Texas police department ordered to close for failing to provide public benefit

Texas police department ordered to close for failing to provide public benefit dallasnews.com

77 points•Danhale93•9 days ago•34 comments•

#public #texas #police #department #ordered #failing #benefit #provide

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> Last week, the [state] agency sent a letter to the city notifying it that its five-member police department would be closed effective Sept. 18. Law enforcement duties will be transferred to the Henderson County Sheriff’s Office until a permanent solution is found.

> The agency said its investigation found the department failed to meet minimum standards and failed to provide sufficient evidence that it provided a "public benefit to the community." The department also failed to provide resources to its officers, including bulletproof vests and an evidence room.

The US has many thousands of little law enforcement jurisdictions like this. The argument for it is local control but in practice you too often get situations like this one. Poor quality, abuses, corruption, good-old-boys network, lack of accountability, frequent unnecessary use of force, etc. Large police organizations are certainly not w/o problems but at this point there are accountability mechanisms and modern standards.

The WaPo did an excellent article a few years ago looking at the fragmented LEO landscape

"Most police departments in America are small. That’s partly why changing policing is difficult, experts say"

https://archive.li/05zA7

jagged-chisel9 days ago

Given the size of the US, and the variety of local populations, I argue that local enforcement is necessary. Adherence to larger enforcement standards is also necessary. I fear that larger, “cohesive” enforcement runs the risk of bringing more political laws and regulations from other jurisdictions. No one wants to be subjected to some remote jurisdiction’s idea of “lawfulness” especially when religious ideals get mixed in.

throw0101a5 days ago

> Given the size of the US, and the variety of local populations, I argue that local enforcement is necessary. Adherence to larger enforcement standards is also necessary.

In Canada, Ontario and Quebec have their own province-level police forces, but the rest of the provinces 'contract' the RCMP to do street-level policing in many areas (with larger municipalities having their own forces). Part of the reason for this is that with any organization there's overhead (training, HR, payroll/pensions, etc), and for smaller communities a larger portion of a fixed budget would go to those things, so by leveraging the RCMP those fixed costs are amortized wider.

In Ontario/Quebec, many smaller communities use the OPP/QPP for local policing (larger cities have their own forces) for the same reason.

For the community in the article, is there a reason why the same 5 cops couldn't become employees of the county's force? For really small counties, it may be necessary / useful to 'contract' the state police to run a local detachment.

unethical_ban9 days ago

I agree with this. It may be reasonable for a town to have its own PD if they can afford it and choose to have one, but certain levels of training and evidence collection and ethical standards should be set at the state level or higher.

thinkcontext9 days ago

Well, how fine grained do we need to get? A police force with 5 officers is pretty fine. In this case law enforcement is being taken over by the county (of which there are 254 in Texas) so its still pretty local.

astrodust8 days ago

Why is it so ridiculous that the state can provide police where and when they're needed, and it's only when you have a sufficiently robust metropolitan area that can afford their own police force that you then have "local" cops?

Or are we all about locally-sourced, artisanal law enforcement now?

abeppu9 days ago

The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement investigated in response to a specific incident that got national news coverage. One has to wonder if there are other PDs that also are not providing public benefit but just didn't attract attention in this way.

> The department also failed to provide resources to its officers, including bulletproof vests and an evidence room.

Of course this will be used to bring back a PD with a bigger budget and more weapons. They may use some of the expanded funds to buy body cams but they won't work.

bluGill9 days ago

The town only has 860 residents. I don't know how they afforded 5 police officers are all, much less how they can afford top expand. I used to live in a county (not city!) of 15,000 people, and the whole county got by on just two sheriffs - calling for help from other nearby cities (in a different county) when there was a big event. Edit: now that I think of it, there was budget for 3 sheriffs - but they only rarely managed to have all 3 positions filled at the same time.

I don't live in Texas, but my experience in Iowa and MN is that cities need about 10,000 people before having a separate police department is worth the bother. At 500 they pay the sheriff a little extra to run extra patrols down the streets to "provide a presence", but it isn't full time (other than possibly an incentive to have a sheriff live in the city so his car was visible in his driveway when he was off-duty.

cucumber37328429 days ago

>I don't know how they afforded 5 police officers are all

Do they have a state or interstate highway running through? Predating on motorists and commerce that does not vote in their jurisdiction is a tried and true strategy for a "zero cost" police department.

nabbed9 days ago

In BC Canada, many, and possibly most cities use the national police force (RCMP) as their local police force. A city that contracts out with the RCMP gets a local RCMP detachment with local headquarters, etc.

Imagine, say, Framingham Massachusetts contracting the FBI for their local police services.

I imagine that could be a big problem if the national police force suddenly had a corruption problem: many cities would also suddenly have a police corruption problem. As far as I know, that's not currently the case, although somebody might correct me.

Some BC cities, like Vancouver and Surrey, have their own police forces (Surrey is actually in the middle of phasing out RCMP usage in favour of their own police force).

duxup8 days ago

It’s common in the US for small cities without a police force to be covered by county officers.

KetoManx649 days ago

Probably works great if you have a small town that has the same cultural values without any force imported migrants that don't mesh with your town's values.

Taikonerd9 days ago

Some interesting context: the city of Camden, NJ had its (much larger) police department closed by the state in 2013. Its duties were handed over to the county police, the same as they're doing in the linked article.

The Camden County police successfully brought the crime rate way down. And in the summer of 2020, when riots rocked the US, the CCPD was held up as an example of good policing.

[0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-jersey-city-disband...

(EDIT: corrected name of city)

jerlam9 days ago

It's the city of Camden that had its police department closed, not Newark.

Taikonerd8 days ago

Oh, sorry! Yes, I meant Camden.

duxup8 days ago

I wish I knew what the report said exactly…. what did they do? Nothing?

>The mayor said he invites anyone with knowledge of water systems to get in touch with the city to help.

This seems like a bad way to fix things….

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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