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Will Chief Hurtt (or) help HPD?

 I might as well offer a disclaimer, before I even start analyzing the imprecise news heralding Houston, Texas’ third African American top cop. “New chief to focus on ‘restraint’: Use of force at issue after fatal shootings,” chronicled the Houston’s only daily newspaper’s front-page headline, replete with a photo of the skinning and grinning Black face, that Mayor Bill White selected for the highest place in the nation’s fourth largest city’s police department. Since my byline holds me accountable for whatever is reported here, I might as well tell it like it is. However, I’m also obligated to report from a grassroots Black perspective, even if I don’t totally agree with the uninformed mindsets of all of African American News & Issues’ estimated 2 million readers.
I’m sure you know where I’m coming from, when I say I wouldn’t be an informed publisher if I hadn’t already been briefed on what’s going to happen, even before it happened. Especially if you agree that African Americans aren’t a monolithic people who all think, look, act, or even worship alike. Even so, inasmuch as I grew up in the ‘hood, my first thought about Mayor White’s new Black police chief (Harold L. Hurtt) was, “So what?” Denial aside, you know and I know, that Black folks who’re old enough to remember when Mayor Kathy Whitmire traumatized the entire city-- and totally lost control of her police department-- by hiring the city’s first Black police chief are thinking, “We’re been there and done that, so what’s a Black police chief going to change?”
Need I even mention what happened to the second Black police chief and open old wounds that I’m sure my friend, Clarence O. Bradford, is still suffering from as we speak? I won’t reveal too much about Mayor White’s game plan, just yet, but I will say that Houston Firefighters had better learn to “Habala Espanol,” if they intend to fully relate to our next Fire Chief, who probably will already have been named when you read this. I guess what I’m saying, is that Mayor White evidentially is taking advice from his Black friends, who’re so out of tune with the grassroots minority neighborhoods, until they think we’re still stuck on stupid enough to allow a Black face in a high place to checkmate as it once did.

It’s been over 50-years in the major leagues since Jackie Robinson proved we can perform major leagues, therefore we no longer support people, because of the color of their skin, regardless of their character. On the other hand, I realize many of our politically apathetic people have amazingly short memories. Thus, African American News & Issues would be remiss (as an editorial watcher on the wall), if we didn’t jog their memory by telling them like it is.
I really shouldn’t have to remind Black Houstonians that our trigger happy cops are unlike any other police officers in the western hemisphere. Surely, Chief Hurtt, who is given high marks for taming Phoenix, Arizona will quickly learn that Houston "ain’t" Phoenix.
Especially when White’s honeymoon with the local media ends and he does something to cross the “Good Old Boys, ” who reincarnated Chief Brown, who was despised by a majority of his White officers, as the city’s first Black Mayor. Greater Houston’s power brokers are much like God, who “giveth” and also “taketh away,” at their discretion. And if citizens think that having a Black chief will deter racial profiling, they must have been vacationing in Phoenix for the pass two decades. Somebody should tell Chief Hurtt about Chief Harry Caldwell, one of the most enlighten men to ever wear a badge, who was so embarrassed by HPD officer’s conduct until he actually quit in disgust… shortly after they beat and threw a handcuffed Joe Campos Torres into the Buffalo Bayou.

And you have one guess to name who was police chief when the record for police-citizens shooting was set. Community policing aside, but this excerpt is from an article (“Fear of HPD turns to faith”), appeared in the April 19, 1987 edition of the Houston Chronicle: “It’s unclear, however, what those figures mean, since in the two years, before Brown came, shootings were much lower than they were in his first year. In 1980, police shot 30, people.” And, in spite of Brown’s nationally acclaimed “Community Police” polices, it got worse before it got better according to a 1990 Chronicle article (“HPD’s ’89 civilian shootings rise to 40”), that revealed: “Houston police shootings of civilians rose to 40 in 1989, more than doubling the 1988 total of 17 shootings, police records show.”

Mayor Kathy Whitmire’s response to the shootings were, “I don’t know what the statistics are and would want to review that with Chief (Lee P.) Brown, since the union does not have a reputation for having its statistics accurate.” And, lest we forget, HPD officers murdered Ida Delaney and Byron Gilliam during Brown’s watch. Need I say more, or do you see where I’m coming from? It has been proven a Black HPD chief makes little or no different to disenfranchised African Americans who have always been subjected to “zero tolerance” policing in our neighborhoods. That is until it comes to drug dealing in the ‘hood. Maybe Chief Hurtt will answer the question, “How can dope houses operate 24-7, in full view of everybody in our neighborhoods, but somehow the cops can’t find them?”

Certainly, I’m all for giving Hurtt a chance. Nonetheless he should be forewarned that African American News & Issues doesn’t have to ask for public records, because we keep excellent files of our own. In fact, we have already researched Chief Hurtt’s record from 1997-2001. To wit: Under his command Phoenix’s cops cost the city $2, 688, 891 to settle 40 lawsuits for questionable shootings; $1, 138, 225 for 66 cases wherein his officer’s used excessive force; $97, 490 for violating citizen’s rights; $341, 151 for 74 false arrest and several other costly mistakes that his troops made while trying to protect citizens and keep the peace. We must apologize to our estimated 2 million readers for not being able to compare Houston’s police liabilities with Phoenix’s cops, but we’ve been told that HPD doesn’t keep records. How much of cop’s mistakes cost taxpayers.

So we’ll never know what lawsuits (such as the Wal-Mart debacle) cost Houston’s taxpayers, unless Channel 13’s super sleuth, Wayne Dolcefino, checks that out for the taxpayers he claims to protect. Meanwhile, as I said before, African American New & Issues keeps excellent records and a living historian who does outstanding research. Therefore you can always depend on Texas’ widest circulated and read newspaper--with a Black perspective-- to let you know whether, or not, Chief Hurtt helps HPD.