Tag: SMPD

Hours 4:30-5:10, 9/6/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 30: Meet and Confer agreement

The SMPD has a union, SMPOA, which negotiates contracts for cops with the city.

No one else gets to do this, because unions have been undermined in Texas.  First, it’s a right-to-work state, which means you can’t be forced to join a union, even though you may benefit from the outcomes.  (This is bad, in my book.)  Second, unions aren’t allowed collective bargaining powers.  If you’re not allowed to bargain for contracts and legal matters, then you’re basically an advocacy group.  Underfunded advocacy groups don’t generally have much power.  

The exceptions is police and fire fighters (and Houston municipal employees?)  Meet and Confer is how the city of San Marcos negotiates contracts with the police and fire fighter unions.

The Ryan Hartman issue:  Ryan Hartman was a police officer with SMPD. In 2020, he was in off-duty in Lockhart. He was speeding, ran a stop sign, probably under the influence, and crashed into Pamela Watts and Jennifer Miller, and Miller was killed in the crash.  He had an open container in his car, but refused a breathalyzer for a few hours.

He wasn’t indicted in Lockhart, and Chief Standridge was brand new, and dithered on the issue until the 180 day time frame expired, and Hartman was put back on the force. Somewhere in here, Mano Amiga takes up the cause on behalf of Miller’s partner, Pam Watts.  Mano Amiga begins a full press assault on Hartman.  Back on the force, Ryan Hartman tazes someone under sketchy circumstances, and is suspended again this past January.  Finally he’s terminated, this past June.

Mano Amiga has a list of five “Hartman Reforms” that they want implemented (and that are incredibly hard to find online.)  Based on this article, I’m pretty sure they are:

  • End the 180-Day Rule
  • repeal of the statute of limitations on investigating wrongdoing by officers
  •  “End Delay of Interviews for Misconduct,” due to officers being allowed 48 hours to prepare answers and review materials before giving an official statement.
  • Public Transparency for Personnel Files
  • End Third-Party Arbitration.

(I’m not really sure how 1 and 2 are different from each other.) In the Meet and Confer agreement, they are proposing to extend the 180 day rule to a 360 day rule. The other reforms are all ignored.

Max Baker asks about the rest of the Hartman Reforms. 

City staff says that the Hartman Reforms were announced on June 15th, but the negotiation meetings had already run from April-May 27th. Max Baker says that the Hartman Reforms overlap with reforms he’s brought up in the past, but he hadn’t gotten the support of council on those.

In Citizen Comment, Mano Amiga made it clear that they do not think this contract holds officers accountable. They’re going to collect signatures to get a repeal of this agreement on a future ballot. Stay tuned!

What do I think?   Here are some reforms that I think are important:

  • Reviews of police misconduct need to be done by independent, external investigators
  • End qualified immunity for police officers (Currently, officers can’t be sued for violating someone’s civil liberties. San Marcos can’t just unilaterally change this, but it’s important)
  • Ongoing de-escalation training (this may already be happening, I don’t know) and cops need to be immersed in neighborhoods and build positive relationships with young adults.
  • Prioritizing mental health of police officers, keeping ongoing relationships with therapists or counselors
  • Redirect mental illness emergencies to first responders with social work or mental health backgrounds

On one slide in the presentation of the Meet and Confer contract, it says, “Applicants with degree in social work, sociology, psychology, human services, or human relations will receive additional points.”    This is good!  You want officers with backgrounds in areas that humanize people. 

By all appearances, Chief Standridge is implementing progressive principles into SMPD. This seems like an opportunity to collaborate and make progress.

….

Item 32: Chris Cardoza is voted onto the Arts Commission.

Item 33: Should renters get notified when there’s a proposed zoning change? This is sent to a committee.

Hours 1-2, 1/18/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

What made this meeting so short is the lack of public presentations. Mayor Hughson implied that the next meeting may be grueling, though.

First up, Citizen Comment:

  • Richard Amaya slams SMPD. Biden Bus, Ryan Hartman, other issues that have come up. (The very next day, actually, it was announced that Ryan Hartmann has been terminated. Activism making a difference.)
  • Darlene Starr speaks about the Animal Shelter and how dismally it’s being run, and how admin is driving away volunteers. This is the latest in a steady stream of speakers painting a totally dysfunctional picture of the Animal Shelter. It sounds demoralizing. I gather that we’re finally trying to hire a director, although the position has been vacant for over a year.

Non-consent Agenda

  • they tweaked the homestead exemption for disabled people and people 65 and over.
  • They created the Animal Services Committee, with Mayor Hughson, Shane Scott, and Alyssa Garza joining whichever community members are on it.
  • Packet meetings have a Do Not Resuscitate order placed on them. (No one but me can possibly be following this deathly dull story line.)

And then: Body Cameras. This was brought by Alyssa Garza, asking about the city policy around body cameras. Namely, what is it?

First, Chief Dandridge says there are state laws governing release of footage, and that SMPD follows those policies. It wasn’t clear to me if San Marcos has other, additional policies, or if the state code is the sum total.

Next, Chief Dandridge makes his main point: Police bodycam footage can’t be automatically released because it would taint all legal proceedings. It would make it very hard to seat a grand jury to get an indictment. To me, this didn’t land as quite as big a bombshell as he seemed to think it would land, because I immediately wanted to know, “Okay fine. What about after the trial is over?”

Dandridge answers that all footage is available, under FOIA, after all adjudication has ended. Fair enough.

Apparently Texas Municipal League is a resource everyone respects. Commissioner Garza has gone and found best practices for body camera footage release according to TML. She begins to go through it with Chief Dandridge, and then suggests that he just send the SMPD body camera footage policy over to council and she can read it for herself.

(Why couldn’t the policy have been included in the packet? Your guess is as good as mine.)

So that’s about where it wrapped up. Everyone professed themselves a little more informed and enlightened on body camera footage release policies. I’m interested to see if anything comes of the review of the official policy.

Post-Script: In Q&A from the press and public, LMC asked if the public has access to the body camera footage policy. Chief Dandridge says that it’s not up on their website, but that it can be FOIA’d.

September 7th City Council Meeting (Part 2)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

The other two most-important items are Items 14 and 34.

Item 14: Interlocal Agreement with SMCISD on School Resource Officers

Commissioner Baker has a list of concerns about SROs.

  • They are reassigned to different schools for failure to do their job, instead of being removed as SROs all together
  • While training is required to be an SRO, officers get placed on campuses that are not trained as SROs
  • There is language about how SROs will “promote the concept of punishment for criminal acts”. How is this useful in our schools? Some people extend this concept to undocumented community members. This is destructive.
  • “Increase students’ knowledge and respect of the law” – what about when officers aren’t due that respect?
  • May we identify the funding sources of this study?
  • Why are we putting protection of property above protection of students?
  • Why aren’t we surveying students to see how the officers are doing and if they feel safer?
  • We put a pro-SRO video on YouTube featuring an officer whose actions have raised concerns.

Commissioner Derrick weighs in with points about SROs needing mental health training. She’s had particularly negative eperienc

Broadly, I agree with all of Baker’s points. However: Chief Dandridge is consistently great when he talks to City Council. I don’t know what he’s like on the job, and I know that there are community members who are frustrated with our police. All I am saying is that Dandridge’s performance at council meetings is very good. So far, this is what I’ve seen:

  • He generally does not respond adversarily to aggressive questions from Baker.
  • He often agrees partially or completely.
  • He backs up his statements with information and data,
  • He admits when he doesn’t know something, and offers to find the information.
  • He does not offer pat solutions and does not reduce the complexity of issues.

Again, maybe he’s a jerk on the force! I don’t know! But he’s good at council meetings.

Chief Dandridge responds to all of these points, one by one. On the questions about statistics and data, he pledges to write a memorandum compiling his data and that he will send it out to council. He lists the classes that the SROs are trained in. It includes restorative justice, mental health, developmental psychology, suicide prevention, and many more. He doesn’t try to dispute Baker’s points per se, but provides context for how these things play out in San Marcos. And he’s supportive of ideas like surveying students.

In the end, they vote to postpone and have work session. So nothing is resolved here, but I’m glad to see these issues discussed.

Item 34: Greater San Marcos Partnership, GSMP

GSMP is a pro-business organization that works across the entire county to bring business in and support existing businesses. San Marcos kicks in $400k/year. Several issues are raised:

Does GSMP make life better for San Marcos residents? Commissioner Baker wants GSMP to conduct a survey to quantify the impact of GSMP on San Marcos residents.

Mayor Hughson seems rather obtuse on this one, repeating several times that San Marcos already conducts a detailed quality of life survey and there is no need for GSMP to duplicate this. The difference is that the city survey is attempting to ascertain the benefits brought by the city, and the GSMP survey would attempt to measure benefits brought by GSMP. One does not substitute for the other.

Amendment for a mandatory survey passes, 4-3.
In favor: Derrick, Gonzalez, Garza, and Baker
Opposed: Hughson, Scott, Gleason

Next issue up is the Environmental Social Grievance reports, or ESG. These are third party reports compiled on the externalities that a business imposes on the community. City Council has asked for information from GSMP on wages, environmental impact, and other externalities. GSMP says that for $10K, they’ll buy an ESG from a third party company.

Baker would like to read one before agreeing that this suffices. But there isn’t one to read, because they cost money and they’re proprietary. It’s a very frustrating business-y solution. “We’ve contracted out with a niche business, and obviously they aren’t motivated by the public good. What’s the problem?” It’s not exactly corrupt, but it’s annoying and full of middlemen.

Baker moves to postpone until they can see a sample ESG report and see if it is satisfactory, but the motion fails.

In favor: Derrick, Garza, Baker
Opposed: Hughson, Scott, Gleason, Gonzalez

Councilmember Derrick makes an amendment to add mental health providers as a targeted industry. This passes 6-1, with Scott voting no, like a dillweed.

A representative speaks up about how intractable the problem of attracting mental health providers is. He promises that they’ll target, but not that they’ll be successful.

This last part is the BEST. Now, Councilmember Baker has been furious since he was at the GSMP Summit last spring, and nobody was wearing masks. Baker makes an amendment to the agreement that the GSMP will have to follow CDC guidelines on safety.

This passes 5-2:
For: Mayor Hughson, Derrick, Garza, Gonzalez, and Baker
Opposed: Just Gleason and Scott.

The whole discussion takes FOREVER, but the poetic justice of Max getting to force GSMP to wear masks is so sweet and worth every last bit.

(Finally, the actual agreement with GSMP passes unanimously.)