In collaboration with the Texas Smart-On-Crime Coalition, this report includes critical recommendations to address the issues that come with incarcerating individuals for their drug addiction. These solutions could drastically improve the lives of Texans who struggle with substance use disorder, diverting them away from jails, and keeping them in their home communities.
Houston is where George Floyd was raised and where he was laid to rest. While he did not take his final breaths here, his legacy is tied to ours and how we respond to this national reckoning with policing and police violence targeting Black people.
This report documents the ongoing practice of discriminatory policing in Houston. It shows that Black Houstonians make up just 23% of the population, but 36% of police stops, 49% of citation–eligible arrests, and 63% of those shot by the Houston Police Department. Black people in Houston are suffering disproportionately at the hands of police.
Around the country and across the state, cities are taking action to fundamentally reimagine the role of police in communities. They are disbanding problematic units, banning no–knock warrants, allocating funding for non-police emergency response, and reducing police budgets.
Houston has not yet taken decisive action on policing. George Floyd was buried in Pearland on June 9. On June 10, Houston City Council voted to increase the police budget by $19 million. On June 25, Mayor Turner appointed a Task Force on Policing Reform, with a mandate to deliberate for 60–90 days on a set of recommendations. The task force excludes the voices of advocates who have been working for years on criminal justice reform in Houston. And at a moment when Black trans people are especially vulnerable, its composition raises serious questions about how LGBTQ issues will be addressed in its work.
Around the country and across the state, cities are taking action to fundamentally reimagine the role of police in communities.
These efforts deny the need for urgent action, now. This report includes five model ordinances based on national best practices and responds to the existing recommendations for reform this administration has already received to:
limit discretionary arrests for citation-eligible offenses;
maximize public access to critical incident body-worn camera footage;
create a framework to expand non-police emergency first responders;
improve fairness and justice in municipal courts; and
ban no-knock warrants.
It also calls on the city to increase accountability in the police union contract; move police budget dollars to first responder, non–emergency and public health services budgets; and invigorate the citizens’ oversight board with power to act independently.
The time for action is now. Mayor Turner, Chief Acevedo, members of City Council, we are looking to you to lead.
We release this call to action on Independence Day because the fight for freedom is far from over. The barrier to reform in Houston in the summer of 2020 isn’t further study, it is political will. It took 30 years for Houston to negotiate a settlement with the NAACP and MALDEF to formally adopt the requirements of Brown v. Board of Education. Changes in policing practices cannot wait that long. In 1965, the civil rights leader Whitney Young reflected on the history of reports on race and policing, writing, “The report is still there, it still reads well, but practically nothing is being done to follow its recommendations.” More than 50 years later, that remains the history of task force reports.
Our leaders need to pick a side: will they choose to stall transformative change with a drawn-out task force that is unaccountable to those most affected by the persistent history of discriminatory policing in our communities? Or will they meet the moment and respond to the demand for action from 60,000 people marching in the streets? The Mayor and City Council can vote now on five ordinances that would change policing in Houston. They should do it.
The time for action is now. Mayor Turner, Chief Acevedo, members of City Council, we are looking to you to lead.
Report by:
American Civil Liberties Union of Texas
Black Lives Matter Houston
Community Justice Action Fund
FIEL Houston
Grassroots Leadership
Houston Justice
Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Indivisible Houston
One Family One Future
Pure Justice
Right2Justice Coalition
Texas Advocates for Justice
Texas Appleseed
Texas Civil Rights Project
Texas Fair Defense Project
Texas Organizing Project
Urban Community Network
Workers Defense Action Fund
Date
Friday, July 17, 2020 - 8:00am
Featured image
Right2Justice strategist for Texas Organizing Project Tarsha Jackson stands on the steps of City Hall at the July 4th Drive for Justice rally.
"Death, Damage, and Failure: Past, Present, and Future Impacts of Walls on the U.S.-Mexico Border – 2019 Update" is an update to a 2018 report analyzing the destructive impacts of border barrier construction with new information about additional border barrier funding and future construction plans. For the past quarter century, the poorly defined and shifting benchmark of "securing the border" has done little to make the U.S. safer or significantly reduce smuggling or immigration. Last year, the original report examined the border walls built since 1994, when the federal goverment aimed to use militarization of the southern border in an effort to convince potential migrants that crossing was too dangerous.
In September 2018, when our original report was released, Congress had provided the Trump administration with $1,912,000,000 to replace existing barriers in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and to build entirely new border walls in Texas. In 2019, Congress provided the president with an additional $1.375 billion through 2019 to wall off the remainder of South Texas’ Lower Rio Grande Valley. This unprecedented funding will allow the Trump administration to draw from more than $10 billion to use for border wall construction, dwarfing the $2.3 billion spent on border barriers from 2007 through 2015.
While “Death, Damage, and Failure” analyzed the impacts of existing border walls, the following is meant to supplement last year's report and focus specifically on the developments of the past year and their implications. The findings of the 2019 update to “Death, Damage, and Failure” include:
The Trump administration has $10 billion dollars available for border wall construction when the funds claimed under the national emergency declaration are added to congressional allowances.
Hundreds of municipal and private landowners in the Rio Grande Valley are set to lose their property.
Tremendous damage will be inflicted upon the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
The Trump administration has waived dozens of laws meant to protect people and the environment in order to hasten border wall construction.
The full updated report with detailed breakdowns of the impacts of walls on the U.S.-Mexico border is available for download below.
