Police gun law starts shakily

Some agencies failing to report officers’ shootings

Several police agencies around the state — including the Texas Department of Public Safety — appear to be out of compliance with a new law requiring law enforcement agencies to report all officerinvolved shootings to the Attorney General’s Office.

House Bill 1036 requires that agencies provide certain details such as the ages, gender and races of officers and suspects involved, as well as whether the suspect was armed, injured or killed.

It also requires law enforcement agencies to report incidents in which suspects shoot officers.

Agencies must report shootings within 30 days, and the AG’s office has five days to post reports online.

The creation of the database comes after almost a year of nationwide scrutiny of law enforcement’s use of force, following a series of lethal incidents between peace officers and civilians that led to riots and protests in many cities.

News organizations also discovered that federal data collection did not count many incidents across the country,

spurring some outlets to create their own databases.

Databases maintained by the Washington Post and the Guardian count 13 fatal shootings in Texas by police since Sept. 1 — six in that month alone.

Those databases do not count officer-involved shootings that are not fatal.

Just half were listed

According to the data from the AG’s office, which does, there have been 24 officer-involved shootings since Sept. 1 and one incident in which an officer was shot.

However, criminal justice watchdogs noted that just half of September’s fatal shootings listed on the Post and Guardian databases appeared in the AG’s database.

Three shootings — in Ponder, McKinney and Paris — were not listed. In two of the incidents, police said civilians were killed after firing at law enforcement officers.

In the incident in Paris, a DPS highway trooper approached a man sitting on a highway barrier.

The man, who was unarmed, became belligerent, causing the DPS trooper to shoot him with a Taser, then his firearm, officials have reported.

The trooper also was injured in the incident, which is not posted on the AG’s database, though another DPS trooper-involved incident from Sept. 13 does appear on the list of reports.

“While bumps are expected when a new law comes into effect, the early compliance issues point to underlying problems that ... no person or office is charged with enforcement, and there are no penalties for noncompliance,” Amanda Woog wrote on the blog Grits For Breakfast, which first pointed out the discrepancies. “If the law is not enforced, or at least monitored, incomplete data will undermine the value of the information.”

‘It’ll get corrected’

Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire said he would be calling DPS to find out why the Paris shooting was not on the list but also chalked it up to the newness of the law.

“They want to comply,” he said. “If there’s missing information, it’ll get corrected real quick.”

Whitmire also said legislators might revisit the legislation if problems about reporting shootings persist.

“There’s not a piece of legislation that can’t be improved,” he said. “This is a pretty bold concept. We’ll monitor it, and if we need to put some teeth in it, or greater enforcement, we will.”

Katherine Wise, a spokeswoman with the Attorney General’s Office, said the agency had not received any reports from the three officer-involved shootings, referring additional questions to the agencies where the incidents occurred.

“We are only a repository for this information, not an authority,” she said.

Tom Vinger, a DPS spokesman, said Friday afternoon that DPS officials submitted the report from the Paris shooting earlier in the day and that the information had also been posted on the agency’s website.

“This is a new law, and we are finalizing procedures to ensure that the required reports are posted to our website and submitted to the AG’s Office in compliance with the new law,” he said.

Education efforts

Anna Clark, a McKinney spokeswoman, said the department sent its paperwork to the AG’s office via certified mail and received confirmation it was received within the 30-day window.

“We’re now checking with the AG’s office about why it hasn’t been posted,” she said.

Gretchen Grigsby, spokeswoman for the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which oversees the state’s law enforcement agencies, said the commission was still working to educate departments and officers about the new law through a recent newsletter.

The commission also was including information about the law in required training all officers receive bi-annually.

“Over time, all officers will be required to go through this course and will get at least some information on it,” she said.

The Houston Police Department earlier this year created its own database for officer-involved shootings in Houston.

Calls to the Ponder Police Department were not answered.