Police are killing innocent people — but not with guns
Caleb Swafford was the third of Heidi Jones-Scott’s four sons but in some ways, he was always the baby. He was sweet, active, goofy. When he was diagnosed with leukemia as a teenager, she didn’t hesitate to spoil him.
His father kept him in the latest footwear and she said she got him anything he wanted. One day, he wanted an Italian beef sandwich, a little reminder of the Chicago home they left behind, and mother and son drove all around Houston in search of one. Still in the midst of his chemotherapy at MD Anderson, when Caleb finally ate the sandwich, he immediately got sick, but he seemed happy to have tasted it. His mother laughs when she tells the story.
Less than 10 years later, somewhere across the seven lanes of Aldine Bender Road, her 24-yearold son was struck and killed on Jan. 4 by a Houston Police Department officer in a Ford Explorer patrol car responding to a call roughly half a mile away.
It was late, a little before midnight, and investigators at the scene told reporters that speed didn’t appear to be a factor, though it would be part of the investigation. Still, friends and family were doubtful about that. The crash was powerful enough to project Swafford onto the sidewalk, according to the Harris County Sheriff ’s Office, which is also investigating it. His brother Terrence Jones says that when he arrived at the scene, he found his little brother’s face and body mangled, his mouth completely gone.
It was the second time in a single week that an HPD officer responding to a call hit and killed a pedestrian, coming just days after another police officer “felt a bump” on the East Freeway that turned out to be 32-year-old Maycoll Amaro. Roughly two weeks later, another person would be hit and killed, this time a woman along the Southwest Freeway feeder.
In each case, it was late at night and the officers didn’t have their lights or sirens on because the types of calls they were responding to didn’t require it, including one that was a double shooting.
Crashes often injure or kill police as well. Between 2011 and 2020, officers were killed at a rate of one per week in vehicle crashes across the country, a leading cause of death for on-duty officers for most of the period. Several analyses have found that most of the deadly crashes involving police occurred during non-emergency situations.
It’s hard to find data on how many people police strike and kill simply responding to a call but easier to track down numbers on civilians and officers killed in crashes during a police pursuit: 12 in the city of Houston in 2020 alone, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. By comparison, in the same year, nine people were shot and killed by HPD officers, according to HPD figures.
In all three recent deadly police crashes, there was no pursuit. Just an officer responding to non-emergency calls without lights or sirens. Houston police in most cases are required to use lights and sirens in life-threatening situations, according to the general orders posted online. Otherwise, they can use their discretion. To use them for lower priority calls, they need to have a good reason that they can communicate to the dispatcher.
Swafford’s mother doesn’t understand that policy on lights and sirens: “They should have at least one or the other when they’re on a call,” JonesScott told the editorial board, “if not both.”
The evidence here is complicated. Some studies have found that emergency response vehicles using lights and sirens, including ambulances, are involved in more crashes. That could be because the emergency situations prompt faster or more dangerous driving. In Houston, our roads themselves often contribute to the problem. The road where Swafford was struck is exactly the kind that both transportation engineers and law enforcement recognize as potentially dangerous: straight, with lots of lanes that encourage high speeds, little lighting, few crosswalks, and also, sidewalks that are so overgrown in parts that green overpowers gray. They are also the types of roads that proliferate across the county and make the region one of the deadliest in the country for “drivers, passengers and people in their path” as a 2018 Chronicle investigation put it.
“We want to address the no crosswalks,” Jones-Scott said. “You got low-income people over there and 9 times out of 10 most of them are at work and can’t drive their kids or whoever to the store so they have to walk.”
The cases are still under review and will be brought to a grand jury to determine whether the officers will face charges. HPD also said that it “continually evaluates” its policies and training based on “findings of all critical incidents.”
This string of deaths should prompt reform, not just evaluation.
Accountability is important. So is improvement. A lot needs to change to make Houston’s streets safer. That must include law enforcement practices.
Would Caleb Swafford be alive if he had heard sirens? Would his mother still be able to look forward to his phone calls, the ones he always ended with “I love you?” She will live with these questions forever. No more parents should.
At least three pedestrians have been fatally struck recently by patrol vehicles.