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Open Government, Austin style

For Austinites and proponents of open government there are lots of new posts up at the Open Government Austin blog, including this essay by Susan Bright, a more detailed debunking of the City of Austin's overblown pricetag for putting local government online, and a contribution from first-time blogger and locally renowned Save Our Springs attorney Bill Bunch.

Hip Hop, Snitches, and Witnesses

I've often said I like both kinds of music: Country AND Western. Hip Hop has never been my thing. As a political and cultural phenomenon, though, its influence permeates today's youth culture. So I perked up last year when hip hop artists and advocates began publicly criticizing the practice of "snitching," a subject in which I'm keenly interested. But I've been waiting for hip hoppers promoting the "stop snitching" meme to start making this important distinction proposed by Temple Prof. Marc Lamont Hill on AllHipHop.com:

Snitches vs. Witnesses

In order to fully understand the legitimacy of the "Stop Snitching" movement within hip-hop, it is important to make a distinction between snitching and witnessing. While witnessing can be rightly considered a necessary civic practice in order to create and sustain safe communities, snitching is itself an act of moral turpitude. While a witness is an asset to truth and justice, the snitch is motivated primarily or entirely by self-interest. While witnesses are committed to upholding social contracts, snitches inevitably undermine them. Given this distinction, it seems that the bulk of the public outcry in favor of snitching is actually a plea for witnesses.

That's a really important point, and the failure to make it has been my main concern about the whole "stop snitching" movement currently thriving in black communities across the country. As I wrote last year, "the reason I consider the 'stop snitching' meme on t-shirts an ill advised message isn't that I think criminals should tell on others for reduced sentences -- it's that gangbangers and drug dealers are busy equating 'snitches' with all witnesses in popular culture." Truth is, there are a lot of good reasons not to snitch beyond the fear-based motive that "snitches get stitches." But none of them justify witness intimidation by criminal thugs.

Hill's article examines several cases of prominent hip hop artists who snitched, or like Lil Kim, who refused to do so. Following the lead of Professor Alexandra Natapoff, whose excellent work Grits has hailed previously, Hill identifies ways in which snitching erodes social relationships and cultural norms in the black community:

At a moment when civil liberties are in jeopardy for all Americans due to the Patriot Act and sophisticated forms of domestic spying, the proliferation of snitches creates a new set of problems for ghetto denizens. Increased violence, sustained crime rates, growing distrust of fellow citizens (imagine going to the basketball court, barbershop, or the local bar knowing that one in twelve people in your community — and possibly that guy sitting right next to you — is a government informant), destruction of positive community-police relationships, and the invasion of privacy for law-abiding citizens are all consequences of the ghetto snitch industry. Instead of merely enabling the drug culture's foot soldiers to "flip" on big bosses (the expressed governmental intent of wet snitching), the current system often allows everyone to trade information for leniency, not least because the government is drowning in overstocked dockets and the criminals are masterful manipulators of the truth.

Hill fears that critics of the stop snitching movement "ignore the moral dilemmas that are part and parcel of the [snitching] practice. Also, we ascribe a level of unearned trust and moral authority to formal institutions, such as the government, despite its consistent indifference to the well being of its most defenseless citizens." He also worries, though, that by promoting the "stop snitching" message uncritically, "the hip-hop community creates the conditions for a fundamentalist reading of a 'don't talk to cops' social text. Surely this can lead to the type of moral irresponsibility and social decline that snitching advocates believe already exists," he writes.

Hill's piece is an interesting, needed contribution to the debate surrounding informants, and I hope he's following up in his scholarship. See Grits' prior posts on snitching.

DRC Net dishes Texas drug war corruption, with a side helping of Grits

I've mentioned approvingly how the weekly Drug War Chronicle performs the mitzvah of cataloguing stories of drug-war-related law enforcement corruption across the country. I might turn supplementing their Texas stories into a regular feature. They always seem to have some Texas cases, and there always seem to be a few more lying around Grits' cutting room floor that together add up to a real post.

Most officers never engage in severe misconduct or corruption, but when they do it's a serious breach of public trust. Gathering anecdotes on the blog has been a useful tool for me to identify recurring problems with drug task forces and snitching. Over time patterns arise - like incidents where officers steal confidential informant payments - that you don't always see looking at official reports from open records requests. Similarly, watching DRC Net's compilation every week, the same types of episodes crop up again and again.

This week's installment mentions two Texas cases - one an undercover narc stealing from the confidential informant fund, the other two Border Patrol agents who tried to cover up after shooting a drug dealer in the ass. Reported DRC Net:

In Gatesville, Texas, a Coryell County Sheriff's Deputy who serves as an undercover investigator was placed on paid leave February 22 after being accused of stealing money intended for use in drug buys by the Narcotics Division, KCEN-TV reported. Senior Deputy Gary Medford, a 21-year veteran, is being investigated by the Texas Rangers. Although the investigation began early last month, it was not made public until last week.

In the other Texas case, the story was not about cash-or-drug related corruption but the deeply entrenched blue wall of silence, or whatever that ugly, greenish color would be for the Border Patrol:

In El Paso, Texas, two Border Patrol agents who shot a fleeing drug courier in the buttocks were found guilty March 9 of assault, weapons crimes, tampering with evidence, and deprivation of civil rights. Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean face at least 10 years in federal prison for shooting Osvaldo Andrade Davila, a Mexican citizen, as he fled back across the border when they interrupted his effort to carry a package of drugs into the US. Ramos and Compean also conspired to cover up the shooting by removing spent shell casings from the scene. The pair turned down a plea bargain for 18-month sentences. They have been suspended with pay since the February 2005 incident, and Border Patrol officials said they will now consider firing them.

It's really a great service for the Drug War Chronicle to keep track of these anecdotal examples. Last week DRCNet covered the Troup, TX police department's closure for alleged distribution of dope from the evidence locker.

But they missed a couple of other recent Texas cases. (Who can keep up with them all? I missed the ones they wrote about.) For example, prison guard Curtis Hinson from the Stiles unit in Beaumont was caught near the border last month after a brief highway chase with 21 pounds of marijuana stuffed into the spare tire of his truck. He claims he was set up.

And here's a doozy: In Odessa, Texas, guards at the Ector county jail were allegedly dealing drugs to their obviously captive audience. A local TV-news station reported that:

Three jailers have been arrested and are accused of selling drugs and other contraband to inmates in an Odessa detention center.

Six witnesses, including inmates, assisted authorities in a sting that led to the February arrests of 32-year-old Anthony Moya, 31-year-old Fernando Nieto and 30-year-old David G. Anaya.

Ector County Sheriff Mark Donaldson fired the three after the arrests.

The former Ector County Detention Center jailers are accused of taking contraband to inmates -- including cocaine, marijuana, tobacco and a cell phone.

Prosecutors say in return, the jailers received money and weapons from people the inmates knew outside the jail.

Jailers vending coke, pot, cigarettes and cell phones to inmates - that's what qualifies as room service in the county jail, I guess. I'm reminded of a Grits commenter who once queried, if we can't keep drugs out of prisons and jails, what makes anyone think we can keep them out of schools? It's a good question.

Anyway, that's DRC Net's account of drug war corruption in Texas for the week, with a helping of Grits on the side.

A curious personality

You have to be a bit of a weirdo to spend your time filing open records requests and combing through mounds of government documents, or as the Houston Chronicle put it, possessor of "a curious personality." Apparently I fall into that category. That's cool, though - I'll own it.

As drug task forces around Texas are closing up shop this month, the Chronicle ran an editiorial Monday ("Shine a light," March 12) praising a series of ACLU open records requests that partly led to their demise. Those requests were filed on behalf of ACLU of Texas' police accountability project, which I head, and led to publication this public policy report (pdf) criticizing the task forces' flawed structure. Wrote the Chronicle:

The search process — the filing of petitions and persistence when requests are denied or delayed — can have striking results. About four years ago, the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union studied drug task forces, federally funded, state-controlled units assigned to fight narcotics crimes. Trying to understand their complex structure, the nonprofit filed a public information request for the task forces' arrest statistics, broken down by ethnicity.

No one in state government had ever asked for such data, so the group paid for its own computer analysis. The results showed rampant ethnic discrimination. Last year, partly because of that records request and the state research that followed, Gov. Rick Perry signed a law stripping the units' seized assets unless they followed stringent procedures.

Making use of public records takes vigilance, patience and persistence. It takes a curious personality to file petitions, crunch numbers and study fine print, but the unencumbered right to do so protects everyone.

That's pretty fun, don't you think? The legislation they're talking about was HB 1239 passed last year, of which regular Grits readers are well aware. Since the Austin Statesman is spending so-called "Sunshine Week" bashing Austin's open government online proposal on the May ballot, it's nice to see a newspaper actually come out in favor of open records. (Statesman editors appear to favor open records laws only so long as nobody but their reporters ever use them.)

Want to file your own open records request? Vince has a good post and sample letter on the topic here, and see also this Grits discussion from last year.

What democracy requires is public debate, not information

This is the 1,000th post on Grits for Breakfast.

This blog started as an experiment, grew quickly into a compulsive habit and ultimately an integral part of my activism. Why "Grits for Breakfast"?, I'm frequently asked. Because I wanted a name that sounded like a column title, not something wonky or pretentious. Why not "Grits for Breakfast?" I figured - it's southern, daily, and good for you. What else are you looking for in a friggin blog title, after all?

Blogging has been a fun and useful diversion, plus an outlet for opinions that occasionally I fear a few of my colleagues might think were better left unshared. Grits has also been a way to record events and information important to issues I work on as an activist, a way to piece together big, long-term investigative stories (e.g., monitoring drug task forces) chunk by chunk.

More than that, to me blogs provide a platform to practice what Christopher Lasch called "the Lost Art of Argument" - a way to subject one's ideas and arguments to scrutiny by publishing them and engaging with critics. The comment section changes everything in that regard, plus debates with other bloggers who are more numerous every day. Lasch died prior to the rise of the web and blogs, but I think he would have approved. Before the internet, email, and long before blogging, he saw the need for a new type of media. In the opening lines to a 1989 essay from Harpers (not online) titled "Journalism, Publicity and the Lost Art of Argument" that strongly influenced how I approach Grits for Breakfast, Lasch declared:

Let us begin with a simple proposition: What democracy requires is public debate, not information. Of course it needs information, too, but the kind of information it needs can be generated only by vigorous popular debate. We do not know what we need to know until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our own ideas about the world to the test of public controversy. Information, usually seen as the precondition of debate, is better understood as its by-product. When we get into arguments that focus and fully engage our attention, we become avid seekers of relevant information. Otherwise we take in information passively -- if we take it in at all.

That's exactly what blogs do - they encourage debate among information seekers, at their best moments tapping into what James Suroweicki called the "wisdom of crowds" -- not always, but often enough to be valuable. Sometimes it doesn't become clear what the critical issues are until you flesh out complex subjects in the public arena with opponents. So while I've taken to deleting certain purely trollish, venomous comments when they contain insults but no arguments, I'm actually thankful when critics disagree substantively in the comments. Critics help further the debate and weed out wrong approaches. Plus when other commenters devise convincing counterarguments, or when I do, it helps build the lexicon necessary to craft convincing messages and ultimately policies that address critics' most significant concerns.

Blogs are a less formal place to trot out arguments and messages for a test drive, putting "our own ideas about the world to the test of public controversy" - somewhere to think through an issue rather than report "just the facts." I ain't the AP, though I respect what they do, but blogs play a different role. My goal isn't just to provide information, it's to argue for new approaches and solutions as part of a larger reform movement. In the process, as Lasch predicted, I think more, better and more accurate information is generated as a byproduct.

So that's what I'm doing here, if you ever wondered. (Some days I do.) Thanks for reading, to Grits' commenters thanks for contributing, to fellow bloggers thanks for linking, and we'll see how long it takes to churn out 1,000 more.

Code Words

The managing editor of the Texarkana Gazette complained last week that recommendations from a $59,000 consultant's study were veiled in "code words" hiding their real meaning behind law enforcement jargon. With apologies to Ambrose Bierce, I think I know how to decipher many of the comments that puzzled him. He writes:

According to the study, there is no consistency in the way policies are developed and implement[ed], internal affairs policy is outdated, some captain’s positions should be restructured or eliminated, the department operates with few performance targets or measures, and interactions between the chief and the command staff were limited to infrequent one-on-one meetings.

Huh?

Huh?

I see a lot of this kind of jargon, so allow me to interpret:

Jargon: "There is no consistency in the way policies are developed and implemented"

Translation: "We operate under a good ol' boy system around here so you better go along to get along, pardner."

Jargon: "internal affairs policy is outdated"

Translation: "No, I'm sorry, missy, there's no form to fill out. You can just tell me your complaint and I'll investigate it later when I have the time."

Jargon: "some captain’s positions should be restructured or eliminated"

Translation: "We've got a bunch of bureaucrats around here sitting on their asses not doing a damn thing.

Jargon: "the department operates with few performance targets or measures"

Translation: "We don't know what we're doing or have any idea whether what we do is helping or not," and finally,

Jargon: "interactions between the chief and the command staff were limited to infrequent one-on-one meetings"

Translation: "Most of the top brass are barely on speaking terms and spend more time infighting than running the department."

I actually thought that section was pretty clear. ;-)

Check out Open Government Austin

Between now and the local Austin elections in May I'll be blogging some over at the newly created Open Government Austin blog, helping debunk the mountain of misinformation being thrown at Austin's proposed Open Government Online charter amdendment by scared bureaucrats afraid of public scrutiny. Co-blogger Jordan Hatcher and others, I'm sure, along the way will be participating. Come check it out at opengovaustin.blogspot.com.

Grits will continue to publish during that time, but the Open Government Online amendment needs defending from increasingly mendacious attacks. It's important, I think for this city's future. I know it's critical toward ensuring openness and accountability at the local police department. And after the Austin City Council's blatant abuse of authority at last night's council meeting, I'm now fighting mad. Perhaps you can get a sense of that from the note I sent them this morning:

To the Austin City Council:

For the record, after last night's hearing on ballot language for the open government online amendment, I'm deeply embarrassed by all of you - literally ashamed that each of you represent me in local government.

The Austin Chronicle predicted Mr. McCracken would overreach on the amendments, and he did. The claims about citizen email going online are false on their face. The clear language in the amendment only requires archiving. That was beyond sleazy - it was a betrayal of your duty to your office and the voters. If you care about the truth on that question, please see this blog post. Most of you obviously, can now quit reading.

Like I said, before I viewed this amendment as a good idea that deserved support. Now they've actually pissed me off.

City's claim that emails go on line ridiculous, fiction

Cross-posted at the new Open Government Austin blog.

OH. MY. GOD.

The Austin City Council must literally think nobody's watching them. After hearing the language they placed on the ballot to describe the Open Government Online charter amendment - hell, I might vote against it if any of it were true.

Most angering was the absurd and patently false claim that under the amendment all the public's email--including individual communications to health clinics or police--must be put online in real time. As though anybody wants to look at that many more ads for Valium and Rolex on somebody else's email in real time!!

That's absurd. The amendment only requires that email be archived. That's it. Records retention. The amendment explicitly requires the city to abide by laws related to personal privacy while it generally increases the availability of information online. It does not require posting of emails on line. Here's the entire section of the charter amendment regarding email correspondence:

(C)OPEN ACCESS TO CITY ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS

(1)In order to better preserve written electronic communication for public disclosure, the City must establish a system that automatically archives all incoming and outgoing electronic communication that deals with City business to and from the following people in their official capacity: (a) City Councilmembers and their staff; (b) City Manager and his or her staff; (c) Assistant City Managers and their staff; and (d) all department heads.

(2)The above people are prohibited from discussing City business via any form of written electronic communication, such as a private email account, that is outside of the City’s automatic archiving system.

That's the whole section. Would somebody tell me where that says email goes online?

The City is making ridiculous interpretations of language elsewhere that describes the larger intent of the amendment--to make Austin a leader in open, transparent and online government--but ignoring the specific language on the topic, not to mention state law that makes correspondence about allegations of crime to the police, for example, or personal health information confidential by law.

I'm too angry now to write more, but future blog items, I'm sure, will further dissect the piece of fiction that voters will see representing this amendment on the ballot.

UPDATE: The Statesman has placed the City's misleading ballot language online (pdf), along with their initial coverage. Even though their editorial page opposed the measure, I hope the newspaper will show more integrity than the city council did and explain to the public how biased and misleading this ballot language really is.

Texas cops use tasers as 'high tech batons,' not substitute for guns

According to an article published (March 8) in Fort Worth Weekly:

in many of [Texas'] law enforcement agencies, officers aren’t waiting for a possible life-or-death crisis before they unholster the Taser. Many law enforcement officers are using the yellow-and-black, pistol-gripped weapon as a first-choice persuader — like a high-tech baton. The president of TASER International told Fort Worth Weekly last month that the stun weapons his company manufactures are “not a disciplinary tool” and shouldn’t be used that way. Nonetheless, records reveal that the weapons, marketed as an alternative to lethal force, are being used in situations where lethal force would almost never be used — as a routine way of gaining compliance from people who are offering no violence or threat.

The Weekly examined thousands of pages of records about Taser use in Texas, discovering sometimes extreme examples like in Wichita County where jail inmates routinely are tasered for having their hands outside their cells. “If Tasers are supposed to replace guns,” asked a man in Austin who received multiple shocks for playing music on the sidewalk, then if the officers hadn’t had Tasers, “would I have been shot for playing classical guitar?” Good question.

A capital victory and a capital embarassment

Congrats to Rob Owen and Jordan Steiker of the UT-Austin Capital Punishment Clinic for winning punishment-phase relief from the egregious Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for Robert Tennard, after the US Supreme Court overruled the Fifth Circuit's earlier refusal to permit consideration of Tennard's 67 IQ. Once again, CrimProf blog has the story.

The same blog post discusses another instance where the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals thumbed its nose at the US Supreme Court, this time in the face of a prior bench-slapping in the case. "The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied relief to Laroyce Smith, holding that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision finding error in his case did not warrant relief because Smith had not shown sufficient harm resulting from the error. In Smith's case, the Supreme Court had found that the sentencing instructions prevented jurors from considering Smith's difficult background, low I.Q., and learning disabilities." Doc Berman may think the Supreme Court's attention to these cases is a "capital waste of time," but somebody's got to rein in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which truly is a statewide embarassment. Small wonder Texas Monthly called it Texas' worst court.

Good lawyering. Good blogging.

On being Billy Madison

A US bankruptcy judge in San Antonio, Leif M. Clark, denied a defendant's motion in February for "incomprehensibility," offering this hilarious analysis in his judgment's sole footnote:

in the words of the competition judge to Adam Sandler’s title character in the movie, “Billy Madison,” after Billy Madison had responded to a question with an answer that sounded superficially reasonable but lacked any substance,

"Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response was there anything that could even be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

Deciphering motions like the one presented here wastes valuable chamber staff time, and invites this sort of footnote.

Download the full, brief order here. Via CrimProf Blog.

US policies worsen out-of-control border

This is nuts. We train Mexican anti-drug forces, the drug cartels hire them. We ban meth precursors, the drug cartels get richer. Beefed up Border Patrols result in doubling illegal immigration. Gunplay on both sides of the border has become common as dirt. It's hard to deny the futility of America's failed security strategy on the Texas-Mexico border, as these recent news reports attest:

• That training at Fort Benning really paid off, didn't it? According to the Washington Times, an FBI bulletin says a group of coyotes (immigrant smugglers) is paying protection money to Los Zetas, the US-trained Mexican special forces team that defected to work for one of the major drug cartels. "Los Roqueros reportedly pays smuggling rights or 'a quota' to the Zetas, former Mexican military officers trained in the United States as elite anti-drug specialists who have since deserted and signed on as mercenaries for drug smugglers. About 200 Zetas are thought to be headquartered in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, but have expanded their operations all along the Texas border." The bulletin says Los Roqueros have given orders to "shoot to scare" Border Patrol agents.
  
• All hell breaking loose in Nuevo Laredo. The Tamaulipas state police chief and another officer were assassinated and two more injured in a hail of gunfire yesterday in Nuevo Laredo. "Investigators recovered more than 100 bullet casings from R-15 and Kalashnikov assault rifles from the scene, police said." As of yesterday, 42 people have died in ambush-style shootings in Nuevo Laredo since the beginning of the year.
• Beware 'overt' movements at border traffic stops. A Hudspeth County Sheriff's Deputy shot an unarmed 19-year old marijuana smuggler on Saturday, firing ten shots after the young mule allegedly made an "overt move" toward his waist during a traffic stop. No weapon was found in the vehicle. Something doesn't sound right there - I'd like to see the video from that one. Video from another recent incident in Hudspeth County failed to support deputies' story.
• Because Mexican drug cartels don't have enough money. In a bit of a non-sequitur, the US Senate added anti-meth amendments to the Patriot Act requiring peudoephedrine to be placed behind the counter. As Grits has noted previously, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin pointed out that "States that have placed restrictions on sales of medicines containing pseudoephedrine have experienced a rise in stimulants coming from Mexican cartels."
• Results from immigration crackdown - 1 in 20 US workers illegal residents: The New York Times reported Sunday, "Demographers estimate that six million to seven million illegal immigrants are working in the United States; that is some 5 percent of the nation's work force. ... The current approach hasn't halted illegal immigration: some 400,000 to 500,000 illegal immigrants enter the United States every year, almost double the rate of the 1980's, before the buildup in border enforcement."

Honestly, can anything good be said about our current approach to border security? Even so, the only proposals you ever see are to throw more money at the same failed strategies.

Vote in the Koufax Awards

Primaries, shmimaries. Let's focus instead on the really important vote: Over at Wampum, polls are now open for the 2005 Fourth Annual Koufax Awards, which honor the best blogs on the left. (The award is named after renowned southpaw pitcher Sandy Koufax.) Rush over now to check out the wonderful array of bloggy goodness nominated this time around.

Last year Grits for Breakfast was thrilled to share the award for Best Single Issue Blog with the estimable Talk Left, one of the blogosphere's big guns and best daily reads. This year Grits has been nominated again for Best Single Issue Blog and in a new category, Best State or Local Blog. Competition is stiff in both areas, but I'd appreciate your support.

You can only vote once and for one blog in each category. The current round of voting picks finalists for the awards. After the field has been narrowed, there will be one more round to choose the winners.

Voting is easy: Just leave a comment that says "Grits for Breakfast" here for Best Single Issue blog and here for Best State and Local. (Scroll to the bottom to post and be patient - the pages seem to be taking a while to load.) Or if you'd like your ballot to be secret, e-mail Dwight or Mary Beth with your vote - be sure to tell them which categories you're voting in.

Texas was well-represented among bloggers honored with nominations in Best State and Local Blog including Burnt Orange Report, Dos Centavos, In the Pink Texas, The Jeffersonian, Off the Kuff, The People's Republic of Seabrook, Pink Dome, the Red State, Texas Civil Rights Review, and Yellow Doggerel Democrat. I also notice that Pete at Drug War Rant garnered a nomination for Best Single Issue Blog. Congrats and good luck to all, though of course y'all know who you're supposed to vote for!

Blaming the messenger: Police must face up to profiling data

Criticizing racial profiling data for disparities in how drivers are treated is a bit like blaming the bathroom scale when you overeat instead of improving your diet and exercising more.

Luflkin police chief Larry Brazil said last week that the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition's analysis of his department's racial profiling data was "flawed," but the study's calculations were based entirely on the department's own reporting. Reported the Lufkin Daily News ("Police dispute profiling statistics," March 5):

Black drivers are 2.7 times more likely than whites when stopped by police to be asked to consent to a search of their vehicles during traffic stops in Lufkin, and Latinos are 1.9 times more likely to be asked than whites, according to a report by the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, using 2004 data collected and released by Lufkin Police.

But when the reporter took the department's original report and crunched the numbers, she came up with the same figures.

Numbers from Lufkin's 147 consent searches, broken down by race, included: 61 whites, 60 blacks and 26 Hispanics, according to the department's report.

The consent search numbers seem fairly level between black and whites, until you consider the difference in total traffic stops by race versus how many of each race's stops ended in searches. Of the 10,850 total stops, 6,727 were white and 2,476 were black.

Of whites pulled over, .91 percent were consent searched. For blacks, the number grows to 2.4 percent — hence the coalition's proportional numbers.

So where's the flaw? I sure don't see it. That's pretty much 8th grade math. Instead, Chief Brazil's comments appear to misunderstand what data was being analyzed in the report.

Brazil cited what he said were potential problems statewide in using census and jurisdictional information to set minority population numbers. He likened it to using the population moving through Diboll on U.S. Highway 59 as a sample representation of that city's racial makeup — a flawed method, Brazil said.

Problem is, the TCJC study doesn't compare traffic stop data to census or population figures - it compares search data to stop data. While it's true there's no generally accepted baseline to determine who is driving on the roads, by definition people who are searched at traffic stops are a subset of who is stopped. And since Lufkin PD officers gather the data themselves about the race of drivers they pull over, that number can be known. If the data is flawed, it could only be because Lufkin PD reported bad information, not because TCJC compared it improperly. They simply took the numbers LPD gave them and did the math.

(Personally I think disputes about what "baseline" or denominator traffic stops should be compared to are overblown - in previous studies that used multiple baselines, disparities remained about the same no matter what the reference point.)

That said, I agree with Chief Brazil "who called for a uniform reporting format and data benchmarks." The chief complained of "a lack of legislative clarity on gathering data. There is no standard collection method from agency to agency, and no standard number constituting racial disproportion, Brazil stated."

Legislation that would have created better standards for gathering and analyzing racial profiling data passed in the Texas Senate in 2005, but did not clear the House because of opposition from police unions who want departments to stop gathering data altogether.

Lufkin PD was one of the agencies that did a good job on the front end implementing Texas' racial profiling law, and their policy was judged one of the better ones in the state in a 2002 study by ACLU of Texas comparing departmental policies to requirements in the law. But data speaks for itself, and Lufkin officers inarguably are more likely to consent search minority drivers than white ones, regardless of the chief's best intentions.

There's an easy solution, though, if the chief is concerned about the perception: Stop wasting time on consent searches where officers don't have probable cause. Groups like TCJC, NAACP, LULAC, ACLU and the National Rifle Association supported legislation to ban consent searches in Texas last year. New Jersey, Minnesota, Rhode Island and the California Highway Patrol have already done away with consent searches because they're coercive and potentially discriminatory.

At a minimum, if the chief thinks those disparities are too high he should begin requiring his officers to obtain written consent before searching - when the Austin PD began requiring written consent, the number of people consenting to searches declined by 63%, and the racial disparity also diminished.

It's probably true, as the Lufkin paper reported, that the disparities in who is consent searched at traffic stops "did not reflect the department's anti-profiling stance." But that doesn't mean they're not accurate. Now the department needs to own up to the numbers they report. If those figures don't reflect the department's "stance" then the chief needs to change his policies to reflect his community's real values. His comments in Sunday's paper amount to blaming the scale for an expanding waistline.

For consent search statistics from other Texas law enforcement agencies, see the report (pdf) from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition and these area-specific fact sheets analyzing local numbers. Also, see prior Grits coverage of TCJC's report here and here.

Drug interdiction driving racial profiling in Fort Bend Sheriff consent searches

Drug interdiction units on major highways in Fort Bend County (southwest of Houston) account for the high rate of consent searches there, according to comments by the Sheriff in the Houston Chronicle ("Searches for minorities still more likely," March 5). I'd written earlier how out of whack consent search figures were for the Fort Bend Sheriff compared to neighboring agencies, and now we know why. Wrote reporter Steve McVicker:

Figures for the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office also were well above the state average.

The [Texas Criminal Justice Coalition] found that 13 percent of the drivers stopped in traffic investigations in Fort Bend were searched without probable cause. Anglos were searched more than 11 percent of the time, blacks were searched 18.4 percent of the time, and Hispanics almost 16 percent.

Sheriff Milton Wright defended his department's aggressive search policy, noting that both Interstate 10 and U.S. 59 — which he called "major drug corridors" — run through Fort Bend County. He added that searching for drugs is the mission of the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force, in which his department is a partner.

"We have (a drug) interdiction unit that stays on the road at least eight hours a day, and sometimes we run two shifts," Wright said. "If (motorists) give us permission, we search. If they don't, unless we have probable cause to go further, then we release them. I think we're doing what we're supposed to do."

The rate of searches by other agencies in the Houston HIDTA fell well below Fort Bend's. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office conducted nonprobable-cause searches 2.8 percent of the time overall. In Beaumont, the county seat, police searched drivers in 1.1 percent of their traffic stops.

From those comments it sounds like Fort Bend deputies ask permission to search everyone they pull over, though we know from the department's reported statistics they're more likely to search when they pull over black and Latino drivers. Searching that many innocent people amounts to a fishing expedition completely unrelated to fighting crime - since only a tiny fraction of searches without probable cause find contraband, the Sheriff's policy diverts officers away from combating confirmed criminal activity in his jurisdiction.

Why waste so much valuable officer time in unproductive searches? Two words: Asset forfeiture. Or if you prefer: Profit motive. Otherwise, it's just an excuse to harass motorists who officers have no reason to believe have done anything wrong. That definitely doesn't make anyone safer - it's the law enforcement version of playing the lotto.

For more on consent searches and statistics for law enforcement agencies across Texas, see this report (pdf) from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition and these area-specific fact sheets analyzing local numbers.

More problems than Tulia caused drug task forces to close

Even as Texas' Byrne-grant funded drug task forces are shutting down, task force officials still appear to be in denial about problems these rogue agencies have faced across the state. Over and over we see officials claim they're being blamed for what happened in Tulia, when really these agencies have been unaccountable more or less across the board. Reporting in the Bryan-College Station Eagle ("Funds drying up for drug task force," March 5), Holly Huffman quoted Brazos County Sheriff Chris Kirk promoting that meme:

"We've seen legislatively over the last two sessions efforts to defund and even deorganize the task forces, and it basically comes back to all the bad press that the task forces got from the Tulia incident and one or two other incidents," Kirk said last week, referencing a discredited, racially charged drug bust in West Texas that sent innocent people to jail. "That's a very broad brush to be using on all the task forces in the state. We ran one of the better task forces in the state - completely above board."

He added: "We've operated a good task force here. We're unfortunately penalized by a media storm for a couple of bad incidents."

One or two other incidents? Try a couple of dozen or so, that we know of, including the one in Hearne just down the road from Bryan. See p. 5 of this public policy report (pdf) from ACLU of Texas, and p. 13 of this one (pdf) for more Texas drug task force scandals, as well as this in-depth case study and other examples cited on Grits. I've argued previously that's because of their flawed structure -- Byrne task forces are federally funded, state managed, locally staffed and therefore accountable to no one. That structural glitch causes these unaccountable agencies to face similar problems in other states, too.

Ironically, the same Eagle article alluded to problems with the Brazos Valley task force, too: "College Station police administrators pulled their officers in 2004, citing continuing problems with task force leadership," reported Huffman. That's a participating agency criticizing their task force's leadership, not the ACLU or Grits for Breakfast - and it has nothing to do with Tulia.

As the saying goes, denial is not just a river in Egypt - it apparently also runs fast and deep through the minds of many in Texas drug enforcement.

Dallas PD snitch reforms don't do enough

Talk about too little, too late. The "reforms" to confidential informant practices at Dallas PD after the Dallas fake drug scandal strike me as a half-assed response to one of the worst drug war scandals in Texas history.

Last year auditors said the Dallas PD narcotics division hadn't fixed problems with handling confidential informants identified after the infamous 2001 fake drug scandal. They now say some but not all of their recommendations have been implemented, reported the Dallas Morning News ("DPD makes strides," March 4), but the details in the article don't inspire confidence. The paper said:

In its original report, the city panel criticized police supervisors for failing to oversee sloppy work performed by narcotics detectives and "glaring absences" in paperwork.

The panel also found that documents in the fake-drug cases were so incomplete or illegible that there are still questions about what happened to more than $400,000 in cash payments that fired narcotics Detective Mark Delapaz said he paid to his informants in late 2001.

In the follow-up audit, the panel found some inconsistencies in paperwork, and the majority of those proved to be "merely clerical errors." Still, the panel recommended that supervisors be required to read all investigative reports, including arrest reports, to ensure that they are consistent with one another.

Many of the panel's recommendations had been implemented, the report found, including keeping a set of fingerprints for each confidential informant, checking the legal status of informants, keeping a running tab on payments to informants, doing a better job of documenting signatures, conducting regular audits of paperwork and ensuring that conversations with confidential informants are taped when possible.

In some cases, the department implemented an alternative version of the panel's recommendations. The panel, for example, had called for issuing debit cards and personal identification numbers to informants to help improve oversight. Money would be transferred into the informant's account when a drug buy was made.

The department instead implemented a policy mandating that informants receiving $1,000 or more for a drug buy be paid at the narcotics division office with a supervisor present.

Those are minimalist fixes that might keep officers from stealing large amounts of money like Officer Mark Delapaz allegedly did, but do nothing to stop lying informants from falsely accusing innocent people. Recording conversations with snitches "when possible," for example, means inevitably when something improper is discussed those conversations won't be recorded. It's a loophole you could drive a truck through. What's more, the department failed to implement all the recommendations, and continues to use officers who helped convict innocent people in the first place:

The panel did not agree with how the department implemented a new rotation policy for the narcotics division. The panel had recommended that the department rotate officers below the rank of sergeant out of street squads after five years and that they not be allowed to return for at least two years.

The department instituted the five-year rotation but allowed officers to return after one year. The panel also warned the department not to circumvent its own policy by allowing officers to be on special assignment in the narcotics division.

The panel also criticized Chief Kunkle for allowing a detective who had been connected to the fake-drug cases to transfer back into the narcotics division on special assignment.

That detective had been investigated for possibly making inconsistent or misleading statements in court testimony. Chief Kunkle allowed the detective to transfer back after finding that the allegations could not be proved.

The panel, however, concluded that "strong evidence exists to support the allegation that [the officer] gave conflicting or misleading testimony," the report said.

Unbelievable - eight DPD narcotics officers signed documents claiming field tests were postive for drugs when they turned out later to be fake, but only two of them were ever fired and indicted. Now they're apparently cycling those guys back into the city's narcotics unit. That's an outrageous breach of trust to allow officers who were involved in the fake drug scandal to continue to work narcotics. It's evidence that the Dallas PD isn't serious about cleaning up narcotics enforcement despite these minimalist reforms.

Prosecutors improperly withheld confession in death penalty case

In a rare reversal based on prosecutor misconduct ("harmless error" is usually their mantra), the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of Anthony Graves, who has been on Texas death row for the past 12 years. Reported Harvey Rice in the Houston Chronicle ("Death-row inmate may get new trial," March 4):

Prosecutors withheld two statements that could have changed the minds of jurors who convicted Anthony Graves of killing a woman and five children in Burleson County 12 years ago, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a decision by a Galveston federal judge and ordered a new trial for Graves, 40, who has been on death row since his conviction.

The appeals court said in a 22-page opinion that the withheld statements could have discredited testimony by the state's key witness, Robert Carter, who was executed for the slayings.

Although Carter's testimony convicted Graves, he proclaimed Graves' innocence moments before his execution.

The appeals court said that Charles Sebesta, then district attorney for Burleson and Washington counties, failed to tell Graves' lawyers that the night before the trial, Carter said: "I did it all myself, Mr. Sebesta. I did it all myself."

Think what chutzpah it took for prosecutors to withhold the recantation of their main witness from the defense, much less for the district judge to say it would have made no difference in the trial! "The appeals court decision overturns a recommendation by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Froeschner that was adopted by U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent," reported Rice.

This is what happens when prosecutors seek convictions instead of justice. Read the opinion (pdf)

Red light cameras in Houston delayed

BlogHouston has more, and the Houston Chronicle covered it this morning.