Harris County

Yesterday the Harris County Commissioners Court bypassed the opportunity to put jail bonds on the ballot as Sheriff Adrian Garcia requested, instead criticizing Garcia for his unilateral decision to take prisoners contracted to a Lousiana jail and move them to Texas counties which charge more money.

Commissioner Jerry Eversole said he'd have been indicted if he did the same thing, but I don't think so unless there was some financial or political quid pro quo. It was a fiscally imprudent decision, but probably not a criminal one unless there's some unstated evidence of kickbacks or patronage that hasn't been alleged. In any event, commissioners have figured out it's cheaper in the short to medium run to rent contract beds and focus on expanding diversion programs than to build new jail facilities they can't afford to staff.

Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia wants to reframe the debate over jail bulding - hoping to succeed where his GOP predecessor failed - by portraying an expanded booking center and extra beds as providing services for the mentally ill. However, Marc Levin and Ana Yañez Correa rightly suggested to the Houston Chronicle that "The costs of running a new building - utilities, staffing, maintenance - will compete for tight budget dollars with reforms that would divert more mentally ill arrestees into treatment instead of cells."

Last week I questioned why the Houston Community College police force needed its own SWAT team, and a couple of commenters protested that I improperly demeaned the quality and professionalism of campus police when I noted that, "Unfortunately, smaller agencies have less training, less pay, and most importantly the pool of quality supervisors isn't even big enough for all the municipal agencies and sheriffs, much less a zillion smaller shops."

But another story out of HCC again makes me question supervisory systems at these smaller agencies. Officer Colleen Adams, who is under investigation in a racial profiling episode, was the subject of a letter from 10 colleagues to supervisors claiming she shouldn't be a cop, but top decisionmakers kept her on the force. Reported KHOU:

The Houston Chronicle reports on Texas' latest DNA exoneration, this one stemming from a mistaken eyewitness and faulty forensics from the Houston crime lab:

A Houston man freed last year after spending 23 years in prison for a rape he did not commit cleared another hurdle Tuesday in his quest to be declared “actually innocent.”

DNA test results released in court Tuesday show that Ernest Sonnier, 47, was not involved in a second rape, which ended in a murder for which he was a suspect in 1985, said Alba Morales, the Innocence Project staff attorney handling the case. She said the test excluded Sonnier from being involved.