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A co-author of bipartisan legislation that would ban arrests on non-jailable offenses, which passed the Texas House last week and is headed into the Senate, is urging his fellow lawmakers to support the bill for the sake of justice in the state.
"I would tell my colleagues that this is a major step forward in criminal justice reform," Texas State House Rep. Ron Reynolds (D-Missouri City), co-author of House Bill 830, told the Houston Daily during an email interview. "This is not an anti-police bill, but a reimaging police bill."
HB 830 is about ending a practice in the state that has been terrorizing Texans for years.
"Black and brown Texans are terrified to drive on a daily basis, living in fear of being pulled over by the police and taken to jail on small offenses," Reynolds said, adding that HB 830-made-law would be "a safety net for all valuable Texans that will save both their lives and freedom!"
HB 830 would limit law enforcement's authority to arrest people for minor charges, including fine-only traffic misdemeanors, by creating a cite-and-release policy for police across Texas.
"Concerns have been raised regarding the authority of law enforcement to arrest a person for conduct constituting a fine-only misdemeanor, especially in light of the case of Sandra Bland, who was pulled out of her car when her only violation was failing to signal," Reynolds said. "It has been noted that people across the state have been arrested for a wide range of fine-only traffic offenses, such as seat belt violations or failure to use a turn signal. There have been calls for lawmakers to ensure that the authority of law enforcement to arrest an offender is commensurate with the violation."
In addition to the Bland case, HB 830 also was spawned by low- and high-profile incidents such as that of Dillon Puente, who was pulled over in Keller last summer for taking a wide right turn, a minor traffic infraction in Texas. Puente's father, Marco Puente, was notoriously video taped being brutalized by police.
HB 830 overwhelmingly passed the house on April 30, following debate on the house floor the previous day, with 113 yeas, 18 nays and one present, or not voting. Companion bills in the Senate, Senate Bill 950 and Senate Bill 1626, both introduced in March and now in the Senate Criminal Justice committee, are identical to HB 830.
HB 830 would ban arrests for all Class C misdemeanors and, thanks to an amendment, also would ban arrests for all Class C traffic violations, the latter accounting for 95% of the arrests for that class of misdemeanors. Existing Texas law, states that anyone found guilty in the state of a Class C Misdemeanor, the least serious of all misdemeanors, "shall be punished by a fine not to exceed $500."
Nonetheless, tens of thousands are arrested in Texas on charges – not yet found guilty – of Class C Misdemeanors.
More than 64,000 Texans were arrested at traffic stops for a minor traffic violation, according to data reported by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE) in 2019. In 2020, amid the still ongoing COVID pandemic that significantly reduced vehicular traffic, more than 41,000 Texans were arrested for Class C misdemeanors that were non-jailable offenses, TCOLE reported.
Traffic stops are a major, front-end driver of admissions into county jails and cost taxpayers millions, according to a report by public interest justice center Texas Appleseed.
"These fruitless arrests result in millions in jail expenses, hundreds of thousands of wasted officer hours, and tens of thousands of Texans being taken to jail for minor infractions," the Texas Appleseed report said.
Research by the Vera Institute of Justice found that "jails are far more expensive than previously understood" because their costs often drive up expenses amongst other county departments.
Other research suggests that these arrests are pointless. Research published in the Michigan Law Review suggests that traffic stops pose fare less risk to police officers and that the rate of assaults on officers that result in serious injury during such stops is 0.00028%, or 1 in every 361,111 stops.
Arrests for non-jailable offenses also are not-at-all popular in Texas. Almost 75% of Texans in a University of Houston poll earlier this year support ending arrests for fine-only offenses.