In the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police, Gov. Greg Abbott pledged to prevent Texas law enforcement from killing anyone in a similar fashion.
But during a virtual meeting Wednesday with the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, Abbott declined to promise he would make police reform an emergency priority during the 2021 session, said lawmakers who participated in the discussion.
Still, state Rep. Garnet Coleman is confident change is coming.
“We’ll ban chokeholds. That’s going to happen. That’s the low-hanging fruit. But you know, we have a whole session to get through. We need to be deliberate and comprehensive,” said Coleman, D-Houston.
The governor previously suggested in media interviews his support for banning police from using certain neck restraints. His office did not answer questions sent Tuesday by The Dallas Morning News regarding his stance on other possible police reforms, including requiring officers to say something before using deadly force or to intervene when another officer engages in misconduct.
John Wittman, a spokesman for Abbott, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Wednesday’s meeting.
Abbott dismissed the idea of defunding police departments during a Wednesday television interview. The call to re-examine and possibly cut police department budgets has received national attention; Abbott said police should have “adequate” funding in order to provide proper training.
“They keep our communities safe, they maintain safety across the state of Texas while these protests were able to take place and so I think we all can agree the police play a vital role, and they must be maintained if not expanded,” Abbott told KTXS-TV in Abilene.
The point of the call was to get a commitment from Abbott to work with black lawmakers on reforms, said Rep. Shawn Thierry, D-Houston.
“He committed that his goal was for people to be detained and taken into custody without being killed,” Thierry said, referring to Abbott. “That is something that you would think would go without saying, but that goes to really underscore the severity of the issue and the problem to me, that that actually has to be the starting point in Texas and in America, which he understood.”
Despite failed reform efforts in the past, the national outcry after watching Floyd gasp for air underneath the knee of a police officer will make a difference with opponents this year.
“They’re shamed. And they’re political,” Coleman said. “It’s not good form to be against getting rid of racism. I wish they’d call (President) Trump and tell him that.”
Local and national leaders are discussing changes in light of Floyd’s death and subsequent protests. Dallas announced several pledged reforms, from formally banning chokeholds and neck restraints to implementing a “duty to intervene” policy.
In New York, state lawmakers want to make it a felony if an officer injures or kills someone using a chokehold. They are also changing the law to allow the disclosure of police disciplinary records, previously exempt from release unless someone received the written approval of the officer in question.
Nationally, Democrats and Republicans are offering their own legislative packages. House Democrats proposed sweeping changes, including new body camera requirements, making it easier to punish problemed officers, eliminating “no-knock warrants” — where law enforcement force entry into a residence without warning — and creating a national police misconduct registry.
Sen. John Cornyn announced he is working with Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and other Republican colleagues on their own reform agenda. An early draft of the reforms obtained by The New York Times also includes a misconduct registry but focuses more on increased training and reporting requirements for local law enforcement agencies. President Donald Trump is weighing a police reform executive order, but the components of this order would still require law changes, Politico reported on Wednesday.
If implemented in the past, some of these reforms may have prevented recent highly publicized deaths.
Sandra Bland died in a Texas jail cell in 2015, after she was pulled over for failing to use a turn signal and ultimately arrested after a violent interaction with a Department of Public Safety trooper. In 2016, Dallas police officers knelt on Tony Timpa’s back for more than 13 minutes as he screamed for his life. They laughed and mocked him after he stopped moving and breathing. In late 2019, Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean gave no warning before shooting through a window and killing Atatiana Jefferson.
Some of these names are shouted at marches in Texas and throughout the country. The legislative black caucus wanted the governor to know they are picking up the torch from the protestors and ready to enact new policy, said Rep. Rhetta Bowers, D-Garland.
“I feel as members of the black caucus, we’ve heard the cries and feel the pressure, and want to make sure that change comes out of the peaceful protest and that George Floyd did not die in vain,” Bowers said.
Coleman and Houston state Democratic Sen. John Whitmire already announced they are teaming up on policing reforms next session that have failed in recent years. They include outlawing police from arresting people for offenses that can only result in a fine and from making traffic stops based on the suspicion that a person has committed another crime, Coleman said.
“When we think about these, this is what leads to racial profiling,” he said. “What we know is that those types of stops happen more frequently with black people.”
The measures were part of the original Sandra Bland Act in 2017, but Whitmire removed them and others that law enforcement groups opposed. With them, the bill likely would not have advanced, Whitmire said at the time.
An attempt last session to bar police from arresting people for certain finable misdemeanors, such as traffic violations, failed.
Whitmire, who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said he has been in touch with law enforcement officials and told them the Legislature is making changes and they need to be part of the solution.
Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, said the largest police officer’s union in the state supports raising professional standards and questioned whether politicians truly want criminal justice reform.
“They want to make damn speeches, and they want to get reelected and they want to blame someone because if they don’t, then the public is going to realize they were in charge the whole time,” he said, adding police unions are not to blame for bills that have not passed.
Wilkison said the group would support changes on banning arrests for low-level offenses and chokeholds. But he included caveats on those changes, potentially foreshadowing the tenor of debates over any reforms when lawmakers return to Austin in January.
