A coalition of advocates and lawyers on Friday morning asked Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg to develop a list of police deemed too untrustworthy to rely on in court — and to release the names publicly to rebuild community trust on the heels of a botched narcotics raid that left a Houston couple dead earlier this year.

The request for policies that would bolster accountability and transparency comes less than a week after the district attorney’s office refused to release to the Houston Chronicle an accounting of how many cops and deputies are on the office’s existing list of potentially untrustworthy witnesses.

The current list, known as the disclosure database, includes broader allegations and helps prosecutors figure out what information they should turn over to defense attorneys. Office policy precludes releasing it to the public, according to the DA’s office.

The new proposal — floated in a two-page letter signed by the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, the Texas Organizing Project, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, the Harris County Public Defender’s Office and a slew of advocacy organizations — calls for the DA’s office to follow the lead of a small number of prosecutors in other states in creating a “no call” list of officers who would no longer be called to testify.

“Under this policy, the District Attorney’s office would identify police officers who have violated the public trust by lying, falsifying evidence, or making racist or violent statements, thereby calling into question their ability to provide legal testimony in an unbiased manner,” the letter says. “This ‘no call’ policy would include only those officers whose behavior is so problematic and antithetical to the oath that they took to protect and serve the entire community that the District Attorney’s office could not rely upon them to convict someone.”

The letter goes on to detail the development — and in some cases release — of no-call lists in other cities. Last year, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner publicly released a list of a few dozen officers flagged as potential problems. Months later, the police union sued, saying the list hurt officers’ reputations.

It’s not clear whether any other prosecutors in Texas have released no-call lists publicly

“The novel move here is this would be taking steps that really go beyond what is required to do the job of the prosecutor,” said Jennifer Laurin, a University of Texas School of Law professor and criminal justice expert. “It’s also leveraging the prosecutors’ role as an instrument of police accountability.”

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office didn’t give any indication as to whether officials would consider creating a no-call list or releasing it publicly, but spokesman Dane Schiller touted the strength of the current database.

“We have done a great deal to both get the law enforcement agencies to cooperate with us by providing information about their officers and also to ensure that defense lawyers gets what they are entitled to have,” he said, adding that the DA’s office has a full-time database manager and is “far ahead of most agencies on this matter.”

Currently, the office keeps an electronic database of information prosecutors might be required to turn over to defense attorneys in keeping with the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Brady v. Maryland. As a result of that case, prosecutors have to give defense attorneys any information that could show a client is innocent as well as any information that could call into question witnesses testifying against them.

The district attorney’s list details possible “Brady material” — everything from criminal convictions to concerns regarding past truthfulness in court — relating to recurring witnesses such as forensic experts, parole officers and police. There are policies in place laying out how an expert or witness ends up on the list, and the addition or removal of names can require approval by a committee.

Prosecutors have never released the names of the officers in their current database, which internal policy notes could impact ongoing investigations or raise privacy concerns. And, some information about certain law enforcement records is protected from public release in Texas.

But the advocacy organizations touted releasing the list as a means to rebuild trust with the community.

“When such a database remains shielded from public view, it does little to restore our fragile trust in law enforcement, nor does it act as a deterrent for future police misconduct,” the letter notes. “A public list and a true exclusion policy puts law enforcement on notice, creates transparency and accountability, restores our trust in the police and ensures our confidence in the integrity of prosecutions.”

Aside from making a policy of not naming those on their internal list, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office is also refusing to turn to over information about the number of officers on that list.

Late last month, the Chronicle filed an open records request asking for the number of officers from each local department in the disclosure database. Even though the request did not ask for specific names or allegations, prosecutors refused to release the data and appealed to the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which has not yet made a decision on whether the information should be released.