TEXAS – Every police chief, every sheriff — anyone who heads a law enforcement agency in Texas is now on notice: follow the state’s racial profiling reporting law, or else.
Just two weeks after our Failure to Report investigation uncovered more than 250 agencies never submitted any racial profiling data between 2016 and 2019, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement sent warning letters. Those letters serve as official notice to the heads of the state’s local and state law enforcement agencies if they don’t comply, they will be punished.
Our investigation also found TCOLE couldn’t produce a single comparative analysis from any department since the 2009 racial profiling law was modified and ordered TCOLE to collect those analyses.
“They’ve got until March 1st,” TCOLE Executive Director Kim Vickers told KXAN. “Any agency that has not yet reported, we’re sending them a certified letter that explains to them the steps that need to be taken, what they need to submit to us and by what time, and that there will be action taken if they choose to not do so.”
Those certified letters are going out this week, the director said.
