Opinion

HPD needs to do better at policing itself It's too hard to get a bad cop fired, potentially harming community trust.

Chad Holley demonstrates how he positioned his hands when he was beaten by Houston Police officers in 2012. Chad Holley demonstrates how he positioned his hands when he was beaten by Houston Police officers in 2012. Photo: Nick De La Torre, Staff Photo: Nick De La Torre, Staff Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close HPD needs to do better at policing itself 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

What does it take to get a bad HPD officer fired? It's shockingly hard to do - even in a high-profile case.

You probably remember the unnerving surveillance-camera video of a clutch of officers beating, stomping and kicking 15-year-old burglary suspect Chad Holley long after he'd surrendered and lay face-down on the ground.

Police Chief Charles McClelland tried to fire seven of the men involved. But three of them got their jobs back through arbitration - in one case, because the department's Internal Affairs department missed a deadline.

"I'd pretty much have to commit a felony to get fired," an anonymous officer told Texas Observer reporter Emily DePrang earlier this year. And the news magazine's analysis shows that that's pretty much true.

From 2007 to 2012, HPD received around 1,200 complaints each year. Two-thirds of those ended in no discipline at all, not even a written-reprimand slap on the wrist. Only 7 percent ended in serious discipline, meaning at least a three-day suspension. And very few ended in officers actually leaving the force.

"Officers who left crime scenes, failed to secure evidence, lied to superiors, falsified forms and, in one case, allegedly pocketed drugs continue to police the streets of Houston," the Observer found.

That number and those results are especially startling given who files most of the complaints: Nearly three quarters of complaints come not from perps whining about imagined slights, but from other cops, including the supervisor of the accused officer.

The problem is what happens next. Inside HPD's labyrinthine appeals system, legitimate complaints can die in a dizzying number of procedural ways. And even those that the department deems legitimate can be overturned - as in the Holley case - by an independent arbitrator, sometimes a person who's spent only a couple of days on the case.

A few bad cops can wreck a community's trust in its department. HPD needs to do a better job of policing itself.

"Policing the Police," a panel discussion sponsored by Texas Southern University's Earl Carl Institute for Legal and Social Policy and the Texas Observer, takes place at 6:30 p.m. Thursday For information, see texasobserver.org.