Name: Blistering report blasts poor training, oversight of Texas law enforcement
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Blistering report blasts poor training, oversight of Texas law enforcement

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateLast year, more than 600 Texas law enforcement officers received a dishonorable discharge from their agencies for misconduct. Yet more than a quarter of them were rehired to work as sworn officers.To qualify for a peace officer license, Texas cops need fewer hours of basic training than licensed cosmetologists and less than half the education required of air-conditioning and refrigeration contractors. While the basic training requires officers to spend 48 hours on the firing range, it demands only two hours of “civilian interaction” instruction.The difficulty of purging bad officers from the ranks of Texas police and outdated and inadequate officer training highlight how state lawmakers have rendered the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement unable to meaningfully oversee the profession, according to a blistering new report by the Sunset Advisory Commission. The commission reviews the performance of state agencies every 10 years or so.More Crime NewsThe Sunset Advisory Commission’s critical findings come amid a contentious nationwide re-evaluation of the fundamental role of police. The deaths of Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and George Floyd, among others, have prompted calls for stronger oversight from police departments and civilian review boards, as well as stricter limits on police use of force.But in Texas, the regulation of law enforcement is “by and large, toothless,” the Sunset report concluded.UNSOLVED:Although it is charged with licensing police and correctional officers and 911 dispatchers, the law enforcement commission differs from state agencies that regulate other professions in that it has almost no authority to act against an officer’s license. Instead, most oversight of police conduct is left up to each of the state’s 2,700 law enforcement agencies, which set their own policies and standards.Without a shared definition of professional conduct, many have widely differing rules. For example, “In the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, chokeholds are an acceptable technique west of the 3200 block of Sandy Lane, but are not allowed on the east side of the same street because it crosses two different … jurisdictions,” the Sunset report found.Texas’ patchwork of uneven oversight has resulted in “a fragmented, outdated system with poor accountability, lack of statewide standards, and inadequate training,” the Sunset report stated.While advocacy groups and demonstrators have demanded better police oversight, they also have called on cities to reallocate millions of dollars from law enforcement budgets into community services. That, in turn, has sparked swift blowback from conservative politicians and supporters of law enforcement. In Austin, a lawmaker recently filed prohibiting local governments from cutting police budgets.‘You seem nervous’:Washington-based criminologist Matthew Hickman said the protests and impassioned conversations about police reform have revealed holes in how municipalities, states and the federal government oversee law enforcement officers.Accountability starts at the department level, he said, with internal affairs investigation. At the other end, in the most egregious circumstances, the Department of Justice can pursue civil rights investigations against problem departments.Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, said the Sunset report was just the beginning of the process of state lawmakers’ evaluation of the law enforcement commission. Legislators will hold hearings next year and almost certainly change some of the Sunset staff’s recommendations.“What you’re seeing there is not going to be state law,” he said. While his organization agreed some changes were needed, he said, it opposed granting the state commission sweeping new enforcement powers to investigate and discipline officers.Still, policing watchdogs said the report’s findings rang true. “Right now, it definitely feels like at the state level, there’s little to no regulation of law enforcement that’s happening,” said Chris Harris of the nonprofit public interest justice center Texas Appleseed, “and to the extent there is, it’s not effective.”NARCOTICS INTERDICTION:And one key Houston-area legislator said he was inclined to make some changes. Reforms to the agency are “long overdue,” said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, who said the Texas law enforcement commission should operate more like other regulatory boards such as the State Bar of Texas or the State Board of Pharmacy.The report was notable for its sweepingly critical evaluation of nearly every facet of the agency, calling its regulation of the profession “fundamentally broken.” It said the changes it recommended were stopgap and called for legislators to form a blue ribbon committee “to comprehensively look at how the state regulates law enforcement and recommend needed changes to improve law enforcement regulation in Texas.”It took particular note of the state’s inability to discipline officers for misconduct. It pointed to a recent incident in which the San Antonio Police Department fired an officer for giving a homeless man a sandwich filled with dog feces. Yet the officer, Matthew Luckhurst, was able to return to the force. He was later fired — for good — after another feces-related incident.The example highlighted the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement’s limited authority to take any action against an officer’s state license. The agency may act only when officers fail to complete mandatory continued education, if they are convicted of or received deferred adjudication for felonies or certain misdemeanors, or if they receive a second dishonorable discharge. The agency has even less authority to sanction individual law enforcement agencies.Roger Goldman, retired law professor from the Saint Louis University School of Law, said that about two-thirds of states have stronger oversight abilities at the state level than Texas, and that in many states, officers can have their licenses revoked for misconduct even if they haven’t been convicted of a crime.Many states across the country are taking other tacks to try to prevent bad officers from getting hired at other departments after allegations of gross misconduct.FIREARMS TRAFFICKING:Some states are now requiring departments to screen candidates more rigorously. In Vermont, for example, lawmakers passed a bill requiring departments to provide information about why they fired officers to other departments when those officers try to get new jobs. In Connecticut, lawmakers implemented rules requiring regulators to create a list of officers fired for serious misconduct but whose licenses were not decertified. The list prevented officers from being rehired by other departments, Goldman said.Matt Simpson, with the ACLU of Texas, said that while the Sunset review recommended a panel to study needed changes, lawmakers in the meantime should “ensure public safety is not threatened” by unqualified cops and pass reforms to give the law enforcement commission more authority to discipline officers dishonorably discharged, as well as empower the agency to sanction law enforcement agencies that “fail to hold up their end of the bargain in hiring and training qualified law enforcement officers.”Simpson also urged the Legislature to pass reforms that set statewide use of force standards and require a focus on de-escalation and proportional response; require officers to intervene if they witness other officers using excessive force; and pass citation requirements for low-level offenses.st.john.smith@chron.comeric.dexheimer@chron.com

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateLast year, more than 600 Texas law enforcement officers received a dishonorable discharge from their agencies for misconduct. Yet more than a quarter of them were rehired to work as sworn officers.To qualify for a peace officer license, Texas cops need fewer hours of basic training than licensed cosmetologists and less than half the education required of air-conditioning and refrigeration contractors. While the basic training requires officers to spend 48 hours on the firing range, it demands only two hours of “civilian...

Blistering report blasts poor training, oversight of Texas law enforcement

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