A Snitch in Time

Since reading Prof. Natapoff's article on the consequences of snitching, I've developed a renewed interest in the subject. Here's a few things I wanted to link to so I'd have them. If you want to know more about the shadowy world of confidential informants, I suggest you take a look:

First, what is a snitch? The definition is not flattering.

The Wall Street Journal reported in December on disparities in use of snitches by federal US Attorneys, which the November Coalition has posted online. Highlight quote: "The big fish gets off and the little fish gets eaten." The Journal reported that decisions about who gets rewards for cooperation are "often haphazard and tilted toward higher-ranking veteran criminals who can tell prosecutors what they want to know."

Northwestern University law school's Center on Wrongful Convictions recently produced a booklet (pdf, 16 pages) arguing that snitch testimony is the leading cause of wrongful convctions in the United States.

Check out the Dallas News/WFAA-TV account of Texas' worst bad snitch case in recent memory -- euphemistically known as the Dallas "sheetrock" or fake-drug scandal. In that case, a local drug dealer/snitch, making upwards of $200,000 per year in confidential informant fees alone, set up innocent migrant workers with large quantities of fake drugs. Half the cocaine supposedly seized by the Dallas PD in 2001 turned out to be fake drugs used to set up innocent people. (Investigators initially thought the substance was ground sheetrock, but it later turned out to be pool chalk.) Texas Monthly's account of the case is here. At least one person was set up by the same confidential informant using smaller amounts of real drugs, and dozens of additional cases were made based on his word.

Of course, lying snitches can get people killed, not just wrongfully incarcerated.

The problem is, these guys just tell prosecutors whatever they want to hear -- "Just let me go, man, I can get you Osama bin Laden."

In 1999, the Chicago Tribune showed how untrustworthy jailhouse snitches lied in death penalty cases.

Meanwhile, I wasn't aware of this somewhat dated PBS Frontline story on snitches in the drug war, including interviews with a confidential informant, "Tony," who said he set up innocent people.

Always a good reminder: After 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act, the feds decided to turn ISPs, phone companies, banks and other businesses into snitches.

Jeralyn has noted before that the "Snitch System Undermines Justice."

Of course, cops make certain obligations to snitches, and occasionally an informant is in a position to hold them accountable. In this case a snitch sued, he said, as a warning to other snitches: The reason "I'm going forward with this thing is that I want other people to know the FBI does not take care of its people."

This book looks like an interesting read, but the price is a little dear. Maybe it's in the library, or maybe the job can pay for it.

Finally, I think snitches are corrupting the justice system, just like I don't think highly of the societal contributions of undercover drug cops, especially these task-force clowns focused on making large volumes of low-level busts. But neither do I think it's a good idea to identify confidential informants by name, online, in a database, as these folks have. CI's are tools of the prosecutors and police; it's wrong to subject them to persecution for succumbing to their weak position. Plus there's too great a chance that undocumented allegations of snitching will cause somebody to be wrongfully accused or even killed. (Housekeeping note: Whenever Grits has named a Confidential Informant, it's always somebody like Othella Kimbrew in Palestine, whose identity has already been made public in court documents or press accounts.)

If anybody knows of other resources on snitching, I'd appreciate you letting me know in the comments.

UPDATE: See other Grits writing on snitches linked at the bottom of this post.

Tom Coleman Appeals Conviction

Tom Coleman, the infamous undercover sheriff's deputy whose testimony was discredited in the Tulia drug stings, appealed his perjury conviction, the Amarillo Globe News reported today. (He'd announced after the trial that he would do so.) For more background, see Grits' guest blogger coverage of Coleman's trial in January.

Ron Mock Suspended!

The Houston defense attorney who has had more clients sent to Texas' death row than anyone else has been suspended for three years by the Texas state bar. Off the Kuff has the details.

TX House Committee to debate red light cameras

Harris County state Rep. Gary Elkins' HB. 259, which would revoke cities' authority to issue civil citations to drivers for running red lights using cameras, will be debated in the Texas House Urban Affairs Committee on Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. I'll be there, all gussied up in my Sunday-go-to-meeting-clothes, to testify on behalf of ACLU of Texas.

The cities of Garland and Houston voted to pursue red light cameras last year despite an overwhelming vote in 2003 by the Texas' House of Representatives to disallow their use. After the idea died in the Texas House by a margin of 103-34, Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving, inserted language into another, unrelated bill allowing "civil fines" for red-light violations (traffic violations are Class C criminal violations in Texas), without informing her colleagues of its true import. That made a lot of people angry, not the least of whom is Jim Keffer, the sponsor of the legislation she amended. Even though he supported red light cameras last time, he is now a joint author of Elkins' bill.

Like a lot of important issues regarding security and justice, whether cities should give tickets for red light running based on cameras isn't really a partisan issue. Here's an initial handicapping for Tuesday's vote: on its face it looks tight. Of the seven committee members, Chairman Talton, R-Pasadena, and Rep. Rodriguez, D-Austin, opposed red light cameras in 2003, while Houston reps Kevin Bailey (D) and Martha Wong (R) supported them. Democratic Rep. Jose Menendez was absent for last session's vote, but he is virulently against the bill, he says curtly, because the San Antonio police chief wants the cameras, and SA has a lot of traffic accidents.

That leaves two freshmen as swing votes: Houston Democrat Alma Allen, and Nacogdoches Republican Roy Blake, Jr.. Rep. Allen beat Ron Wilson in the Democratic primary last year; Wilson who opposed red light cameras. Blake's predecessor, Wayne Christian, who left his seat to run for Congress, also opposed them. If camera supporters can hold onto their base and pick off one of these freshmen, Elkins' bill may be in trouble. Certainly the vendors' lobbyists are out in force.

But hold on, there's another big wildcard at play here: Elkins, Keffer, and many others see Harper-Brown's amendment in 2003 as a sneaky approach that subverted the obvious and overwhelming will of the Texas House. It's quite possible that even Bailey and Wong, who supported cameras last session, might be convinced that they should allow the full House an opportunity to correct the institutional offense, regardless of their own position on the matter. Indeed, the bill has built early momentum precisely because so many members in the House took umbrage at being deceived. Elkins' co-sponsor list is impressive. Many think that the institutional integrity concerns about pre-empting the will of 103 House members will be given a lot of weight. In that case, speculating (quite) optimistically, such an appeal to their better angels could result in a near-unanimous, 6-1 vote for HB 259, though as is common practice, the bill will likely be left pending at least a week after the public hearing.

If HB 259 has problems in committee, Rep. Carl Issett, R-Lubbock, has filed another bill, HB 665, which has been referred to the House Transportation Committee but not yet set for hearing. That bill outright bans red light cameras, whereas Elkins' bill just deletes Harper-Brown's permissive language. So the anti-camera crowd will get another shot at the brass ring in a different committee no matter what, plus Elkins and Co. can easily amend the provision to legislation passing through the House floor.

That all makes me hopeful that, at the end of the day, the Urban Affairs Committee won't stand in the legislation's way. Given its history, the issue deserves to be debated again by all 150 House members.

Sorry, if you had a reasonable expectaton of privacy to keep him from photographing up your skirt, our dogs couldn't sniff for drugs at traffic stops

FleshBot lays out the thinking man's dilemma behind a vexing legal problem: The Supreme Court's inadequate definition protecting Americans' "reasonable expectation of privacy," as evidenced in the Caballes case, disallows significant punishment for things like photographing up young girls' skirts in the neighborhood mall. Says FleshBot:

The responsible, privacy-respecting part of us thinks it’s reprehensible that a Virginia man caught secretly filming teenagers at a local mall received a mere ten day prison [sic: jail] sentence thanks to a loophole in most states’ “video voyeurism” laws: apparently it’s only illegal to photograph someone without their consent if it’s done in situations in which they have “a reasonable expectation of privacy”, such as dressing areas or locker rooms. The perverted part of us, however, is all “Cool! More upskirt photos!” So as you can see, we’re a little conflicted about the whole thing.

For my part at least, the responsible, privacy respecting part, ultimately, has won out, and I'll be at the Texas Legislature next week on behalf of ACLU of Texas asking legislators to support new regulations on voyeurism and other abuses of government surveillance cameras. In doing so, I suspect my message will be less like Fleshbot's, and more like those articulated in this recent piece from the UK Guardian:

Victims of video voyeurism are often horrified to find out that what has happened to them isn't even illegal in most states.

``It was really frustrating and depressing,'' said Jolene Jang of Seattle, who was secretly filmed at a festival five years ago by a man who lowered his camera to shoot up her dress. `'I felt helpless.'"

The Internet has only exacerbated the problem. Type the words ``upskirt'' and ``downblouse'' into the search engine Google, and millions of Web sites pop up.

Lawmakers nationwide have begun to respond, reworking laws written before advancements in camera technology led to a boom in digital voyeurism.

Most states with video voyeurism laws prohibit unauthorized videotaping or photographing of people who are in private areas, such as dressing rooms, or in situations where they have ``a reasonable expectation of privacy.''

The description has been too broad for several state courts, which have ruled people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy underneath their clothing when they're in public.

In 2003, state Sen. Jeff Wentworth added language to an otherwise agreed bill making all information about government surveillance cameras secret, including the location of cameras, policies restricting voyeurism or other misuse, who has access to surveillance data, what the information will be used for, how long it will be maintained, etc. In the wake of that ignominious legislation, some police agencies are keeping surveillance data secret from citizens, but sharing the information with private businesses and other entities.

Perhaps the Baron will correct me if I'm wrong, but the through-the-looking-glass logic that says one has no reasonable expectation of privacy against others looking up her skirt stems from the same set of legal reasoning that brought us the pathetic Caballes decision claiming use of drug sniffing dogs at a traffic stop isn't a search. A dog is an extension of the human senses, the logic goes, so the smell of marijuana from an enclosed trunk is in "plain view" if one uses a dog to enhance the sense of smell. Similarly, if a woman's privates are in plain view from some legally available vantagepoint, perhaps using a telephoto lens, anyone has the right to point a camera at them under the same legal logic.

If you're operating a government surveillance camera in Texas, thanks to Sen. Wentworth's legislation, you can legally do so without anyone knowing you're watching, or what you do with the tape.

That's the new reality behind the proliferation of surveillance cameras that nobody talks about. Under current Supreme Court interpretations of Americans' Fourth Amendment rights, there really are no limits on what can be filmed or how it can be used if it's arguably visible to the public somehow, someway.

For the Fourth Amendment to retain any relevance in the technology-dominated 21st century will require a complete overhaul of the old framework for protecting privacy, and new definitions for what constitutes legitimate government surveillance. Judges have failed to protect our Fourth Amendment rights, and by extension, many important privacy rights that Americans take for granted. It's now time to turn to the legislative process to bolster them again, first to the states.

Via TechLaw Advisor

Tell me baby do you want it?

Texas Governor Rick Perry wants it. The House Appropriations Committee Chairman thinks it's a good idea. The Senate Criminal Justice Committee recommended it after months of study. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice wants it stronger (pdf). Two former House Corrections Committee chairmen think it's essential.

What is it? Probation reform. It's the catchphrase of the week at the Texas Legislature. It's supposed to keep Texas from having to build more prisons. So what does it mean?

Rep. Haggerty's HB 575 is key to lowering probation caseloads. Even so, the state needs to hire hundreds more probation officers. They've got to fund more drug treatment. The question is how to pay for it?

Testifying Wednesday on behalf of ACLU of Texas' legislative committee, Ann del Llano offered the Appropriations subcommittee on criminal justice an array of options for reforming Texas' probation system, and identified several lucrative sources of revenue. Take a close look at the handout she gave them. (Disclosure alert: I work with Ann on ACLU's legislative committee.) It turns out, Texas could probably finance most of its extant drug treatment and probation service needs from one source: discretionary accounts held by local District Attorneys from hot check and asset forfeiture funds. Check out the size of the slush funds we're talking about:

District Attorney discretionary hot check and asset forfeiture funds should be appropriated to these solutions that work. The Harris County District Attorney testified that he has at least $26 million sitting in his discretionary funds. These funds should be accounted for in all 254 counties and then appropriated to needed programming.

If the state's going to seize assets from drug transactions, they needn't just become some slush fund to be dispensed at the whimsy of the local DA. It makes tons of sense to use that money for drug treatment, instead. It will be argued that asset forfeiture money is needed to provide matching funds to finance drug task forces, but if the Legislature follows the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee's recommendation and abolishes the drug task force system, that federal grant money could be used for other things like treatment and drug courts.

Gov. Perry: "Better ways" than more prisons

In yesterday's Austin Statesman, Governor Perry lent his voice to the recent chorus of Texas Republicans calling for reforms to the probation system in lieu of prison building. Reported Mike Ward:

Gov. Rick Perry joined the debate, labeling new prisons as last on his list of justice priorities."

"There are better, more efficient ways to deal with this prison population than going and building more prisons," he said.

Democrat Sylvester Turner, who chairs the subcommittee on criminal justice on the Appropriations Committee, similarly offered promising predictions about how the Legislature would react to the overincarceration crisis:

"We're talking about changing our whole mind-set on criminal justice, redefining and fundamentally changing the way our whole system works," said Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, who chairs the panel. "We simply don't have the money to continue building more and more new prisons that will just fill up and then make us build even more.

"We can't afford that system any more."

You know, as unlikely as it seems, if I didn't know any better, I'd think these folks were working together in a bipartisan way looking for pragmatic solutions to one of the state's biggest problems. According to the article, legislators in Tuesday's budget hearing explicitly spoke in terms of a tradeoff -- more treatment programs in lieu of more prison beds:

Instead of earmarking millions to pay for new prisons and leased prison beds to hold a growing population of new convicts, lawmakers discussed a tradeoff: Figure out what the new beds would cost, then allow prison officials to spend much of that money on expanded probation programs, rehabilitation and drug treatment services that would give the lawbreakers a much better chance of returning to the streets as law-abiding citizens -- and are much cheaper.

Ward called the proposed reforms a "clear and potentially significant shift in state policy," and opined that, "Not so many years ago, such public talk about spending big money on alternatives to prison, in a state that prides itself as being tough on crime, would have stood little chance of passing."

That certainly has been the conventional wisdom in the past, but it doesn't appear to represent the current consensus: "Committee members nodded in agreement as they discussed diverting future funds out of prisons and into those programs," reported Ward.

Regardless of which party is backing proposed probaton reforms, I find myself nodding along with them.

Can You Spot the Missing $50?

An informant-based drug case generated by the Dogwood Trails Narcotics Task Force went to trial in Palestine, TX this week. The Palestine Herald-Press, which has been known to publish task force press releases under its associate editor's byline, gave this account of the key transaction.

Read it closely. See if you can spot the missing $50:

Allyson Mitchell, Anderson County assistant district attorney, said the drug transaction in the parking lot of the Oak Hill Apartments involved McKenzie, Baker and the confidential informant.

Moments before the transaction, the trio exited Baker's apartment and got inside a car in the complex' parking lot, according to the state

"That's when the deal took place," Mitchell told the Herald-Press. "He (the confidential informant) bought $250 of crack cocaine from Seneca (McKenzie)...He was able to identify him out of a lineup later."

A short time after the alleged drug deal, McKenzie was pulled over by authorities for having an expired registration sticker, according to Mitchell.

"He had $1,100 on him and $200 of it were the Dogwood Trails Narcotics Task Force's impress funds," Mitchell said.

The task force's funds - which were used by the confidential informant - were identifiable through serial numbers, she added.

Okay, so the confidential informant was observed leaving the house and getting into the vehicle with the suspect. The drug deal took place inside the vehicle, they pull away, and a short time later they're pulled over on a pretext stop. The CI said he paid $250 for the drugs, but only $200 was found on the alleged drug dealer. They were under surveillance the whole time.

So where's the missing $50?

If you figure it out, I'd suggest you contact the Anderson County District Attorney and let him know.

It's really no wonder the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee and President Bush want to get rid of these flaky task forces. BTW, stemming from incidents in June 2002, this is not one of the 72 cases from the racial profiling incident in Palestine last fall, but I was especially interested in the details after learning more about snitches recently.

Actions speak louder than words for Rs on criminal justice

I'm not complaining or nothing, but I'm surprised not even to see a mention of criminal justice issues in the Texas Public Policy Foundation's legislative briefing book. They're considered the Texas Republican leadership's most closely-trusted think tank, but they didn't mention Texas' looming overincarceration crisis nor offer proposals to solve it, focusing instead on the need to stop the state from delivering services that the market could deliver, and lessening the tax burden on businesses.

So far, most Republican voices speaking out on Texas criminal justice issues have had good things to say (meaning, naturally, that I broadly agree with them). The House Appropriations Committee chairman is opposed to building more prisons. The Senate Criminal Justice Committee recommended no new prisons but unanimously backed expanding probation and drug courts. Two Republican former chairmen of the House Corrections Committee are pushing for more treatment services and fixing the probation system. What's more, the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, led by a Republican former sheriiff, recommended abolishing Texas' drug task force system in December, a position echoed last week by President Bush in his new budget.

Perhaps actions speak louder than words. Certainly it's more evidence of Doc Berman's observation that a "new right" may be developing on criminal justice reform.

Snitching Undermines Justice Institutions

Over the weekend CrimProf blog ran a feature highlighting Loyola (CA) law school prof Sasha Natapoff, and linking to her January article on Snitching: The Institutional and Communal Consequences, in the University of Cincinnati Law Review. If you have even a remote professional interest in the subject of snitches, or "confidential informants," to use the bureaucratic lingo, you simply have no choice but to read Natapoff's fine article. It's long, but if you print it out and take two hours to go through it like I did, it's worth it. Even if your interest in the criminal justice system is more policy oriented and you've never met a snitch, Natapoff is taking the debate over use of informants to a whole new level.

Lots of good stuff here. For example, she rightly describes the mechanics of informant agreements as an "extreme form of plea bargain," and fleshes out the implications. "The government (provisionally) agrees to reduce or eliminate a suspect's liability, while the suspect (temporarily) forswears his right to contest liability, while promising to provide information incriminating others," she writes. That's problematic, though, because:

the informant deal lacks the safeguards of the typical plea: specificity, completeness, finality, enforceability, judicial review and publicity, and, in the case of most informal negotiations, counsel. It is precisely these safeguards, however, on which courts and scholars have relied in justifying the system's heavy reliance on plea bargaining. Absent these protections and limits, the informant deal pushes plea bargaining towards the limits of its own legitimacy.

Pushed it right off the cliff, as far as I'm concerned, but seldom if ever have I seen the problems with this malevolent institution more sagely adumbrated. Natapoff estimates that an astonishing one in twelve black men returning to their communities from prison might be "active informants at any one time. By way of comparison, at the height of its power, the East German secret police -- one of history's most infamous deployers of informants -- had 174,000 informants on its payroll, approximately one percent of the entire East German populaton."

What a proud record: More informants than the East German secret police. Worse, she shows, informant use arguably causes as much crime as it's stopping:

a central harmful aspect of informant use is the official toleration of crime. ... The informant 'revolving door' in which low-level drug dealers and addicts are arrested and released with orders to provide more information arguably perpetuates the street-crime culture and law enforcement tolerance of it. At the very least, it violates the spirit of 'zero tolerance' and 'quality of life' community policing policies aimed at improving the communal experience of high crime communities. ... For communities already suffering from high crime rates, criminally active informants thus exacerbate a culture in which crime is commonplace and tolerated.

Ain't that the truth? In Palestine, a drug task force allegedly busted a man named Othella Kimbrew bringing large amounts of drugs into town in late 2002, but instead of getting him to finger bigger dealers up the food chain, they set the fellow loose for almost two years as a confidential informant in that 17,000 person town, giving him money to convince addicts to agree to help him buy crack. Hardly any of the 72 people, all black, who were arrested based on his testimony in October were actually crack dealers (only four were busted with significant weight). Instead, by offering money to individual addicts to score drugs for him, Kimbrew roped drug users into charges of delivery and/or sale.

That begs the question, though, how much crime did the drug task force create in Palestine with its decision to spend two years paying for Mr. Kimbrew to arrange drug transactions? I see real-world examples of law enforcement creating crime all the time, just like Professor Natapoff describes. She's right on the money.

Some of her proposals are common-sense, open government type reforms that may even have a chance in conservative states. ACLU of Texas proposed requiring corroborating evidence for snitches and improving defense attorney's discovery access to information about informants in recent testimony to the Texas Senate Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. Natapoff also suggested more data collection and analysis about confidential informant use, and restricting informant awards. Give her a read -- really good stuff from the ivory tower.

More big-government conservatism

Pete details the good news and bad news on the drug war in the Bush budget. I know Grits readers will be surprised to read that booming deficits didn't stop President Bush from proposing $268 million in new drug war spending. Big-Government Conservatism: Do you think it's a trend?

Oklahoma man dead following task force arrest

A man arrested by the LeFlore County Drug Task Force in southeastern Oklahoma died in the county jail from unknown causes, the Fort Smith Times Record reported yesterday. Bobby Gene Willis was arrested last Wednesday in a task force raid on his home that allegedly turned up 70 lbs of marijuana. Jailers told the paper that Willis complained of a sore back but appeared to have no other medical problems. Autopsy results will take up to ten days. Willis' was the second death in the LeFlore county jail in the last eight years.

Meth-head prosecutor gets off light

Meth-head Texas Panhandle prosecutor Rick Roach pled guilty to a weapons possession charge, reports TalkLeft, but not to drug charges, even though they caught him redhanded with drugs in his office. He'll get a better deal than he ever gave anybody as district attorney. See here for more background.

Caballes opens door for computer searches

How bad was the Supreme Court's Caballes decision? We're still finding out. Mark Rasch at Security Focus is starting to unravel how thoroughly Caballes screwed up Fourth Amendment rights in cyberspace. Under the new regime:

The expectation "that certain facts will not come to the attention of the authorities" is not the same as an interest in "privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable," the court wrote.

In other words, the search by the dog into, effectively, the entire contents of a closed container inside a locked trunk, without probable cause, was "reasonable" even though the driver and society would consider the closed container "private" because the search only revealed criminal conduct.

The same reasoning could easily apply to an expanded use of packet sniffers for law enforcement.

Currently, responsible law enforcement agencies limit their warrantless Internet surveillance to the "wrapper" of a message, i.e., e-mail addresses or TCP/IP packet headers, unless they have a court order permitting a more intrusive search. Looking at the "outside" of the communication has been treated as similar to looking at the outside of a vehicle -- and maybe peering into the window a bit. To peek inside the communication -- read the content -- required that you first get someone in a black robe involved.

The experiences of Mr. Caballes ... changed all that. The government is practically invited to peek inside Internet traffic and sniff out evidence of wrongdoing. As long as the technology -- like a well-trained dog -- only alerts when a crime is detected, it's now legal.

With as much information as is stored electronically these days, that's less like a dog sniff and more like they just took the chain off the pit bull. It's easy to imagine searches, or whatever we're supposed to call them now, of electronic files that purport to only look for illegal things. Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy wondered about this implication the day the decision came out:

This is particularly troubling in the context of computer searches and seizures. Can the police send a computer virus to your computer that searches your computer for obscene images, or images of child pornography, and then reports back to the police whether such images are on your computer — all without probable cause, or even any suspicion at all? The traditional answer would have been no: the police cannot enter your private property to search even for non-private stuff. But thanks to the increasing focus on the nature of the information rather than how the information is obtained, it's no longer so clear.

I fear Caballes allows exactly that, and that it's just the beginning. At a time when one could stack up the victims of identity theft like cordwood, we don't yet understand the 21st century implications of our lost Fourth Amendment freedoms after a series of shoddy Supreme Court decisions misinterpreting it for the worse. The protections that meant so much just a few years ago have been largely stripped away, particularly regarding computer information and our rights on the road. We have stepped through the looking glass.

$100 million, mas o menos, to fix system say probation officers

Mike Ward reports today on the Statesman's legislative blog about proposals from the Texas Probation Association for solving the state's overincarceration crisis. The group held its lobby day at the capitol today, and probation officers from all over the state were there. Their message, reports Ward:

“Reduce the caseloads of probation officers with additional funding for programs and supervision . . . and we will save the taxpayers of Texas millions of dollars,” said Fred Rangel, president of the statewide Texas Probation Association, a trade group for local probation officers. ...

Needed, they said, is an additional $60 million to reduce probation officers’ caseloads to 75 offenders, from more than 150 now; $20.1 million more to provide more local detention beds for those who violate probation rules; an additional $7.2 million to provide up to 4,000 beds for those who need substance-abuse treatment, and additional funding for rehabilitation programs to keep non-violent offenders from occupying expensive prison beds.

And that's the cheap option, they told legislators. El Paso state District Judge Mary Anne Bramblett said the alternative is to build more prisons “and the cost of doing that will be astronomical.”

Those numbers might be inflated a little if they assume the state should solve the entire probation officer shortage by hiring more P.O.'s. -- right now we're 1,000 shy. Perhaps more realistically, some combination of hiring new probation officers and reducing the overall number of people on probation would be necessary. Rep. Pat Haggerty, R-El Paso has proposed a method for reducing probation caseloads by giving incentives to probationers who comply with the rules and don't commit new crimes to get off probation.

Behind the scenes, some local probation agencies question Rep. Haggerty's bill because, under the current system, departments are paid based on the number of probationers they serve. It's hard to say whether the one-time $500 early release fee he's proposed would fully make up the difference. Plus, fees from "good" probationers, one hears repeatedly -- those who've been in the system a long time, who meet all their requirements and who haven't been revoked back to prison -- are a reliable source of income, subsidizing the rest of the system. But in the scheme of things, nobody's talking about cutting funds to probation departments; these are small, structural problems with how funding is allocated that could be resolved to everyone's (relative) satisfaction. They shouldn't get in the way of a reform like H.B. 575 that could stave off billions in new prison spending.

For more background, see this handout (pdf) from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which oversees Texas' probation and parole systems, which was included in the Probation Association's press packet.

Lack of drug treatment hurts schools and foster care

Mary Margaret Farabee began working to combat substance abuse after the death of her own child in 1996, and she sees the issue as closely intertwined with all the other big issues facing the Texas Legislature -- especially school finance and foster care. Fewer than five percent of Texans who would benefit from drug treatment are receiving it, she wrote in an Austin Statesman op ed piece yesterday. Farabee is a boardmember of the Phoenix Academy, a well-regarded juvenile drug treatment facility in Austin. She thinks the state's failure to deal with the medical, instead of just the law enforcement aspect of drug abuse has heightened the crisis:

Substance abuse poses a grave threat to Texas, raising the costs of health care, welfare and criminal justice, while reducing productivity. We can't dispute the connection between substance abuse and two other key issues facing the Legislature: public school financing and the reorganization of the foster care system. As with nearly every other government program, a comprehensive effort to diagnose and treat substance abuse will reap benefits in both of these areas.

Our education system will be greatly strengthened if we can eliminate the drug abuse that makes so many children and adolescents ineducable. Similarly, nothing taxes the foster care system like the family breakdown resulting from substance abuse.

Rather than cut treatment services to address education and foster care, legislators must recognize the desperate need for investment to strengthen both systems over the long haul.

In the workplace, substance abuse is the leading cause of lateness and absenteeism. Substance-abusing workers are not only unproductive, they can also be counterproductive, and workers with substance abusing family members are also likely to be less productive. A Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse study finds that lost productivity is the largest economic cost of substance abuse, costing Texas $11.2 billion in 2000.

The most tragic impact of substance abuse is on families. It is profoundly moving to see families both wealthy and destitute struggling with such a crisis.

Check out the rest. She's connecting a lot of important dots most people don't think about much. I just hope folks over at the Texas Lege are in a listening mood.

Junk Science

It's a shame when politics corrupts science, because the public continues to distrust the scientists for politicizing their findings long after their transient policy goals are a distant memory. That's what's happening, in my view, to the National Institutes on Health's Institute on Drug Abuse.

This study purports to show us that marijuana use is especially dangerous, but I think it shows the opposite. The study found that pot smoking may cause slight narrowing of blood vessels hindering blood flow to the brain, which the researchers hypothesized may explain examples of memory loss. But the study also found higher blood flow levels to the brain overall among pot smokers, which seems contradictory. Whatever the case, here's the kicker:

After a month without cannabis - during which the volunteers agreed to remain in a clinic, with no access to marijuana - Cadet repeated the sonography. The resistance to blood flow of light and moderate users - who usually smoked an average of 11 and 44 joints per week, respectively - was starting to return to normal.

So for those smoking an average of 44 joints per week (!), the discovered ill effects wear off in a month once you quit. They wear off over a longer period for heavier smokers who quit. Either way, the vast majority of marijuana smokers are consuming a lot less than 44 joints per week, if only restricting their intake from pure economic motivations. A "joint" is a pretty imprecise measuring stick, but it sounds like folks who smoked up to a couple of ounces per week get over the described ill effects through abstinence in the short term. That says to me most people aren't at serious risk -- that's a helluva lot of pot smoking!

This junk science reminds me a lot of the problems with Texas' forensic labs -- part of the reason the work of forensic scientists helped convince convict innocent people in Texas is that scientists only answer questions prosecutors ask them, and prosecutors only ask questions where they think the answer will prove their case. That's a problem, because which questions scientists ask dictates, to a large extent, what answers they'll find.

So sure, when they study the fellow who smokes 50 JOINTS PER DAY, they find significant health concerns, but I wonder how bad they are compared to someone who, say, drinks a fifth of whiskey every day, which might be an equivalent level of substance abuse. In fact, I'll bet the 50-joint-per-day smoker has a lot of other problems, too -- where did they even find sombody who smokes that much pot, and how is it even remotely possible? I'll bet even Tommy Chong in his heyday never strung together too many 50 joint days in a row -- how in the world can this be considered indicative of what happens with "heavy use"? I'd have considered 44 joints per week pretty heavy use, but I'm no expert. Then, it would appear that at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the experts aren't so very expert, either, just well-credentialed shills for the drug war.

NH Catfight Shows Why Drug Task Forces Must Go

The fingerpointing is now underway between the New Hampshire Attorney General and member agencies of their statewide drug task force after revelations that officers provided backup on undercover missions while intoxicated and twice physically attacked police officers who they thought would rat them out for drinking. Now, the Attorney General is circling the wagons, some agencies are leaving, and even the task force's defenders admit its problems loom large.

I can't find a copy of the report by Rockingham County Attorney Jim Reams posted anywhere online, but if anyone finds it I'd appreciate a shout out. There's a few Texans I know who'd sure like to see it.

Even without the full report, anyone who thinks strengthening Texas' task force system's central command under the Department of Public Safety (DPS) will solve their accountability problems should look closely at the clips linked above about what happened in New Hampshire. In that much more manageably sized state, the Attorney General controlled a single drug task force statewide working out of just four satellite offices, in theory operating as a cohesive unit. But the combination of federal funding, state management and local staffing simply proved unaccountable in practice.

By contrast, the scale of Texas' management problem and the depth of existing snafus that need fixing would make reining in task forces here more difficult by many orders of magnitude compared to New Hampshire, even if DPS were given full control, which they don't have by any stretch. Plus, let's face it, whether it's fair or not, the public won't receive a huge confidence boost from promises that DPS will henceforth rigorously concern itself with strict management practices or attention to constitutional niceties. The drug task force system has brought discredit to everyone involved with it. It's time for a new approach.

This is another one of those pseudo-police-agencies funded by the federal Byrne grant program for which President Bush proposed 90% budget cuts in the next fiscal year. Make me philosopher king, and I'd prefer that money be spent on drug courts or treatment-based alternatives to incarceration, but Texas' leaders have never put those options on the table. So if drug task forces can't get their act together any better than in Texas, or New Hampshire, or California, or, hell, really all over, then slashing their budgets is alright by me. They're causing more problems than they're solving.

Big Brother Sprouts Up All Over

What's the deal with Big Brother at traffic stops? First we hear that the feds want data from traffic tickets in five Southeast Texas counties for some sort of ill-defined pilot program. Now CrimProf blog points to this New York Times article saying cops are gathering fingerprints at traffic stops in Phoenix, AZ. Giving the fingerprint is "voluntary," say the police. Yeah, right. When you're alone at a traffic stop with a cop who asks you to do something -- whether to give a fingerprint or let him search the car -- it never really feels like "asking," does it? Most people are too intimidated to refuse.

Meanwhile, Fuzzie checked in to say hello after my conversation with the Baron. When I went to check out his shop -- pahuntfishshoot.com -- I found this post about new federal requirements that applicants for state hunting and fishing licenses must give a social security number and answer questions about their child support status to be approved. So far, most of my friends actively defending the Second Amendment have pretty much let the Bush Administration off the hook for Big Brother expansion of government on the pretext of being tough on crime, though a few more began to express concerns about expanding police powers after 9/11. I wonder, though, how long they'll sit idly by as the government passes judgment on who is allowed to hunt and fish?

Bush: Cut Byrne grants 90%!

President Bush's new budget proposes slashing the "Byrne grant" fund that pays for Texas' drug task force system by 90%, from $600 million to $60 million, AP reports. He's feeling generous. He proposed eliminating the program entirely in his first four presidential budgets. Last year, Congress slashed a quarter of the Byrne budget, merging it with another program.

In Texas, 86% of Byrne money goes to fund drug task forces like the ones in Tulia, Hearne and Palestine, which have been rife with scandal and accused of widespread racial profiling. The same type of drug task forces cause problems in other states, too, and the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee recently recommended getting rid of them in its interim report.

Via Talk Left UPDATE: Loretta's got more in this great post, including a good case that narcotics officers' unions may have wound up using Byrne grant money received indirectly to oppose the President's proposal in the past.

Feds want traffic ticket data? Why?

Vince Leibowitz at Burnt Orange Report ponders the meaning of an AP report that five Texas Gulf Coast counties will participate in a first-ever pilot program where the federal government collects data gathered by police officers on all traffic tickets. Obviously, those homeland security guys don't have enough haystacks yet in which to look for needles. Vince asks all the right questions in his fine post.

Baron von Big Brother

The Baron offers the most cogent defense I've seen in the blogosphere of the Supreme Court majority's decision in Caballes, which ruled that using trained dogs to sniff for drugs isn't a search. Mssrs Moore, Guither, myself, and "Fuzzy," with whom I'm unacquainted, duke it out in the comments. Check it out.

Just desserts

Austin police chief Stan Knee made his bed and now he's lying in it, or perhaps about it.

During the last round of police labor negotiations, Knee acquiesced to demands to gut APD's disciplinary process, making it nearly impossible to get rid of bad cops in Austin under the city's meet and confer agreement. The agreement could have fixed exactly the problem that's got him in trouble now, if he'd had the cojones to stand up to the police union at the bargaining table. He didn't.

This time around, after he tried to fire an officer for "failing to report an officer-involved 911 call and then falsifying a government document in order to 'cover for the officer," according to the Austin Chronicle, Knee found that technicalities in the state civil service law would have let the officer off, so he fudged a sworn statement. The press is making him out to be the bad guy, and city manager Toby Futrell recently had him in for a perhaps-not-so-friendly chat.

I don't feel sorry for Knee a bit. He arrogantly dismissed concerns that the rules made it too easy for officers to get away with misconduct. Now he's being hoisted by his own petard.

After all that, to boot, an arbitrator overturned Chief Knee's decision to fire the officer, as happens in almost every case where an Austin chief tries to fire officers for misconduct. And as Howard Bashman noted recently, an arbitrator pretty much gets to do what he wants.

I've been watching the Austin Police Department for too long, because I feel too jaded to get very excited about this. The story, "Bad APD cop will stay on force" sounds to me like old news -- perhaps next week's headline shall be "Sun rises in east, sets in west"? The fight over whether APD would be able to discipline bad cops was already decided -- in the negative -- when the 2004 "meet and confer" labor agreement was approved. Everyone who was involved in that clusterfuck disgraced themselves, as far as I'm concerned. So if Austin has to live with the bad cops on the force no matter what, I'm glad at least Chief Knee may get his comeuppance.

Cops on Steroids

Four Oklahoma police officers were fired for using and selling steroids. I see quite a few cops, especially in the larger Texas cities, bulked up to near inhuman proportions, frequently with Barry-Bonds-style forehead bulges. (Austin and Houston both have more than their share matching that description.) I've always wondered if steroid use was the probable explanation. From this example, it seems likely. AP quoted a police psychologist who said:

"There is sort of an underground, unspoken tradition among several departments that I've worked with that if you really want to bulk up, this is the best way to do it."

However, steroids also can lead to heart disease, liver damage and shrunken testicles, as well as uncontrolled aggression, or "roid rage," which can be especially dangerous in a law officer.

(Insert shrunken testicle joke here.)

Last year in the State of the Union address, President Bush called for eliminating steroid use in sports -- the public would have been better served if he'd called for their banning in law enforcement.

Unaccountable drug task forces boost liability everywhere

Texas' Byrne-grant-funded drug task force system earned a black eye with cases like those in Tulia, Hearne and Palestine, but Grits has been documenting their problems in other states to show they're not just a Texas concern. Two recent stories bear that out:

In California, the state agency that administered federal Byrne grants was abolished after audits revealed money flows couldn't be documented for tens of millions in grants, reported the San Jose Mercury News yesterday. The agency was,

so plagued with accounting problems that it was impossible to audit and tens of millions of dollars in future funds could be in jeopardy, state auditors said.
Auditors looking into the Office of Criminal Justice Planning found incomplete and inaccurate paperwork a year after the agency was abolished because of leadership problems and poor business practices.

"In my 30 years experience, this is the worst thing I've ever seen," Samuel Hull, chief of state audits, said Wednesday. "When we got into there and started looking at things ... the problems just kept ballooning."

The problems are so bad they might jeopardize the state's receipt of new federal crime-fighting funds.

That sounds awfully similar to a situation here in Texas. In 2002, a state auditor found that Governor Perry's Criminal Justice Division, which oversees distribution of Texas' Byrne grant money, had either improperly paid out our failed to justify $15.6 million in federal grant funds. The year before, the head of the Criminal Justice Division was demoted for spending grant money on gifts and taking kickbacks from drug task forces in the form of impounded cars he drove as personal vehicles. (See p. 5 of this report, pdf).

Meanwhile, in Iowa, an unarmed man was killed by a drug task force officer in a December raid. The task force broke into his home on a no-knock warrant and gunned him down while he watched TV. According to the Des Moines Register:

the investigation into another western Iowa police shooting continued Thursday. Mills County Attorney Marci Prier said she still was awaiting toxicology reports from the Division of Criminal Investigation before deciding whether to hand the case to grand jurors.

In that Dec. 29 shooting, Brett Pace, a rural Mills County man suspected of weapons violations, was unarmed when law officers burst into his home and shot him twice in the chest. Pace, 46, had been watching television, officials said.

Council Bluffs Police Officer Tim Fullmer, who was part of a drug task force that had gone to Pace's home, fired the fatal shots, investigators said.

One wonders why toxicology screens might matter when an unarmed man is shot sitting in front of his television? If the man had drugs in his system, for example, could that possibly justify his death?

Beyond that, since these types of incidents recur so often with these type of pseudo-agencies, one wonders how it's possible to justify their continuation? Unaccountable funding, tragic policy outcomes -- it's really true that Byrne task forces aren't just a Texs problem.

The Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee in December recommended abolishing Texas' drug task force system.

Prison health is budget buster

The Statesman's Mike Ward, who has been doing a good job covering Texas prison system budget issues compared to his colleagues in the capitol press corps, checks in this morning to say the UT Medical Branch may pull out of its contract to provide healthcare to prisoners if the 79th Legislature doesn't fork over more money. UT officials expressed concerns that they can't provide a constitutionally acceptable minimum level of care. Bottom line:

Prison officials are requesting $31.8 million to cover expected health care losses through August.

In their budget requests, prison officials have also asked for $674 million for prisoner health care for the two-year budget that begins in August, according to Mike Viesca, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. UTMB provides contract health care to about 119,000 of Texas' estimated 150,000 prisoners, and Texas Tech provides the rest.

Even that number is definitely low-balled. For example, a Hepatitis C epidimic is raging among prisoners, but the state does not pay for diagnostic tests to determine who has the disease, because once they knew someone had the illness, they'd be constitutionally liable for their care. But the budget crisis is deeper than that -- current levels of funding don't even allow for basic care, Ward reports:

Because of a nearly $25 million budget cut two years ago, Raimer said, UTMB was forced to lay off 370 medical employees and curtail some services at all but 25 of its 80 prison clinics. That has decreased access to health care for thousands of convicts and driven up some subsequent treatment costs, he said. At the same time, costs have increased for nurses, pharmacists, medications and an assortment of already expensive treatments.

"We can't go any farther," said [Dr. Ben] Raimer, a physician and former chairman of the state's Correctional Managed Health Care Committee. "I'm certainly not going to be involved with a system that is not constitutional. . . . We're at that line now. One step across it and we're there."

One get so used to hearing bureaucrats poor-mouthing legislative budget committees that it's easy to be dismissive of such dire predictions. But in this case Raimer's right on the money. If the state doesn't willingly pay for healthcare for people it incarcerates, ultimately a judge will likely order them to do so. And if the state doesn't want to foot those costs, maybe it should consider incarcerating fewer people.

UPDATE (2-5): Ward followed up this morning with another piece discussing Texas Tech's prison-health-related financial woes.

TX House Appropriations Chair: No new prisons

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, said in a hearing this morning that Texas can't afford to build new prisons, according to an Austin Statesman article just web published.

"We're going to have to increase the emphasis on probation. There's no question about it," said Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie. "We simply can't afford to build a bunch of new prisons, much less pay to operate them."

In testimony this morning, committee members were told by state budget analysts and prison officials that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice could be out of beds to house new convicts as early as March. It will then have to lease jail beds from counties, at an estimated cost of more than $12 million for the rest of the budget year, which ends Aug. 31.

During the next two years, prison officials say they will need an additional $51 million to lease 3,500 beds. And in five years, official projections show, the system will be 15,000 beds short.

Grits reported earlier that Rep. Pat Haggerty filed HB 575 last month, which is the actual legislative fix on probation that would resolve the overincarceration crisis, at least for the time being. The Statesman article didn't cite the actual legislation, but desccribed the broad outlines of the problem, which regular Grits readers will find familiar.

While prisons will need tens of millions more to maintain the current system, Pitt said other agencies are also seeking increases. In all, he said today he expects there will be $10 billion worth of needs on the table — including school finance reform — beyond what the state needs to maintain current services.

"Obviously, that's a lot more than we have available — so you can see that we're going to have to look at alternatives," Pitt said. "Increasing probation programs is one of the places I think we'll start."

Committee members questioned why so many offenders, who are filling up the prison beds — 15,000 during the last year alone — are there for technical violations of their probation, many for minor infractions such as not paying their probation fees on time. In all, officials said 70,000 convicts in prison today are there because their parole or probation was revoked.

Hearing Jim Pitts speaking enthusiastically about Rep. Haggerty's idea is a very good sign. I've always wondered what would happen when fiscal conservatism finally butted heads with the overreaching tough-on-crime policies that have caused Texas' overincarceration crisis. It's still awfully early, but Pitts' comments are a good sign that fiscal conservatism has a chance of winning out.

Dog sniffs by the book and by the numbers

Ken at CrimLaw has a fine analysis of the recent Caballes case that okayed police use of drug sniffing dogs at traffic stops, while Pete at Drug War Rant crunches the numbers to show how many innocent people will now be subject to unnecessary dog searches. UPDATE: Vice Squad thinks it might not be all bad.

What she said

Ann at Solutions for Texas has posted the handouts she gave to the Senate Finance Committee yesterday along with her testimony regarding the budget of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which operates Texas' prison system. Check them out.

Haggerty bill smart on probation policy

As regular Grits readers know, Texas prisons are full, and the biggest reason is an increase in revoked probations, mostly for "technical violations," not for commission of new crimes. Rep. Pat Haggerty, R-El Paso, a former chairman of the House Corrections Committee, filed HB 575 last month, which adjusts Texas probation laws to provide more incentives for good behavior by probationers and to relieve the overincarceration crisis.

Currently about 455,000 Texans are on probation, in addition to the 151,000+ who are incarcerated in Texas prions and state jails. (And that doesn't even include county jail populations.) Probation can last for as long as ten years, meaning that, even if a probationer stays clean and out of trouble for nine of them, they can still be imprisoned for small mistakes during that tenth that don't rise to the level of criminal behavior.

Plus, the state is 1,000 probation officers short, and in the midst of a prison overincarceration crisis. Ironically, state leaders have said the only way to avoid building more prisons, at a potential cost of billions of dollars, is to use probation services MORE, and incarceration less.

That's where Rep. Haggerty's new bill comes in. His especially smart fix, which he also proposed in 2003, would not only resolve immediate, functional problems with the system but would acrtually establish incentives for better behavior. Under HB 575, "unless in the judge's opinion the best interest of society and the defendant will be served," or if the probated offense is drunk driving or requires the probationer to register as a sex offender, probation would end after completeing one third of the term if no new crime was committed. It would also charge probationers who were released under this provision a $500 early termination fee.

For probationers who were drunk drivers, sex offenders, who commit new crimes (even low-level misdemeanors), or who the judge simply thinks should remain on probation, they must serve out the full probation term received. And of course judges may still terminate community supervision for new crimes. Indeed, any judge can decide any individual probationer should not be released after one-third of the probation period -- all they have to do is include a statement in the record stating why.

That makes a whole lot of sense -- in the big picture, society wants probationers not to commit new crimes. One's messy personal life -- missing meetings or having marijuana show up in a urinalysis -- doesn't justify prison time, especially since such people currently would be taking up space the state needs to house more dangerous offenders. If probationers know they can get off community supervision completely, they have a lot more reason to comply with the rules than if they're stuck for 10 years no matter what. I'm not a big fan of that $500 fee, and I'd like to know what happens for probationers who can't pay it, but overall this bill is a dramatic improvement over current policy.

Fixing probation might cost some new money, which is the reason for that $500 fee, but other sources of funds have been identified. In any event, spending a little now would stave off much bigger expenses later. The only other option: spend up to $2 billion on new prison beds by the end of the decade. With the state's school finance crisis looming over the budget like the sword of Damocles, that seems quite a foolish way to spend that much money.

Libby from Last One Speaks sent me a lovely and much-appreciated note yesterday that mentioned she was impressed when Grits broke stories that weren't in the Texas papers. I have to say, that ain't too damn hard. This bill, which easily is one of the most important pieces of criminal justice legislation in the 79th Texas Legislature, was filed January 25, but has not been covered yet in the Texas media, though his hometown newspaper, the El Paso Times talked to Haggerty about the idea before he filed it.

Bush SOTU promises $$ for DNA testing

Thank heavens Jeralyn took on President Bush's phony-baloney State of the Union claptrap about funding DNA testing and capital defense training to prevent innocent people from being executed. (I was grumpy because I thought I'd have to delve into the egregious, federal "Justice for All" Act.) Bottom line:

If you add up the numbers, $755 million goes to test old rape kits looking for a perpetrator while $25 million is allotted to inmates with innocence claims for dna testing. Add to that another $500 million for crime labs, and you have over $1 billion for crime-fighting and victims and $25 million for inmates with innocence claims.

Like Jeralyn, I'm not ungrateful for the small mitzvah. Plus, some of that crime lab money shouldn't be seen as pro-prosecution, since in many cases crime labs falsely accused folks and the new money might help correct existing problems. But it sure grates to hear President Bush express concern for innocents on death row, since his own record as Texas governor shows he cared little about the subject when he had an opportunity to do something about it.

Better Solutions

Check out Solutions for Texas' first legislative newsletter promoting smart-on-crime solutions to Texas' overincarceration crisis.

Grits as Art?

A man in South Carolina has taken grits from the breakfast table to the artist's studio -- he's painting them! “I found a way to feed my kids and create my artwork out of the same pot,” he announced. Now that's some high-caliber southern ingenuity.

Not long ago I was on the phone with a young Yankee gal who was looking for information on Texas' criminal justice system, and I referred her to this blog. "Grits?" she said. "What are grits?"

"Think of them as redneck polenta," I replied.

Drug task force cites Grits in federal court motion!

Well, it's nice to know somebody's reading this stuff! This blog was cited last month in a Motion for Reconsideration submitted to a Waco federal court by attorneys defending the Byrne-grant funded drug task force in Hearne, which ACLU sued over wrongful arrests and racial profiling.

Regular Grits readers know a lot about these corrupt pseudo-entities that first made national headlines after the infamous Tulia drug stings. (The sheriff's deputy in that case, Tom Coleman, was convicted of perjury in Lubbock last month.)

Here's the story: Grits reported here about U.S. District Judge Walter Smith's ruling that all counties involved are liable for the task force's misbehavior. The national ACLU Drug Policy Litigation Project sued the Hearne task force in 2001 after a widely publicized racial profiling case involving wrongful arrests based on testimony from a lying confidential informant. Now attorneys for Limestone County have asked the judge to reconsider his ruling, and quite humorously, passages from Grits constitute some of their primary arguments!

The attorneys pulled selective quotes from that blog post to try to portray the judge's ruling as some radical interpretation. Citing my comment that the ruling was "HUGE," the court filing intones that ACLU is "hailing the decision as perhaps the most important blow they have been able to inflict in their crusade to abolish narcotics task forces." That's hogwash -- I called it "much bigger, in the scheme of things, than Tom Coleman's perjury conviction," which is true. Coleman's conviction was a footnote to a major story -- in Hearne, the end of the story has yet to be told. However, Governer Perry's pardon of the Tulia defendants, the abolition of the Amarillo task force in the Tulia civil settlement, a Texas' House Committee's recommendation to abolish drug task forces, and decisions by Lubbock, Tarrant County and others to leave task force system all had bigger, real-world impact than this court decision.

Selective quotation is a fun game, to be sure, and certainly Grits' posts are fair game for criticism. But the drug task force's motion pulls quotes out of context to make it sound like I was advocating some radical notion instead of black-letter law. I said the ruling meant that, "in cases like Tulia and Hearne, all counties in a drug task force are liable, even if they weren't remotely involved" (emphasis added by defendants). However, the motion didn't quote portions of the post that would have told the judge that attorneys for other drug task forces agreed with Judge Smith's interpretation of the law! For example:

Lubbock's disbanding of the South Plains task force last year drew lots of media attention. Here's the explanation given for their actions by the Lubbock paper:

Topping the list of Lubbock's concerns was the tremendous level of liability risk for any and all of the cities involved.

As the department responsible for the $655,000 grant that funded the task force, the Lubbock force also was liable for the actions of participating officers in the 18 counties that comprise the task force, according to a police department statement.

One need only recall Amarillo's recent experience with the Tulia drug defendant cases to recognize the tremendous financial liability potential that Lubbock had to take into consideration in making its decision to withdraw. The resulting civil suit and legal settlement from the now-discredited Tulia drug sting cost Amarillo about $5 million.

In that respect, the decision to withdraw from the regional task force was a difficult one, but it also was the right one.

So Lubbock's attorneys also believed they'd be liable for other counties' actions. I guess nobody thought Judge Smith would care about THAT part of my blog post! Similarly, all 26 Panhandle counties paid off in the Tulia civil suit, even though only two agencies were formally involved, because their attorneys and insurance carriers believed, as Judge Smith ruled, that all counties were liable for the task force's actions.

The defense motion correctly notes, by the way, that I'm director of ACLU of Texas' Police Accountability Project. But for the record, this blog is a personal, not an ACLU project.

Oklahoma meth law overhyped

Drug warriors across the country have been falling over themselves to emulate Oklahoma's anti-meth statute, which only allows pseudoephedrine tablets (a "precursor" substance used for making meth) to be sold by a pharmacist. Texas state Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, has proposed SB 107, which emulates Oklahoma's law, and SB 108, which would increase prison sentences for meth production (See prior Grits coverage: 99 is not enough).

OK law enforcement says meth lab busts have declined in Oklahoma by 80% since the statute was implemented.

It may not be that simple, though. According to the Lawton (OK) Constitution (pdf), meth busts have declined there, but over the same period, cocaine use skyrocketed to an "all-time high," with arrests for cocaine increasing by 660%.

So if meth busts declined by 80%, but meth users substituted cocaine, arrests for which increased 660%, did the new policy really curb drug abuse in Oklahoma? It seems a stretch to say so.

Here's an alternative explanation: roughly the same percentage of people appear to be addicted to hard drugs in Oklahoma as before the new meth law, just to a different drug, one supplied by Colombian drug lords instead of local meth cooks. But it's not as though a large number of Okies aren't still sucking powder up their noses.

The Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee has proposed expanding drug courts and treatment programs as a way to actually reduce drug abuse. That seems more productive than just shifting addicts from one drug to another.

Update: "War on Sniffles" harms public safety.