Our city council has the opportunity on Tuesday to pioneer a better way forward toward ending needless arrests.
In 2007, the Texas Legislature identified a host of minor offenses for which they deemed a citation would be sufficient as opposed to an arrest. Governor Rick Perry signed it with bipartisan support.
Last summer, Mano Amiga and other interested residents of San Marcos, urged the city council to form the Criminal Justice Reform Committee and presented a draft ordinance that would make citations the default option for San Marcos police officers except in certain specified scenarios such as: the subject does not provide satisfactory identification or the subject has an outstanding arrest warrant, etc.
In October of last year, official county data on SMPD’s arrest rate for citation-eligible offenses was made available to the press and public. Regional media noted the high rate of needless arresting of residents as well as the special attention that African American residents got from our officers. A story on the Fox News affiliate, titled “Report shows San Marcos police didn’t cite-and release any Black people in 2018,” revealed a remarkable inequality of enforcement.
With what appears to be a very high rate of arrests for citation-eligible offenses in 2019, I stand with those who believe that now is a prudent opportunity for our city council to provide guidance on officer discretion and elucidate our priority of keeping people out of jail who do not need to be there.
Let me be clear. I appreciate the vital work of our police officers. On several occasions I have been the beneficiary of their work. As a former city councilman for three terms, I learned about the danger and complexity of their service to our community. On a few occasions I rode with police officers to better understand the many challenges that they face each day. It is a tough job, requiring much professionalism and courage.
It is my opinion that this ordinance will go a long way toward strengthening and building trust between the police department and the general public, including those who see themselves as more vulnerable to unnecessary arrests. This ordinance will provide a clearer set of boundaries and guidelines that will assist police officers as they make discretionary decisions in critical moments of enforcement. This ordinance will require more transparency about the way discretionary judgments are made and the reasoning behind them. Finally, this ordinance will likely help us move from our excessive dependence on incarceration as a way of holding minor offenders accountable to a better way known as restorative justice. I would hope that if this ordinance is passed, that a structure will be designed to facilitate authentic communication within the work groups created by the ordinance. Sufficient time should be provided for interested individuals and relevant groups to air their differences and find common ground by having a place at the table. Surely we can move beyond threats, denigrations and distortions that keep us from hearing each other. May it be so.
Karl W. Brown
San Marcos
