People who call the police for help in a life and death situation have every right to expect the responding officer to be at least as well-trained and professional as the person who cuts their hair or fixes their air conditioner.
We should have similar assurances that the deputy pulling us over for speeding or the jailer locking the cell door holding a murder suspect are being held accountable to local and state legal standards that preserve life, safety and civil liberties.
That may not be the case in Texas, according to a harshly critical report from the Sunset Advisory Commission, the oversight body the Legislature created to ensure state government agencies remain effective or be shut down.
The study showed that the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, the organization responsible for licensing peace officers and regulating state and local police agencies, hasn’t been able to effectively hold police or their departments to sufficient standards. It found that “Texas’ approach has resulted in a fragmented, outdated system with poor accountability, lack of statewide standards, and inadequate training.”
In the wake of the 2015 jail death of Sandra Bland in Waller County, the carnage of the 2019 botched Harding Street raid in Houston and the death in Austin later that year of Javier Ambler after a police stop, scrutiny of police practices and policies is long overdue. The Sunset report only increases the urgency for Houston to move forward on recent recommendations for reform at HPD and for Texas to make fundamental changes at the state level.
The Sunset process, which begins with the staff recommendations, will eventually require lawmakers to pass new enabling legislation for the agencies under review or allow them to close. That’s powerful leverage for lawmakers who believe, as we do, that the Legislature should overhaul the way the state certifies and regulates the 155,000 peace officers, jailers, emergency telecommunications operators and school marshals operating within 2,700 local law enforcement agencies across Texas.
The report makes clear that the current system too often allows officers fired from one department to get hired by another, fails to provide the basic levels of instruction needed to support the demands of a fast-changing profession and does not adequately inform the public about a government service that is crucial to daily life and safety.
A new state system needs to focus on transparency, training and true accountability. That isn’t the case now.
The Sunset report found that Texas requires more time in basic training for cosmetologists (1,000 hours) than for cops (696 hours). Air conditioning and refrigeration contractors, meanwhile, have to put in 2,000 hours of training to get licensed. The Houston Police Department requires at least 48 semester hours of college credit for prospective officers but a high school diploma or GED is enough in other parts of the state.
The type of training officers receive is also out of whack with real world demands. Requiring 48 hours for firearms training and 40 hours for instruction in arrest, search and seizure is appropriate, but the regimen also includes four hours of work on interacting with canines while requiring only two hours on interacting with civilians.
The standard Basic Peace Officer Course includes only four hours for education on “Family Violence, Child Victims, and Related Assaultive Offenses” and no special training for dealing with rape victims.
The fact that larger departments in places such as Houston, Dallas and Harris County mandate, at local expense, more and specialized training for officers only points out how much it is needed as a basic state standard.
This isn’t about creating a one-size-fits-all program. It’s about certifying officers have the knowledge and skills to do vital, dangerous and demanding jobs. The officers themselves will be the first beneficiaries of these stepped-up training requirements. The patchwork approach leaves standards for policing to vary across the state’s 254 counties, 1,200 cities and other jurisdictions, depending on widely disparate resources, department culture and current leadership attitudes about training. That’s not how the law is supposed to work.
