Much ado about ‘defunding’ in Harris County

In Harris County, despite an increase in law enforcement spending across the board for several years, somehow a narrative of “defunding the police” is taking hold.

To clarify: neither county judge candidate — both of whom are eager to hang this label on the other — actually wants to cut police budgets. Far from it. Yet, in the bizarre upside-down reality that is election season, “defunding” is a misnomer. Each candidate, Judge Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat, and her opponent, Alexandra del Moral Mealer, a Republican, is applying the term, er, liberally, if you will, to prove she is the one who would shower more money on law enforcement agencies.

In a county where more than twothirds of likely voters list public safety as the most important issue in picking their next county judge, in part because of a pandemic-era surge in violent crime, carving out any advantage as a crime fighter could swing the race. In reality, when it comes to actually reducing crime in our region, the size of the police budget won't matter as much as how that money is spent.

Mealer is unabashedly staking her entire campaign on the crime issue. She has consistently hammered Hidalgo on public safety, straining to depict the incumbent as more focused on unnecessary social services than giving law enforcement agencies the necessary resources to do their jobs. Mealer has stepped up her attacks recently, accusing Hidalgo of cutting law enforcement budgets, when in fact public safety makes up two-thirds of the county's proposed budget in which the sheriff and constable offices were to get boosts in funding.

Last week, Mealer proposed the framework of a plan she believes will be far more effective in making the county safer. She promised to hire 1,000 new law enforcement officers over the next two years if elected, a number that comes close to matching previous requests made by Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. Mealer estimated the additional officers — which would be spread across the sheriff 's office, constables and county jail — would cost $100,000 each, roughly 5 percent of the county's $2.2 billion budget.

“This is a good framework that law enforcement thought we could actually achieve,” Mealer told the editorial board days after the press conference.

Hidalgo, meanwhile, told us that Mealer's plan is a “very successful campaign line,” that would inevitably grab headlines.

Hidalgo believes that the budget proposal she has put forward reflects a more holistic, realistic approach. The sheriff 's office and constables would still get a significant boost in funding — $97 million more than the previous fiscal year — including pay raises for some “frontline deputies.”

“There was this kind of ethos that my opponent wants to take us back to — that the county can only be a onetrick pony,” Hidalgo told the editorial board. “So you can only do roads and bridges, you can only fight crime, but don't talk about maternal mortality, don't talk about childcare, don't talk about veterans.”

Mealer believes her plan reflects the urgency of the moment, and some data support that. Harris County law enforcement agencies tallied 632 homicides in 2021, a 12 percent increase from the previous year, according to DPS data. Hiring more officers could help. One study found that there is one murder abated per year for every 10 to 17 police officers hired in large U.S. cities.

Mealer's plan would include pay raises for all new hires, which will make squeezing 1,000 new positions into the budget without slashing key social services — which Mealer insists she doesn't want to do — all the more challenging. Mealer said she would start by tapping federal COVID relief funds that are still available, but that she would also take a scalpel to county agencies, such as the county administrator's office, whose headcount, she claims, has grown substantially under Hidalgo, and institute a hiring freeze.

“I will go department by department, I'm not just going to do a uniform, top-down cut,” Mealer said.

Yet any additional resources poured into law enforcement must account for the fact that, thankfully, violent crime figures across the county, including homicides, are finally starting to decline through the first half of this year. It seems at least some of that reduction can be attributed to the sheriff 's microzones policing initiative — a program Hidalgo and county commissioners funded — in unincorporated parts of the county where violent crime is high.

Maj. Thomas Diaz, who leads the sheriff 's Crime Analysis Intelligence Division team, told the editorial board that violent crime in the micro zones has decreased by 14 percent, according to the most recent 60-day data.

The Dallas Police Department — an agency similarly struggling to hire new officers — has also had success with a broader version of this program. In collaboration with criminologists, Dallas PD used data to map out roughly 50 micro zones that produced the highest volume of violent street crime and flooded those areas with a consistent police presence. In the 12 months since the program started, street-level violent crimes have decreased by 11.5 percent.

The early success of these programs in Harris County and Dallas seems to indicate that law enforcement agencies are, in fact, quite adept at doing more with less. We're sure the sheriff would love to have his request for 645 new deputies filled, and Diaz conceded that, but he suggested that the mere number of officers isn't as important as the functions they'd serve. What he'd really like to see is more investigators who are critical to actually solving crimes, rather than simply making the street-level arrests.

Mealer might be better off expanding the microzones program than throwing more money at the constables, who have seen budget increases in each of the past two fiscal years, and would again under the proposed 2023 budgets, even though the burden of fighting violent crime largely lies elsewhere. The constables' usefulness has long been in question, and the sheriff estimates that his department handles upwards of 70 percent of violent crimes and a far higher percentage of murders.

Of course, none of this matters if

Jack Cagle and Tom Ramsey, the two Republican county commissioners, continue their boycott of Hidalgo's proposed budget. By skipping the Commissioners Court meeting last week and depriving the court of a quorum, the county will be forced to adopt a lower budget. That would mean $42 million less for the sheriff 's office and $5 million less for District Attorney

Kim Ogg's office.

During an appearance Wednesday on a conservative radio show, Ramsey said he decided not to attend the meeting after the court rejected his idea to spend an additional $20 million to hire 200 patrol officers. The logic to Cagle and Ramsey's strategy escapes us. The last time they did it, it was to block a hefty tax hike.

But this time, by taking their ball and going home they will prevent officers from getting raises and may force law enforcement agencies to freeze hiring or cut open positions. If that's not defunding the police, then what is?

We're encouraged that both Mealer and Hidalgo are eager to flex their public safety bona fides. Funding even more officers than what's been proposed — and paying them well — is worth discussing down the road. But now is not the time to be distracted by campaign headlines and “defund” debates. Both parties should be focused on ensuring the law enforcement officers that are currently on the payroll can continue to make our county safer.

Mealer and Hidalgo spar over how best to solve violent crime issues.