With Memphis, little seems changed since Floyd’s murder case
Last week, one thing seemed to be on everybody’s mind: police reform. Whether or not you chose to watch the gut-wrenching video of Tyre Nichols’ death at the hands of five Memphis police officers, it was hard not to wonder: Has nothing changed since George Floyd’s murder?
From your letters about your policing and public safety concerns in the Houston area, it’s clear that we still have a long way to go. From minor traffic violation stops gone awry to the prevalence of firearms, you brought up the many compounding factors that contribute to police misconduct. Overwhelmingly, you seemed to agree with Patricia Swartley’s conclusion: “Not all police officers are bad, but it is time to give more attention to protecting the public from those who are.” Bill Turney suggests that “the good officers must police themselves, get the bad officers out and speak out publicly.”
Turney’s suggestion is a good one. It’s also not new. As our editorial board pointed out last Wednesday, building on nearly a decade of Black Lives Matter organizing, the summer of collective outrage after George Floyd’s death led to substantive, if rushed, legislative change. Between May 2020 and May 2021, over half the states in the nation passed laws strengthening law enforcement oversight, including a duty for officers to intervene, report or render medical aid in instances of police misconduct.
Though late to the party, Texas created such a duty with Senate Bill 68 by Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston: Officers are required to step in and file a report documenting the incident. It’s definitely something to celebrate. Yet the law — all of 144 words — comes up short when it comes to airtight enforcement.
To understand why, I spoke with Zachary D. Kaufman, associate professor of law and political science and co-director of the Criminal Justice Institute at the University of Houston Law Center.
Among other things, Kaufman explained, Texas’ law has no anti
Texas’ short law on police intervention lacks teeth.
retaliation measures to overcome the “blue wall of silence” that so often chills whistleblowing. It has no exemptions.
It focuses on “excessive force” without defining it sufficiently. It only triggers the duty to intervene if officers violate law but not policy — an issue when our laws aren’t nearly as all-encompassing as some more progressive departments’ policies might be. And there is no state-mandated training on “whether, when and how” to implement the duty to intervene.
More importantly, Kaufman told me, for the oversight to work at all, “we need to add more teeth.”
Our law, as written right now, is the equivalent of your fed-up warning to your kids that you’ll stop the car and leave them on the side of the road if they don't stop bickering with each other. They know that’s an empty threat. You know that’s an empty threat. What happens a couple of hours later? Another fight.
In his forthcoming law review article, “Police Policing Police” (say that three times fast), Kaufman lays out a detailed model statute that would make “police bystanderism” a felony punishable by a fine and possible imprisonment. That, he argues, would raise the stakes sufficiently, ensuring officers hold themselves and each other accountable.
A 2021 Hobby School survey found that 91 percent of Texans support a duty-to-intervene law. I wonder how many would get behind Kaufman’s proposed amendment. Law enforcement, of course, might be wary. But Kaufman points out his proposal “would keep everybody safer, including police officers — from themselves and each other.” And that’s ultimately the job they signed up for.
All I hope is that it doesn’t take another name, another video, another mural, another life extinguished, for change to happen.
Regina Lankenau is assistant op-ed editor at the Houston Chronicle. This piece originally appeared in Thursday’s SaysHou newsletter, a subscriber exclusive dedicated to your letters to the editor. To join the conversation, sign up at: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/ newsletters/opinion/