the subhed, Healthcare, Prisons, and Water), and vocal, organized special interests like the correctional officers union and the drug task force, whose jobs depend on a steady flow of new people into the system, are unlikely to criticize such excesses.

Interestingly, the Dogwood Trails task force nearly disbanded earlier this year because officials in the neighboring county of Cherokee, which is also in the task force, complained that little or none of the task force's drug enforcement efforts were expended in that county. The commissioners court there split in a 3-2 vote over whether to keep the task force. Clearly Dogwood Trails is still not working in Cherokee county if none of 72 cases made occurred there. Perhaps the Cherokee commissioners court should reconsider that decision next year when they're asked again to contribute money and manpower to drug enforcement in other counties.

A task force in Lubbock disbanded earlier this year in part because squirrelly undercover operations like the one in Tulia increased insurance rates, and meant the main agency in the task force was liable for behavior of officers they didn't hire or manage. This extremist sweep by the Dogwood Trails crew raises similar liability fears, one would think. Hard to believe these guys get away with this stuff.

Featherlite tract surveyed but stagnant

My house in Austin backs up to the Featherlite tract that was purchased by former Dell Chief Financial Officer Tom Meredith. Meredith actually visited with neighbors one evening at our home last spring, and has been generous so far about accomodating reasonable community concerns. We've really appreciated that, all in all. Most significantly, he decreased the amount of impervious cover after concerns were raised about the effects of the development on neighborhood drainage (the property lies next to a creek at the bottom of a large hill).

Last we heard, the commercial section of the development is completely on hold. Originally Meredith and his entourage hoped that the Austin Children's Museum and KLRU (Austin's local public television station) would become anchor tenants for the commercial complex, and serve as a draw for other supporting commercial businesses like restaurants or small shops. Meredith offered to donate the land to those two entities, both of which obviously are non-profit organizations, but they would have had to build on it with their own funds. Both entities wound up passing, so now the commerical portion of the development is in limbo.

Meredith plans to move forward with a small development of condominiums, with its own binding homeowners' association contracts, that will go in betwen 14th and 16th streets, from the existing houses all the way flush up to Boggy Creek. Fourteenth St. would be extended, and 16th would be extended past Miriam St. to the East; 14th and 16th would be connected by a new road running along the edge of the railroad tracks. I always thought some of that was flood plain, certainly some of it floods sometimes, but the city maps insist the formal, legal flood plain only exists on the other side of the creek. We'll see, I suppose, once it's built out.

Survey stakes went up a few months ago, and the grass was mowed, making us think something might be happening soon. But most of the stakes have fallen down now, the grass is knee high, and there hasn't been much action beyond some neighborhood dog walking and kids racing up and down the odd concrete strips that dot the tracts' landscape. It's zoned, platted and ready to go, though, so once Meredith decides to move forward it could happen quickly.

Men in C&W music step up

Loving this new podcasting offering, "Takin' My Country Back." Listen to it now! Forward it to your friends. Call your local radio station and ask them to play it.

Performed by outlaw country star Tony Stampley, and written by David Kent (who wrote Blake Shelton's hit, Austin), it's a raucous, fun rant that lashes the president (while never naming him), even as it remains sympathetic and respectful to both the troops and mainstream sensibilities.

Glad to see the fellas in the country and western world aren't leaving my gals in the Dixie Chicks completely high and dry! For a while there it looked like they and Steve Earle were the only country stars out there with any cajones.

Police proliferation problematic

Presently Texas has 2,540 separate law enforcement agencies licensed with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education. That's an average of 10 law enforcement agencies per county, including not just local police and sheriffs departments, but school district police, college campus police (universities, junior and community colleges), airport police, parks police, and a wide variety of other supposedly specialized units. In reality, these smaller agencies often aren't "specialized" at all, but merely marginal. They must pick from the bottom of the barrel for applicants and management after the bigger dogs get theirs.

The proliferation of small, specialized police forces threatens to undermine the credibility of law enforcement, especially at smaller agencies, and has caused accountability for police officers generally to decline. Here are the main problems caused by this explosion of specialized agencies:

1. Gypsy cops: Having so many special forces creates a problem with so-called “gypsy cops,” where officers move from small agency to small agency, typically after misconduct or other problems that may indicate their unsuitability to wear a police uniform. Officers in Texas know if they misbehave and get fired they can just move on down the road. Tom Coleman, the undercover officer in the Tulia scandal, is the most famous example of a gypsy cop (which is law enforcement slang popularized by the Tulia case). Coleman’s troubles at a prior agency came to a head in Tulia when a warrant was actually issued for his arrest while he was working undercover!
2. Resources: Smaller forces don’t have sufficient resources for modern, high quality policing, or for more specialized police work involving particular types of crimes.
3. Fragmentation: Having so many different agencies means information sharing is basically impossible, fragmenting potential for seamless intelligence gathering regarding criminal activity. After 9-11, the federal government changed its laws and policies to allow federal agencies to share more information with law enforcement regarding terrorism, but this local fragmentation makes that goal unwieldy at best and unachievable at worst.
4. Supervisor shortage: The pool of quality police supervisors in Texas simply is not deep enough to manage 2,540 different agencies. That means many of these special agencies are being led by managers who are frankly unqualified.
5. Qualifications not uniform: Having so many agencies means that a mind-boggling array of differing hiring, training and employment practices exist from agency to agency inevitably muddying the public’s ability to determine if an agency hires good officers.
6. Equal protection: Non-civil service agencies in cities whose main police department is covered under the state civil service code can find themselves in a situation where different labor rules cover different law enforcement employees, even when they have the same employer. E.g., in Austin APD is covered under the civil service code, while the parks and airport police are not civil service agencies, even though all the officers get a City of Austin paycheck.
7. Too expensive: Having licensed police officers in schools and parks is frequently overkill, a more-expensive-than-necessary overreaction to security problems. Security guards equipped to call 911 or a police dispatcher would be cheaper than commissioned officers, and could handle virtually every situation that arises, especially in school scenarios (for parks police, there’s a need to allow them to write tickets).
8. Mission creep: In schools, officers' presence has led to mission creep, where officers actually teach DARE programs in schools as though they were a regular teacher. Studies show these programs are ineffective at preventing drug use, and using commissioned officers as teachers is much more expensive than paying teachers to handle the same classroom duties.

One can't turn back the tide with a spade, but a few common sense reforms come to mind that state and local governments could take to begin to rein in the problem.

• Consolidation of specialized police forces should be a state priority, with both carrots and sticks employed to convince local agencies to cooperate.
• Where possible, alternative security arrangements to using commissioned officers should be implemented, with non-commissioned guards relying on 911 service in the event of occasional but rare need for actual police powers.
• A single statewide school police force could be created and run centrally, in Texas' case from the Texas Education Agency. All officers would still be locally funded. If a school district wanted officers in their school, they would pay for them, but TEA would formally hire, employ and manage the officers, who like DPS troopers might be transferred around over time according to state needs. Such an arrangement would provide more uniform hiring and disciplinary practices, and keep officers who get in trouble at one school from moving along to the next one, while relieving a significant security cost burden from the shoulders of local taxpayers.

Task force scandals mar D's stance

I noted earlier that drug task forces across the country are rife with corruption, despite the Kerry/Edwards desire to continue their funding in the face of utter mission failure. But it seems like there's always more.

An Indiana task force chief pled guilty recently to stealing drugs, $9,000, and a firearm from the task force, 13 counts in all. A judge revoked his bond and issued an arrest warrant when he failed to show up for a sentencing hearing.

A father-son officer team at the Butler County task force in Kansas based in El Dorado have been suspended (from two different employing agencies). The Kansas Bureau of Investigation was called in to examine possible criminal charges. "From the city's standpoint, we wanted an outside agency to look into some things we were not comfortable with in the task force," [El Dorado city manager] Collins said earlier. "The KBI was the logical choice, so I instructed Chief Boren to make the request. We felt a third party would be the best way to do this." The father has resigned. The article says the incident may result in the task force being disbanded altogether.

As another task force sex harassment case ramps up in New Mexico, an older incident in Kentucky winds to a close. The New Era newspaper litigated to open the contents of a sex harassment settlement involving the Penryville narcotics task force commander. The task force commander allegedly sexually harassed a task force employee in the Kentucky case, while the New Mexico case involved a confidential informant.

Meanwhile, John Edwards criticized Bush this week for trying to cut Byrne grant funding that goes to drug task forces, even though that's exactly the right thing to do! (See the Edwards link in the blog below.) One has to wonder whether the Dems are ignorant or opportunistic on this score. A massive wave of scandals have heaped disapprobation on the Byrne program these last five years, and its hard to imagine a well-intentioned person could continue to take that stance if they knew the history. On the other hand, no American politician has been harmed for demagoguing about drugs in the last three decades. Perhaps they're cynically relying on that fact to skate by on a bad position.

Kerry backs drug task forces

I was disappointed to find that John Kerry expressly backed Byrne-grant funded drug task forces when the Republicans tried to kill the program in January 2003. The Rs tabled an amendment by Tom Harkin to renew the funding, which in any event was ultimately reinstated in conference committee.

No surprise. The Rs in the Bush administration have consistently opposed the Byrne program as pork, and the Dems seized on it as an opportunity to seem "tougher on crime than thou." It wouldn't bother me if the Dems adopted the R position regarding the Byrne grant program.

Meanwhile, John Edwards has been demagoguing on "meth labs" this week, criticizing Bush for cutting Byrne money. Of course, the rise in meth lab busts stems largely from focus on users instead of dealers -- most "meth labs" are home kitchens where individuals make just enough meth for personal use.

New Gladwell book out in January

Having just included The Tipping Point in a review of two newer books, I was interested to see the new Malcolm Gladwell book is coming out in January 2005. Entitled Blink, it adumbrates the process by which people make instant decisions. Looking forward to it.

Tipping Crowds on the Internet

My friends at The Texas Observer published a 2,500 word three-book review authored by yours truly in their Oct 8, 2004 issue. Even though the topics were Internet related -- Joe Trippi's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, and James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds -- the Observer did not put the review in their online edition. But you can order a complementary copy or subscribe, or pick up a copy in your local bookstore.

Drug Task Forces in Constant State of Scandal

Friends and readers know that imbroglios involving drug task forces have occupied much of my time since the infamous 1999 Tulia drug sting. The most problematic task forces are funded by the federal Byrne grant program.

If you pay attention, drug task force cops misbehave all the time -- it's an egregious pattern extending well beyond Tulia or Texas, but which includes task forces all over the country. E.g., here's some typical, recent cases:

• In New Mexico, drug task force officer stands accused of sexually harassing a female confidential informant.
• In Indiana, a task force commander pled guilty to forging confidential informant payment reports in order to steal money.
• In Longview, Texas, a black narcotics officer sued the Northeast Texas drug task force for racial discrimination.
• In Colorado, a county candidate says a drug task force should be de-funded because of a botched raid in Frisco, CO.

Though it's more from incompetence than malfeasance, in Kentucky hundreds of cases may be tossed out because a drug task force was not properly constituted under the law. This California task force was sued for keeping its meeting closed during deliberations over whether to expand focus to include anti-terrorism work.

These multijurisdictional pseudo-agencies constitute a bureaucratic nightmare: They are federally funded, state managed, locally staffed and therefore doomed to fail. While law enforcement portrays the Tulia cases as enigmatic, anyone paying attention will spot misconduct cases cropping up near constantly among Byrne-grant funded drug task forces.

Design ≠ Art

Frequently it has occurred to me that the best political campaigns (I'm speaking of issue campaigns, not candidates, though it's true of both), the ones that, in the modern jargon, "go viral" and become widespread phenomena, benefit as much from the artistry of the political operatives as from technical proficiency. Content, style, timing and method of delivery are subjective decisions, but they determine whether a campaign is run with grace and nuance, or if it seems "klunky" and mechanistic, without effectively capturing the imagination of potential supporters. Even if your side has more money and resources, a luxury I've seldom enjoyed, one still has to piece together the electoral or legislative majority, which on every issue requires a balancing act that cannot be approached in a cookie cutter fashion.

After viewing an exhibit of furniture produced by artists in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in NYC last month, though, and thinking about the debate therein over the relationship between "design" and "art," I realized my assumption that what I was seeing in the better campaigns was "artistry" was incorrect. What distinguishes the top campaigns is superior design.

Consider the views of Mr. Tuttle:

"A great designer has to know everything (language, history, ethnography, anthropology, psychology, biology, anatomy, etc.), while an artist doesn't have to know anything. This polarity ... is the starting point. But ironically, to really appreciate design, it is not about knowledge, but about the experience of living with the work; you don't have to know anything, and you get its 'information' almost through osmosis. Whereas to appreciate a good artwork, you have to bring and apply absolutely everything you know. Why is that?"

Richard Tuttle,
Design ≠ Art, National Design Museum, 2004

That's a damn good question. It captures a quality that prevailing ideas and messages in politics also contain -- the determinative factor often isn't whether an argument is right in its details, but whether it "feels" true or correct.

Think about the common argument, "Putting more criminals in prison would reduce crime." It's patently false, because breaking up families makes it more likely their children will become criminals, thus increasing crime in the medium to long run, but it sounds instinctively logical, so the argument works even if the facts aren't on its side. Another popular one: "We have to fight the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them over here." That argument, though utterly fallacious and in fact precipitative of the worst possible outcomes (enraging the Arab world when they otherwise would have helped us fight Al Quaeda), can never be completely argued down because it feels correct. George W. Bush is a master of false statements that feel true, but it's a pastime for the entire political class, on both sides of the aisle. Alternatively, because it is so often "stranger than fiction," the truth itself may sound difficult to believe by comparison to a simpler, more comfortable lie.

Politics is not and cannot be art -- no political operative can become the god-like painter filling in a canvas with exactly the right colors in the right spot. Instead, those in politics must produce messages that people can understand and live with comfortably -- it's important to challenge assumptions, but progressive or other ideas cannot become dominant until they move beyond the challenger stage to promote messages with mass appeal. We must reach deeper into the core of issues to develop arguments so fundamental and powerful that they feel true without anyone having to think about it any more than they do the chair they're sitting on, even if it's a little on the artsy side.

Bad CIs Creating Crime

One of my biggest beefs is the use of drug enforcement strategies that create new crime instead of investigating current ones. A Tennessee drug task force roped in a Florida woman on money laundering charges recently, but it turned out she was uninvolved, and a confidential informant (who had a long criminal record) had manufactured the allegedly criminal situation.

This is very common, especially for drug task forces funded by the federal Byrne grant program. In Hearne, Texas ACLU is suing because a confidential informant set up innocent people and attempted to manufacture crimes where none existed. In response, the 2001 (77th) Texas Legislature passed House Bill 2351 requiring corroboration for testimony by confidential informants in undercover drug stings. To my knowledge, no other state has enforced that restriction. The requirement for corroborating evidence, though, is as old as the concept of justice itself -- in Mosaic law in the Bible, corroboration was mandated for the equivalent of criminal convictions, and both Jesus and the Apostle Paul confirmed the necessity for corroboration in the New Testament.

For more information about drug task forces, see Grits' full coverage.

Trailing Gypsy Cops

What can be done to solve Texas’ problem of “gypsy cops,” who float from department to department without their bad records ever catching up to them? The issue has been brewing around the state for several years.

Gypsies are officers who have been fired for cause and/or resigned to avoid termination, then secured employment at another department.

The classic “gypsy cop,” about whom this previously internal-law enforcement slang term was popularized, was Tom Coleman, on whose word 16% percent of the black population of Tulia Texas was imprisoned in the infamous 1999 drug sting. That case received international attention, but the term and the circumstances it describes are more common. Just last week, the October 2 Longview News Journal reported that a Longview patrol officer who was fired for excessive force got a job with the Rusk County Sheriff’s Department before his departmental appeals were expired. Other examples abound.

It has been suggested by Texas police unions that officers should only be considered “gypsies” after they’ve transferred agencies six or more times, but the public and the Legislature have a genuine right to be concerned the first time a bad cop is re-hired in another jurisdiction.

Making officer termination information public at the state peace officer licensing agency (the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education), would create a new set of incentives for agencies to avoid hiring “gypsy cops.” If the media, concerned members of the public or political opponents discovered an agency was hiring officers of questionable character or quality, it changes the context, and departments are more likely to take actions that will protect the public from a few bad eggs.

 

A bill passed in the 2001 Texas Legislature made termination information at TCLEOSE public for officers who engaged in excessive force or criminal conduct, but that should be expanded to make termination notices public for all cases when an officer was fired for cause or resigned while being investigated.

The Law Enforcement Committee of the Texas House of Representatives heard testimony on this topic August 19 (see their video archives), and may recommend reforms to address this problem in the committee's forthcoming Interim Report.

Who is this guy?

Grits for Breakfast is the private weblog and nom de plume of Scott Henson, a former journalist turned opposition researcher/political consultant, public policy researcher and blogger. Here's the short version of how I got here:

In college, I worked at The Daily Texan and afterward co-founded an alternative magazine called Polemicist with a max circulation of 15,000 that featured investigative journalism aimed at the university. For this work, my co-editor Tom Philpott, Jr. and I were inducted into UT-Austin's Friars Society.

After leaving UT Austin without a degree to become associate editor at the Texas Observer, as well as freelancing for a number of publications along the way, I grew weary of journalism and turned to more exciting electoral politics, performing opposition and defensive research for a total of 68 political campaigns in Texas between 1991-2004, as well as performing technical writing for several government agencies and nonprofits. In a brilliant stroke of planning, in 1995 a partner John Umphress and I launched a startup business called Paper Trail Research Services - an ill-fated name that seemed perfectly suited before a few years later the internet made "paper trails" an anachronism. In the early days of the web, our firm was among the first to perform overnight profiles of entire jury pools for law firms using available databases and public records That was lucrative but boring work, for a while.

I also served a brief stint in the mid-'90s as a data specialist (or some such title) at the Texas State Medicaid Office, where I was primary author of the second edition of a publication called "Texas Medicaid in Perspective," colloquially known as "The Pink Book," essentially a 150-primer for legislators, staff and opinion leaders on the sprawling, byzantine, multi-billion dollar program. (That's where many of those "technical writing" gigs came from.) For about five years during this period, I authored a column on health care finance for a now-defunct publication called The Good Life. And I performed contract research on behalf of Texas environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the Save Our Springs Alliance, including an early public policy report critical of the economics behind a low-level nuclear waste dump in West Texas.

Most of my criminal-justice reform work over the years was performed as a volunteer, and mostly in the political off-season. I became engaged in the subject after helping victims respond to a serious police brutality incident in my own neighborhood in Austin in 1995. That got me engaged on the issue at the city level.

In my role as an opposition researcher, during Austin's 1996 municipal elections I experimented for the first time with html and created a web site called the Austin City Council Candidate Hall of Shame, where I dumped opposition research regarding a slate of four establishment candidates. Though "the public" didn't necessarily see the site, insiders and journalists did and frequently cribbed facts and analysis from it in ways that indirectly influenced their reportage. A lot. By the end of the campaign, virtually every tidbit from the site had made its way into some media outlet's coverage and every targeted candidate lost. Emboldened, the next year, I created a now-defunct website called the Austin Police Department Hall of Shame which published excerpts from police disciplinary reports procured under the Open Records Act, and later, weekly media roundups of police misconduct cases from around the state. As my interests expanded beyond police misconduct and toward the state legislature, the now-shuttered site was renamed the bland, "Texas Police Reform Center.' In many ways it was a proto-blog, but all hand-coded in html.

In 1998, I co-founded of a local political action committee, the Sunshine Project for Police Accountability, which successfully campaigned for Austin's current Police Monitor and Oversight Board, for all the good it did. On behalf of that group, 1999 was the first year I began monitoring criminal justice legislation at the Texas Lege, where over the years I've helped originate, promote and/or negotiate a number of important pieces of reform legislation and fought (with mixed results) to kill bad bills.

From 2000 to 2006 I was director of the Police Accountability Project at the ACLU of Texas, at first part-time, and was the group's point person negotiating new security legislation post-9/11 at the Texas Legislature. While at ACLUTX, I worked on several pieces of successful legislation on their behalf, including a requirement for corroboration of undercover informants after the Tulia drug stings and Texas' racial profiling statute, which included provisions incentivizing and financing use of dashcams in police cars performing traffic stop. I helped push Texas' early probation reforms in 2003-2005. Also in 2005, I helped pass legislation regulating the sort of regional narcotics task forces involved in the Tulia drug sting. The following year, the governor de-funded and disbanded the task force system because so many brashly refused to accept DPS oversight - the serendipitous culmination of a five-year campaign by my Police Accountability Project to eliminate the drug task force system.

After leaving ACLU in December 2006, I bounced around taking contract work, including on some non-criminal justice projects. (I spent two years on contract part-time analyzing water rates.) My next regular, paid gig related to criminal-justice politics came in 2008 when I became a consultant for the Innocence Project of Texas, advocating on their behalf at the Legislature in 2009, 2011, and 2013 to help successfully secure expanded compensation for exonerees, reforms in eyewitness identification procedures, corroboration for jailhouse snitches, expanded access to habeas corpus writs, and other public-policy reforms. After a stint consulting for the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition and the Drug Policy Alliance, I did a short stretch as Executive Director of the Innocence Project of Texas before joining Just Liberty as Policy Director in 2016.

Grits for Breakfast remains an uncompensated hobby: All opinions are my own unless otherwise specified. I also maintain a seldom-updated personal blog called Huevos Rancheros. I've maintained Grits independently from any group or party because I want it to be place to discuss ideas in all their nuance, not just a spokesblog for this or that organization. The problems facing the criminal justice system are enormous, and we need unfettered, creative thinking to identify solutions that can work for everybody and keep us safe and free. It's my sincere hope that Grits contributes to that process in some small way.

Thanks for stopping by.

Last updated January 25, 2015