County caps reserve ranks
Liability concerns, campaign pledges spur new policy on limit for volunteer deputies
They patrol Harris County streets, trawl the county’s waterways, ride on horseback through its neighborhoods.
Indeed, Harris County’s reserve deputies perform many of the same functions as the county’s full-time lawmen, on a part-time, voluntary basis.
And for as long as lawmen have patrolled Texas towns and cities, sheriffs and constables here have relied on reserve deputies to bulk up their presence on city streets, and in some cases, provide a training ground for would-be, full-time officers.
“They’re a warm body to augment your force in the field,” one veteran county staffer observed. “It’s boots on the ground — and you can’t underestimate that.”
A new policy approved last month by county commissioners, however, puts a cap on the number of reserve deputies constables or the sheriff can appoint.
The move comes as the use of reserve deputies — which has enmeshed some local constables in controversy in years past — has resurfaced leading up to Tuesday’s election.
The policy caps the number of deputies at one for every two sworn deputy constables or sheriff ’s deputies — but would allow county constables to add an additional 563 reserve deputies to their ranks and the sheriff ’s office more than 700.
Those additional reserve deputies would provide the county with more than $11 million worth of free staffing,
assuming a full-time deputy’s base pay and benefits and that the reserve deputies work 20 hours per month, which is the minimum work requirement in the sheriff ’s office.
The policy is a way to ensure such deputies are being properly monitored and to limit possible liability issues, county officials said.
“You have a supervision issue there. … It’s important that Commissioners Court, we take a close look at quality of service that’s provided and at the same time the liability to the county,” said Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack, who formerly served as Precinct 5 constable.
“To be able to have a good reserve program — it can be very valuable,” Radack continued. “Some reserves out there work their hearts out and provide great benefit to the county — to county government itself and to taxpayers. It’s basically a way to try to ensure you’re going to have adequate supervision, and so there’s some limitations.”
‘These are our people’
Wearing law-enforcement blue with a Precinct 1 constable’s patch on his right shoulder, Reserve Deputy Jimmy Bruinsma furiously scribbles notes as he interviews a suspect Wednesday morning in the parking lot of a northwest Houston apartment complex.
Responding to reports of a burglary and stolen car, Bruinsma, 32, is both thorough and deft in his questioning, mixing the pointed — “Where were you Saturday night?” — with the lighthearted — “What did you dress up for as Halloween?”
Whether it’s working security for Houston’s Gay Pride Parade or being dispatched to crime scenes, Bruinsma takes pride in the community service component of the position, always seeking to represent law enforcement in a positive light.
“I’m here to help them, and sometimes I have to arrest them,” Bruinsma said. “You don’t want to have that perception that it’s us versus them. That’s not the case. These are our people.”
Following his father into law enforcement, Bruinsma volunteers without pay as a reserve deputy about 100 hours a month, working side-by-side with a fulltime deputy.
Reserve deputies “make a oneman unit a two-man unit,” according to Deputy Jerry Morton, a 20-year veteran who is training Bruinsma.
“They’re helpful in so many ways,” Morton said. “They take a workload off a stressful job.”
Managing the numbers
With Tuesday’s election expected to create turnover in several of the county constables’ offices and possibly at the Harris County Sheriff ’s Office, and with at least one favored constable contender pledging to bulk up the ranks of reserve deputies, county commissioners voted last week to limit the number of reserve deputies.
The number would limit the smallest Harris County constable offices to approximately 30 reserve deputies, and the sheriff ’s — the largest county law enforcement agency — to about 940.
“We’re always recruiting additional reserve deputies to try to address our needs for increased patrol presence,” said Ryan Sullivan, a sheriff ’s office spokesman. “They gave us 700 additional slots, which I doubt we’d be able to fill.”
In a letter to commissioners seeking approval of the policy, County Budget Officer William Jackson said the new limits will set reasonable levels for county law enforcement agencies.
“I just wanted to make sure, even before the election, that we had something in there to be a guideline,” he said. “I don’t think anybody would hit it, but it just kind of said, ‘=We just need to manage that.’”
Now, reserve deputies must receive a minimum of 643 hours of training to receive their state license, said Gretchen Grigsby, a Texas Commission on Law Enforcement spokeswoman. Reserve deputies must also complete 40 hours of continuing education every two years, and in Harris County, depending on the agency, work 20 hours a month or more for the department holding their commission.
‘A gun and a badge’
In years past, such restrictions were far more lax, and some constables became notorious for handing out badges or hiring reserve deputies as political favors.
In 1989, the same year Texas tightened training requirements for reserve deputies, the county tried to institute a now-defunct one-to-one ratio, meaning constables could have as many reserve deputies as they had regular paid deputies.
Victor Treviño, then-Precinct 6 constable, had 10 paid deputies and approximately 80 reserve deputies.
At the time, Treviño told commissioners he needed the deputies to work in schools fighting truancy or inhalant abuse. The constable’s law enforcement career ended when he pleaded guilty in a public corruption case and was sentenced in 2014 to 10 years probation.
After Treviño’s resignation, nearly three-quarters of the department’s 102 reserve deputies were dismissed or left, many because they weren’t working their required number of hours, said Precinct 6 Chief Deputy Armando Tello.
“We’re not going to just give somebody a gun and a badge and just say, ‘Hey, you’re a reserve,’ as a courtesy to let them carry a badge,” he said.
Precinct 6 now has 27 reserve deputies, he said, adding that Treviño’s successor, Heliodoro Martinez, also dissolved the department’s motorcycle division, which reserve deputies were using to work extra jobs escorting or directing traffic but which provided little value to the department’s day-to-day operations. All of the current reserve deputies work between 24 and 32 hours a month, he said.
Now, Treviño’s wife, Sylvia Treviño, the leading contender to replace Martinez in this year’s election, has campaigned on a platform of bulking up and reinstating the department’s corps of reserve deputies, as well as restoring the agency’s motorcycle division.
Room for growth
All the agencies that could be affected by the new county policy are currently well below the new limits on reserve deputies.
Precinct 5, for example, which has 334 full-time deputy constables, has just four reserve deputies.
Precinct 1, which has 263 fulltime deputies, has the highest proportion of reserve deputies, with 41, including Bruinsma, according to county records.
“Considering we would have to triple our reserve force before approaching the cap, the cap causes no immediate staffing concern to Constable (Alan) Rosen,” Precinct 1 spokesman Alan Bernstein said in an email. “It’s a bridge we’d love to worry about crossing someday.”