It's been 4 days since we first reported that the Harris County Sheriff's Office secretly surveilled the Ibarra Brothers for a few days in October 2007. At the time the Ibarra Brothers were about to start a long awaited Civil Rights trial against the sheriff and Harris County. The county ultimately settled that lawsuit for big money (just before the Sheriff was to be called to testify). The county may now face another lawsuit over the surveillance.
Tonight on the TV side we reported that the detectives doing the surveillance never created any report or documentation on their surveillance trips. The sheriff's office isn't answering any questions about that (they claim the DA is ordering them to stay quiet).
The problem is the Sheriff - the elected leader of the department - hasn't said a thing about this in 4 days. It's not for a lack of trying. We've called his office more times than I care to admit, gone to his house, shown up at events. He is simply making himself unavailable.
As is virtually every leader of county government.
We finally tracked down Judge Ed Emmett today at a luncheon. He tells us this is an issue for the Sheriff and would not weigh in on whether it's appropriate to use county resources to surveil plaintiffs.
You agree?
I am curious what you think? Is this a larger issue about county resources and proper use? Is it an election issue? Is it a civil rights violation?
Sometimes when I get in to a story for the third or fourth day, it begins to become a bubble and I can't see what's outside. What do we need to ask that hasn't been asked and what are you still curious about?
Former Catholic priest Gil Gauthe admits what he did in the past is awful. He admitted to sexually abusing 39 kids when he was a Catholic priest in Louisiana in the 1980’s. He had at least one more victim in Texas – a 3 year old boy he lived next to in Polk County.
Gauthe wasn’t registered as a Texas sex offender when he moved here. He didn’t have to and the crime in Polk County was negotiated down to ‘Injury to a Child’ – a non-sex crime, so he didn’t have to register then either.
When we tracked him down in La Marque he still wasn’t registered despite a 2005 change in Texas law requiring him to. He didn’t tell his charter bus company employer about his past either. It allowed him to have a job until he was exposed. It’s not the first time he’s been through this.
You can see our story on Gil Gauthe here. And read a lot more about him here. New Orleans based journalist Jason Berry has done tremendous reporting on Gauthe for years.
One of the questions I have is what to do with people like Gauthe? He’s served 9 years in prison, more on probation and he’s a registered Sex Offender now (La Marque PD says he'll be on the DPS website by the end of the week). But his options are limited on where he can live and who will employ him. Mr. Gauthe’s been very forthcoming about his past and tells us he’s worn out by round and round of exposure. He told me this afternoon he doesn’t know where he’ll find the energy to start over and if it’s worth it. He also said he wished the attention would be focused on someone else this time.
But here’s the thing I am mulling over as a father, a citizen and a reporter: in Texas sex abuse of kids often isn’t punishable by life in prison – so offenders are going to get out and need somewhere to live. Exposing Gauthe means he lost his job and his only source of income. I am not suggesting anyone should have more sympathy for Gauthe (an admitted repeat sex offender with on-going desires) than his victims. I’m not suggesting any sympathy for him.
But what should be done and where should Gauthe and offenders like him go? It’s not as easy as saying go to hell or an island or into the wilderness. What do you say? And are there any proven solutions other areas are using that you’ve seen or read about?
I really am curious and want to hear your thoughts. Please comment below.
Stevens is now working in the Grand Jury section of the DA’s office.
Magidson is a very easy guy to speak with. We talked for 10 minutes and while he didn’t stray far from safe territory, I got the sense he is a leader unafraid to make change where change needs to be made. But like his predecessor, unwilling to announce it first to me.
I wish he would, but don’t blame him for keeping quiet.
You can watch the whole interview here and see some immediate differences from Mr. Rosenthal. Let me know what you think.
As Ted promised, here is part of his raw interview with Houston socialite Joanne Herring. She is played by Julia Roberts in the new movie Charlie Wilson's War.
(I've been away for a while and I apologize - my family and I moved into a new house and if you've ever done it, I don't have to tell you how awful and time consuming it is.)
Tonight on the TV side we're putting together a piece on Joanne Herring. She is the woman Julia Roberts plays in the movie, Charlie Wilson's War. Herring is a Houstonian and has lived a very full life. I can't begin to give you the full bio. If you want more on her, look here. She speaks with ease about everything from high society to foreign policy with ease. It is actually an enjoyable conversation. She said, "If I had something serious to say, I try to make it fun to hear." She does.
We interviewed Herring last Friday. She is a remarkable woman - one of the smartest people I've ever interviewed. Funny and engaging, but smart enough to figure out when I was trying to dance around a question that might offend.
We will have a huge chunk of her interview on here for you later.
In the interview we got in to a discussion about the lasting impact of the covert war she helped make happen. There's been a great amount of discussion about whether the secret US involvement in Afghanistan and the way the US left without rebuilding helped fuel the rise of the Taliban and subsequent rise of Al-Qaeda. George Crile's book Charlie Wilson's War ends with this very discussion. I will leave it you to read it.
Herring suggested a similar conclusion to Crile's when we talked to her about the controversy saying, "We destroyed the country. Twice. We need to help them... We can't predict future wars. If we could, we wouldn't have future wars... We went in there to defeat communism and we did it."
True to form, it was fun to hear, it was fun to speak with Joanne Herring.
I hope the movie is as fun to watch.
To the many of you who watched or browsed our piece on the HPD GPS issues, thank you. We continue tonight and will have one more piece tomorrow.
For whatever reason the comments to our piece are not posted here. Thank you all for what you are telling us. Let me share some of what other users are saying (because people did not know I would post here, I will keep them anonymous - let me know if I am violating some sort of blog etiquette).
- Do not mistake what the chief told you about undercover units. There may be a lot of undercover units but they are not working at the same time or same area. They are targeting only certain crimes in certain areas. If you want to see how short we are show up at roll calls(like day shift at the north station) or pull some paper roll calls and see how many units are hitting the street.
- I have often wondered if the department is so short,why is it that to get into the Houston Police Department you have to have college credits. There are so many high school graduated (a-c)student that can read,write, and communicate well with people. If the department is short why not look into x-ing out the college credit.
- Maybe HPD shoudl implement some sort of auxilary program like NYP and Chicago police have. The auxilary programs have trained volunteers patroling and report directly to police while answering small calls where a police officer is not really needed.
- Can we get an overlay of where the donut shops are, too? Joking of course. Some of the police are at Denny's & IHOP.
- Can we get an overlay of where the donut shops are, too? Joking of course. Some of the police are at Denny's & IHOP.
- Thats why the crime is rising once again. Next they want to point fingers at adolescents saying there the reason. Its not there fault there are not enough police officers to provide presence of security. We should focus on having our communities mostly involving adolescents, to protect our hoods. They are the eyes and ears of the street.
- Regardless of the accuracy of this information, it will still give some historical tendancies of geographical police presence. I think this was a BAD idea to publish and BAD reporting. Hopefully, only the stupid criminals will try to read this article.
- This is the nitty gritty type reporting native Houstonians want to see about. We ALL Know what's wrong. We want some one to stand up and demand SOLUTIONS. Our home streets have become "free fire zones" and I have the proof documented but the HPD doesn't care to acknowledge it's existence and now I have become fearful of HPD retaliation as a whistle blower who has names ,dates and places as well as video and photos. I am now as much afraid to call HPD as I am to endure another street "shoot out". They don't like being shown they are manifesting a cowardly and lazy attitude in their performance. I am CONSTANTLY told by officers NOT to confront criminals in MY OWN YARD, Not to photograph them commiting crimes in my yard and to stay inside.
We spent a few months trying to figure out how bad HPD's short staffing really is. The union says Houston need 1000 more officers. The mayor is aggressively pursuing overtime programs and adding cadet classes. But what does the short staffing mean right now when you call 911. Look at our work here.
HPD has 4800+/- officers on the payroll. 2669 of them are assigned to patrol - but on average a tenth of those officers are on the streets ready to respond to a 911 call at any given time. Sometimes far less.
We wanted a way to show you what that means in your neighborhood and we think we came up with one. I heard one day this summer that HPD installed GPS devices in patrol cars and was tracking patrol unit movements. We got the data and started looking at it. In its raw form it looks like this:
080022:376|A=P:U=17E45D:|UNT5|P|137163607-N|ENR|17E45D||3500|P|P|PSW|17-Sep-2007|N|6200 W BELLFORT ST #267 ,HO |-95510760|29655530|
080025:548|A=P:U=91E32:|UNT5|P|137198907-C|ONS|91E32||3900|P|P|PSW|17-Sep-2007|N|4898 W BELLFORT ST + 10301 S POST OAK RD ,HO |-95461980|29669600|
080025:767|A=P:U=18G66A:|UNT5|P||AV|18G66A|||P|P|PWS|17-Sep-2007|N|8600 SANDS POINT DR #110 ,HO |-95512900|29709630|
After some data work, we were able to get hourly snapshots of the city. We figured they would show where HPD units generally are.
The GPS system sends pings to the system every few seconds for a moving vehicle, every 30 minutes or so for an on duty car sitting still. With the help of colleagues at the National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting we sucked out the first instance of a unit closest to the top of the hour. Those are the maps we have here.
You can decide what they show.
You won't see an on camera interview from HPD on the television side of this piece. We asked several times and HPD turned me down. They did offer an off camera brief with an Exec. Asst. Chief - which we went to.
Usually I refer to our efforts here as a "we" effort, but HPD made it clear they would not talk to "me". HPD brass is upset at how I reported a story on Taser use more than a year ago. The HPD Public Affairs Office has only made one person available to me on camera since - and they are clear the Taser story is why. While this is not the forum to debate that, for better or for worse that is why HPD is sitting this one out. I hope the unofficial policy changes soon.
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