HPD officers almost never get punished for shootings

In the last five years, Houston police officers made the life-and-death decision to use lethal force dozens of times — shooting 121 people, 52 of them fatally.

Many of those wounded or killed by HPD were armed with guns, knives, screwdrivers and in one case a sword. But more than a quarter of the people shot from 2008 to 2012 were unarmed, according to a Houston Chronicle investigation. Some of those unarmed civilians were mentally ill or were killed after routine traffic stops.  

Questionable shootings that have sparked outrage in the community include the killing of a double amputee in a wheelchair who was wielding a ballpoint pen.
But no Houston police officer was charged with criminal wrongdoing in the five years of shootings examined by the Chronicle.

In fact, the last time a Houston police officer was charged in a shooting was in March 2004, after the death of an unarmed teenager. Since then, Houston police officers have been cleared by Harris County grand juries 288 consecutive times, according to the Chronicle investigation.

Officers have fared almost as well in internal HPD probes of shootings as they have with outside criminal investigations.

From 2008 to 2012, investigators with HPD’s internal affairs division reviewed 636 shootings of all types by officers, including shootings of animals and accidental discharges. They ruled that only one shooting was not justified.

One unarmed shooting victim was Blake Pate, a 24-year-old furniture refinisher from Pearland who ran into another motorist on Christmas Day 2011. A Houston police sergeant says Pate backed into him, and then was reaching for him as the officer attempted to handcuff him for trying to leave the scene.

Pate, who had no criminal record and was not intoxicated, did not verbally threaten the officer nor make any move suggesting he was going for a weapon. A grand jury declined to charge the officer.

Critics of how grand juries are picked in Harris County say it is stacked in favor of the criminal justice system, which results in the near perfect record of Houston officers who have been cleared in civilian shootings. Most of the grand jurors in the county are not picked randomly as are juries in criminal cases, but are referred to judges by grand jury commissioners. The composition of those grand juries tend to be mostly elderly white retirees.

Defense attorneys also question the practice of letting new grand jurors undergo an orientation session featuring police shooting simulators, a little-known practice that dates back a decade in Harris County.

Before their three-month term begins, the Harris County District Attorney’s staff takes grand jurors to the basement of the criminal courthouse where they have set up a computerized police shooting simulator. Grand jurors use a modified police handgun to shoot a laser beam at a life-size screen, as scenarios including bank robberies, domestic disputes, convenience store holdups and vehicle stops are played.

Some defense attorneys and law enforcement experts say the shooting simulator makes the grand jurors biased in favor of police. Prosecutors say is a way let jurors see how officers must make split-second decision whether to use deadly force.

– James Pinkerton