Justice

The time has come for immediate reforms to repair the relationship between Texas’ justice system and the people it exists to protect.

In May 1963, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy invited black leaders to discuss ongoing protests for civil rights. Loraine Hansberry, the great playwright, was among them:

“I am very worried,” she said, “about the state of the civilization which produced that photograph of the white cop standing on that Negro woman’s neck in Birmingham.”

Nearly 60 years later, I think everyone in this country should be worried—urgently and fervently—about the state of the civilization that is still producing those same pictures.  I know I am.

And while it is undoubtedly Black Americans who have most consistently borne the brutality of unjust laws and corrupt enforcement, what’s happening in this moment of our history must concern us all. If you’re not worried on behalf of Black people (and you absolutely should be), then be worried for yourself:  the foot of authority on American necks is precisely why our predecessors cried out, “Don’t Tread On Me,” and “Come And Take It”.  When they saw their governments engaging in clear abuses of power against their neighbors, they knew that they could be next.

We should worry also about the moral authority of our great country, about its soul. Making America truly great means making things right. It means taking decisive steps to restore the Constitutional balance between the police and the citizens they work for. And it means doing it now. Many of these vital reforms are rightfully the domain of local government—including the specifics of use-of-force policies and how to re-directing some police funding to social services so that police can clean house and focus on their core mission.

But there are long-overdue statewide reforms that I believe are essential to create a framework for local initiatives:

• End Qualified Immunity.  Sure, police officers should be protected from frivolous lawsuits. But when clear patterns show that an officer has repeatedly violated department standards or basic Constitutional rights, they must be subject to civil liability. And like other professionals, they can carry personal malpractice insurance so that good cops and taxpayers don’t have to pay for the actions of bad cops.

• Create a Duty to Intervene. Police are given a great deal of respect and responsibility in our society—to say nothing of power. And, as the old saying goes, with great power, comes great responsibility. That responsibility must include the responsibility to protect citizens against all abuses, even those committed by fellow officers.

• Require More Training.  A couple months is not enough to learn the nuances of the law and how to put it to work to protect your fellow citizens.  Our military rightfully trains our servicemen for longer, often much longer, before asking them to enforce rules in foreign countries.  Why shouldn’t we do that much and more for our own citizens?

• Make Lynching a Hate Crime. Why, in 2020, is this even controversial? Frankly, it’s shameful for us, as Texans, to have to talk about why public murders aimed at intimidating whole groups of Americans is a species of terrorism. And yet, talk about it we must, and we must make it clear that anyone found guilty of this heinous crime will pay a heavy price.

• Reform Police Unions.  Like anyone else, police officers should be allowed to form unions to represent their interests. But they should not be permitted to avoid direct accountability to local governments elected by the people they serve to protect—yet that is exactly what current state law lets them do.

These measures aren’t radical. Most of them aren’t even all that controversial. And they’re certainly not sufficient, in themselves, to set things right between police forces and the communities they exist to protect. But they are necessary, they are urgent, and they are long overdue.

Let me be clear: I believe—I know—there are heroic police officers. And with equal certainty, I know that the current system of rules and unions doesn’t empower those cops to do the job they signed up to do, and it doesn’t reflect the culture of justice, of morality and the innate sense of right-and-wrong that the majority of Texans share.

And again, more must be done.  The list is long, the road is uphill.  But once the most urgent reforms are implemented, we will still need to:

• Reform Civil Asset Forfeiture.  Assets that are suspected of being used in a crime should certainly be subject to seizure—but only after the owners have been convicted of a crime. And after conviction, the assets should go towards education (or into the Texas Trust)—never to police for their own personal or departmental use.

• Reduce Marijuana Penalties.  The extremely harsh penalties for marijuana possession in this state cannot be squared with the fact that medical cannabis is legal in Texas, and hemp is legal for all purposes. They should be reformed, and, once marijuana is legalized in Texas, we must release anyone in prison solely for marijuana possession.

• End For-Profit Prisons.  Profit motive can be powerful, but there are some things that shouldn’t be privatized—justice is one of them. Prisoners never be forced to work without pay, spend indefinite sentences in solitary confinement, or be subjected to un-airconditioned Texas summers. Yet all these things happen when profits are more important than people.

• Protect the Press.  Thomas Jefferson rightly observed that “our liberty depends on the freedom of the press.” So when police across the country are filmed casually beating reporters and camera crews, anyone who respects the Constitution should be furious. Texas should lead the way in defending the 1st Amendment with laws specifically protecting unarmed journalists from abuse and arbitrary arrest.

I didn’t always think protest was a good thing, or at least not an effective one. But I am in absolute awe of the incredibly diverse group of Texans who are peacefully demanding justice in the streets. Their action is essential, patriotic, and necessary. The Texians put up a good protest at Gonzales in 1835. Windows were broken, fires lit at Stonewall. Suffragettes didn’t win the vote for women until they realized that “the argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics.”  And of course, the Sons of Liberty understood the power of mercantile protest well enough when they got together for their 1773 tea party in Boston.

The end goal of protest, though, must be reform by democratic means, or of the democratic system itself. Some one of us has to take the message from the streets to the Capitol building, to take the mottos and cries for change and write them into legislation. I’d be honored to be that someone.