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Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
2024: Ranked #1 Law Podcast
Host: Tyler Owen and Clint McNear discussing topics, issues, and stories within the law enforcement community. TMPA is the voice of Texas Law Enforcement, focused on protecting those who serve. Since 1950, we have been defending the rights and interests of Texas Peace Officers by providing the best legal assistance in the country, effective lobbying at state and local levels, affordable training, and exemplary member support. As the largest law enforcement association in Texas, TMPA is proud to represent 33,000 local, county and state law enforcement officers.
Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
#101 - "Dismantling the Complaint Database"
In Episode #101 of the Blue Grit Podcast, we’re joined by TMPA Executive Director Kevin Lawrence and Legislative Liaison John Wilkerson for a no-nonsense discussion on the executive order signed by President Trump abolishing the national law enforcement complaint database. We break down what this move means for officers on the ground, the fight against politically driven oversight, and the broader implications for policing in America.
Kevin and John also discuss other key political issues affecting law enforcement, from policy changes to upcoming legislation that could impact officer protections and due process.
email us at- bluegrit@tmpa.org
Now the President Trump signed an executive order basically stopping doing away with the national law enforcement misconduct database and was in fact a huge waste of time and money and resources. You know there's an impact there and I think John can actually delve into how it did in fact trickle down to impact Texas.
Speaker 2:Welcome back. Viewers, watchers, listeners. I'm your host. Tyler owen got, uh, kevin lawrence here today stopping in and saying hello. Of course he's always welcome to jump in. It's, it's uh. It's our podcast, it's tmpx podcast and john wilkerson, our legislative liaison, is, um, he's down at the capitol right now. He's slipped off in a little quiet room, so if you hear some background noise, he is joining us by phone. John, are you there?
Speaker 3:I am here.
Speaker 2:Thank you for joining us. We got a little topics we're going to discuss today that I admit that I didn't know about. I had heard some scuttlebug, but I didn't know the full detail. So we're going to dive off into a pretty important topic that President Trump just signed an executive order, I believe getting rid of and talk about the importance of kind of how it affects or why it was established, and how it's affected John and our legislative team there at the Capitol.
Speaker 1:So Kevin, yeah, president Trump signed an executive order basically stopping doing away with the national law enforcement misconduct database. That's only been around for two and a half three years now and was, in fact, a huge waste of time and money and resources. So that you know, there's an impact there and I think John can actually delve into how it did in fact trickle down to Impact Texas, because, you know, after the mostly peaceful protests in 2020 and 2021, there was a lot of stuff that came out of the state of Texas mandates about us developing new model policies and so on and so forth, and several of them made reference to this national database and our participation in the national database. I think John can help us out with that. But it kind of went unnoticed by the media that this executive order was signed and I got calls and questions from a number of old friends saying, well, what does this mean? What does this mean? And my answer was it means we're going to stop wasting money on something that didn't work anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, speaking of friends, you were, you were, uh, the people you were chatting with the other day is is several people who you've had on your Facebook live shows, uh, and and talk about the importance of having those relationships before we dive off into John Wilkerson and who those people are.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, we're talking about the uh lawyers from the African-American attorney section of the state bar uh, rudy Mattier, steve Foster, uh, uh, nikki, uh, I'm going to forget Nikki's last name.
Speaker 1:I'm so sorry, nikki, uh, but yeah, back in 2000, as a matter of fact, when, when the protest first started uh, steve, who's an old friend, used to work at the Capitol, was general counsel for the Criminal Justice Committee in the Senate he called me and said hey, we need to get out in front of this. This is going to be big, and we need to get out in front of it and start talking about facts and not let the rhetoric take control of everything. And I feel like we did a good job of at least keeping our members involved in those conversations. We certainly did not head off the avalanche. Yeah, what was to come?
Speaker 2:Well, you want to dive off into J-Dub. How has what Kevin just said, how has it impacted you there at the Capitol with the reporting system?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it really hasn't affected much of what we're doing at the Capitol and I think that Kevin hit on it on the fact that, or, wendy, I just hit on the fact that it kind of flew under the radar. You know Kevin wanted me to kind of touch base on how this thing came about and kind of that mess last year. Let me hit off this conversation by saying, kevin, you know TMPA paid for a lot of PTSD treatment for me after the last session because of this bill, and now you're going to rip that scab right off of me. So yeah, senate Bill 1445 was a pretty crazy time during the last legislative session. You had a bunch of input from a bunch of different groups. Crazy time during the last legislative session. You had a bunch of input from a bunch of different groups, a lot of those that were highly supportive of those that were out there peacefully protesting, and you know they started getting in the ear of the legislators and you know we played a lot of defense last session specifically on this particular bill.
Speaker 3:I bet you this bill was rewritten no less than 25, 30 times trying to get some better protections in there for law enforcement. But that was not the movement of the bill. At that time the movement of the bill was trying to get more increased. What it did is it created a new section under the Occupations Code 17-01-169, which requires that the commission commission being TECL submit a when a licensee, a police officer or jailer or dispatcher, when their license is revoked, they have to submit it to a designated law enforcement database. So how this thing is really going to affect Texas, I don't think it is, and the reason why I say that is because TECO, they did not choose that database, so that order was on the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database that was maintained by the Justice Department.
Speaker 2:Well, and to be clear, it wasn't in a situation where the federal government was implying or hinting that states should participate, but it wasn't a mandatory deal they were threatening to take away grants.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's important to point this out. It didn't come through Congress, it was an executive order signed by President Biden. They couldn't get any traction in Congress, so he signed an executive order to create this database, and then, yes, it was more. Since executive order cannot put mandates on the states, it had to be more arm twisting of trying to convince them, and so Texas's response was to give into that arm-twisting as little as possible. Got you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so there was no requirement. Agencies could certainly do that. And it's interesting, if you go to that webpage right now, you'll see an update on there in a yellow box that basically says that nobody can. Yeah, it says right here user agencies can no longer query or add data to the in-lead. So again where you know where I was going with that is you know it's not going to really impact Texas how we do things here and that is because T it's not going to really impact texas how we do things here and that is because tico designated the. Uh, let me see what. I can't remember what that acronym is.
Speaker 2:While you're looking that up, kevin, what was the driving force behind this piece of legislation or executive order being signed? Was it george floyd? Was it the situation in memphis? What? Was there a specific incident that we can recall, or was it just?
Speaker 1:no, it was primarily george floyd and the fallout from george floyd. But you remember the whole thing. The push by campaign zero goes all the way back to trayvon martin and ferguson at the other brown case.
Speaker 2:It's interesting, as trayvon wasn't wasn't killed by police, he was killed by a private.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there weren't even any cops involved in the trayvon martin case. He has a private security guard. You know, whatever George Zimmerman was, the only cop involved in that was the one on the phone telling Zimmerman stop it, don't do this, and the one that responded you know crazy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the one Texas uses is the National De-Certification Index that is controlled by the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training, IDALIS. So in Texas that's the designated one. So when TECO has a licensee that they are revoking their license, they will report it to this database, and when an agency in Texas goes to hire an officer, they have to certify that they did in fact check that officer through this database to make sure that they are not, uh, decertified.
Speaker 1:Got you Okay and that database still exists, and and Texas is still involved in that. The good news is that database is not fraught with all the political influence that the one that was created by executive order included, as a matter of fact, the one that was created by executive order included, as a matter of fact, the one that was created by executive order, the one that President Trump has now put a stop to. 75% of the incidents that were reported into that database had to do with border crossings and prison. Wow, so people who are in prison were complaining and people who were illegally crossing our border were complaining. That's 75% of what that database was all about. Well, and what's crazy?
Speaker 2:is you had mentioned this the other day. Is that, theoretically, it was in place, or put in place to prove bad cops, to identify bad police officers and I think you said the other day— Right to run them out?
Speaker 1:of the business altogether. It hasn't done that. As far as we can tell, not one cop has been weeded out of law enforcement because of the existence of that database.
Speaker 2:Well, here's the golden question for both of you. Is that, now that President Trump has signed the executive order, is that going to have any weigh-in or impact on what now Texas has for T-Coles implementation? Do you think it'll fade out, or do you think it'll strengthen or maintain, or how is it going to work for that?
Speaker 1:maintain, or how is it going to work for that? My guess is we'll continue with these policies in place for the next couple of sessions until we see what kind of traction we get from them, and if and when we discover that it is yet again a waste of time and resources, texas will back out of it.
Speaker 2:JW, you think the same. Thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you know, as long as we've got the data to show, like Kevin is saying, that you know that there may not be the fruit that they're looking for on this thing and so once we have that data and we have it armed, we can go to these legislators. And you know, for now I can see them asking about hey, you know what's this doing. I was talking with Gretchen from TECL earlier and she mentioned that she's already gotten a couple phone calls from some legislators and you know, asking questions about oh my God, what did this do to our bill that we passed last session? And the answer that she gave is the same answer we're going to give. It doesn't do anything to that legislation. Again, because we don't report to that database that President Biden created. We report to this other one and the data in this other one is much more accurate because it requires, you know, you can't just go on there and make a general complaint of oh, this officer talked mean. To me, the only way it gets in there is if it's a misconduct complaint that's sustained. Now we can probably have a three-hour conversation on whether or not there's proper due process in Texas for all law enforcement, because our argument is not. Yeah, it's not, but at the end of the day I don't know that there's going to be that much uproar and then also keep in mind one of the things that we made sure when I say we, I'm talking about the TNPA ledge team.
Speaker 3:We made sure when 1445 was being passed. We made absolutely sure that there were safeguards put in there, like the earlier language of that draft, that I recall having to explain this to legislators because they just could not wrap their head around it. But one of the things is that if an agency, let's say in California, an officer in California, has their license revoked, the original language said that that officer could not be issued a license in Texas period. And we're like whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. What if the reason that they were revoked in California was because they moved to Texas and they weren't able to keep up with their training requirements in California? So that's why you see that language on that bill that says that it must be for a reason that TECO would revoke the license for Because TECO is not going to— Go ahead, yeah, go for.
Speaker 2:And just to be clear, Because TECO is not going to Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. So, just to be clear, this database that you're referring to I admit that I didn't know a whole lot about it. It flew under the radar. So an officer gets complained on physical, any type of complaint, and it's sustained. It should or was intended to go to this database.
Speaker 1:Sorry, we're talking about the one that no longer exists or the one that we are. The one that no longer existed. The intention was, yes. The hope was that it would be the one central repository for all complaints against all law enforcement, nationwide.
Speaker 2:Eventually, and so, now that that's gone, where's all this information, that all the hard work, I guess, that was put to identify these quote-unquote bad cops?
Speaker 1:now that information is just poof well, since, since it didn't identify or well, I mean there was some, there was data on there, just not nothing that they intended for. It's still in possession of the department of justice as far as I know, but it's not available for john. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's. It's no longer available for law enforcement agencies to go on there and search it and it's no longer possible for any agency to go add new information to it.
Speaker 2:It's crazy, I wonder if Elon Musk is happy with it.
Speaker 1:And, by the way, I want to make sure we're very clear about this Law enforcement has always done a better job of policing our own than any other profession you can think of, especially in Texas. And we are not claiming we have never claimed that we don't have bad apples in law enforcement. We do, but we work harder to weed them out, to punish them, to fire them, to indict them, to convict them if they are not doing the job the way they're supposed to be doing, the job we always have. We do a better job than the clergy. We damn sure do a better job than politicians or than the legal profession or doctors and medical yeah Right. So we're not saying that there's not a need to make sure that we track this information. It just needs to be done free of political influence, which, as we all see, is all we get anymore out of DC is political influence one way or the other. And we've still got some other issues. Talk about what's going on at the national level right now and how it affects us yeah, big yeah.
Speaker 3:To reiterate what Kevin was saying, one thing that's really important to notice is and Kevin, you asked me to clarify this and you're absolutely correct, kevin when you go on to the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database big yellow box update and it says agencies can no longer access data or put data in, there you go. Second thing I want to point out is when you go to the IDALIS site, it will tell you that the NDI currently contains 56,244 actions reported by 50 certifying agencies. So what that tells me is that more agencies have identified the political influence on that national one that was created by President Biden's executive order Department. Know, department heads saw it for what it was. It was a farce, that's all it was and so most agencies are using this one through IDLIS or most state, you know, whatever their version of T-COL is, or POST or whatever it may be. More of them have identified this IDLIS database to be more effective at truly tracking the bad apples and making sure that they can never wear a badge and gun again.
Speaker 1:By making that information available to the next potential employing agency, which is the right way of doing all this.
Speaker 1:Another issue that was brought up last week was people asking me about what, about this, what Doge is doing and the trimming of the federal payroll and the federal budget and everything.
Speaker 1:Um, and I don't want to get in the middle of the politics of that, but my response to it was this you know, people were saying well, there's there's really good people losing their jobs simply because we're trying to trim the fat out of the federal budget. And, by the way, let's point this out, every Democratic president since, well, in my lifetime except maybe LBJ has promised to cut the fat out of the federal budget. None of them have. Every Republican has promised to do it and none of them have until now. And now we've got somebody who's actually going in and saying, okay, we're going to quit wasting our tax dollars to the point that our national debt is now at $37 trillion, which is 10 times our annual budget. It's 10 years worth of our annual budget. If good people are losing their jobs, my response to them is hey, we got lots of job openings at the state and local level for good people because our recruiting and retention crisis has not been solved. Come on, we can use some good people.
Speaker 3:Right, and to kind of reiterate that, kevin, you know when, if I have a member that asked me about that or you know as TMP getting involved in that, you know my asks me about that, is TMPA getting involved in that? My response is look, you're a member of TMPA, right? And if we have a bunch of employees employed for jobs that we don't need, how much are we going to have to raise your dues to cover that? And it's the same concept. So I get it. They may be a wonderful person and they may be good at their job, but if that position is not needed, why are we paying for that position through our tax dollars? It would not be an acceptable practice in the private industry either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the other stuff at the federal level. Obviously, the passing of the Social Security Fairness Act was a big deal. You know what I haven't heard yet? Is anybody calling in to let us know? By the way, I've started receiving my increased benefits from this.
Speaker 2:I saw a post the other day from President Yost that indicated that it was going to be the week of the 24th, they were going to be retro paying, uh, those recipients their payments, but I haven't seen or heard anybody actually receiving those and those will be the retro payments all the way back to january 1st of 2024 I believe so okay yes, sir, yeah.
Speaker 1:So. So we knew it was going to take some time. We knew there was going to be, you know, especially with uh, pretty fast though, I mean from the time it passed I the administration being under understaffed to start with, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and now Elon's cutting and cutting even more. But yeah, it's pretty fast, I mean from the time that he was signed and now it's what? A month? Month and a half maybe.
Speaker 3:I figured you know they had to send a caveman into those caves to dig up the retirement paperwork to figure out who all was where.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's funny, by the way, for anybody who's hearing this stuff about. Supposedly there were people that were 150 years old that were receiving benefits. Elon was being flipped when he made that remark. In the Social Security database, there's a default for the date of birth item and if, for whatever reason, they didn't have a date of birth for the person they were generating benefits for, it defaulted to a date in like January of 1875. So everybody, they didn't have a. Just follow me here. If they didn't have a date of birth for you, they automatically put a date of birth from 1875, which means it would show you right now to be 150 years old so, kevin, I'm sorry but.
Speaker 1:But the point is, if we don't have your date of birth, why the hell are we giving you business?
Speaker 3:if we know exactly that's what I was about to say.
Speaker 1:Yeah no kidding, and that was the point elon was trying to be. He was trying to be funny with that piece of information right there and of of course, in a soundbite world. That doesn't get explained, Yep.
Speaker 2:Well, speaking of soundbite worlds and being in caves, John, you are sitting in a cave right now at the Texas Capitol. We haven't touched on this a little bit, with Session getting kicked off a couple weeks ago. Let's talk about how many bills have been filed, what the hell TNPA is doing down there, what are we seeing? Our involvement with T-LAC let's, let's touch. Let's touch on that while we got you on the phone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. Uh. So, currently, right now, as of what, uh 10, 28 AM, on the 28th day of February, uh, there are 6,007 total pieces of legislation filed. Uh, now, granted, that also includes your resolutions and all that good stuff. As far as what we're tracking and keeping an eye on, we are currently tracking 1,187 as of yesterday afternoon.
Speaker 3:Haven't been able to go in today and see about the bills that were filed today and which ones we need to be paying attention to, but yeah, we're a lot of these bills. You know, what we do is we look at the caption of the bill and we say could this affect the laws that our members enforce? Does this affect, you know, the prison sentences of these violent offenders that we're trying to keep off the streets? Does this affect the labor relations between our local associations and their employer? And does it affect any officer rights, you know, such as, or anything that kind of touches that right, so like workers' compensation. So we look at that cap, we say does this affect it or is it germane enough that something could be tacked onto that bill that can negatively affect? So we have to be constantly thinking about all the what ifs out there and then once we once we track the bill, if that bill comes up for a hearing, then what we do is is, brian and I, we and now John John's, you know more heavily involved in the legislature. And so on the weekends we get to sit there and read throughout the bills that are up for a hearing and take, you know, sometimes a 12, 13 page bill, condense it down into four or five sentences of this is how exactly this is going to affect law enforcement. And then we meet internally to say, you know, kind of what we feel our position on this should be.
Speaker 3:And then every Monday morning, tmpa co-chairs what we call the TELEC, which is, when it was originated it stood for the Texas Law Enforcement Council, and so we co-chair that with Dallas Police Association, houston Police Officers Union and Harris County Deputies Organization and every group at the Capitol that is there advocating for law enforcement.
Speaker 3:Now, whether that be the administrators, so say Texas Police Chiefs Association, or Sheriff's Association of Texas, or whether it be the labor groups like PMPA, dpa, hpou, those groups, or even the retired, like we have Retired Game Warning Association in there we all come together and we look at all the bills that are going to have hearings, I pretty much primarily bills that are going to have hearings. I pretty much primarily share that calling out the bill numbers hey, does anybody have anything on this, any intel on it? Because that world is a fast-moving world. We could have language that we pull off the website and right before that meeting we may have a legislator that reaches out and says, hey, bill's coming up for a hearing, say tomorrow, and I have a, a, a draft that we're going to be dropping as a committee substitute uh, want to get this to you and that committee substitute may completely change the landscape of that of that particular bill.
Speaker 2:And it's so cool to see it from from our perspective. Uh, because there's so many different people that that want to approach the groups groups, because it's all the major law enforcement groups across Texas. And so just the other day there was a group that was a lobby group that had some interest regarding some license plates and so they just simply wanted to come in and kind of explain their thoughts on a bill. And so that happens all the time during those T-Lake meetings. That T-Lake meeting is so important for everybody to be on the same sheet of music for the same mission. Often we've said this a lot of times in this podcast is that we have we might have different patches but we all have the same mission.
Speaker 1:Well, it's also very helpful for us to have those groups coming 100, because not only do we see the the black letter law that they're proposing, then we start finding out what the motives are.
Speaker 2:Right what's the reason behind all this? Yeah, yeah, no, it's uh, and you and you do a great job, uh, you know, heading that chair with, with, with tealek you and ray hunt.
Speaker 1:It's uh, it's just fascinating to watch and by the way, they're nowhere near finished filing bills. No, uh, there's. There's one in particular that we're waiting for to come back from ledge council, I think john, there may have more updates on this bill. Nine, uh, no, that no bill number yet because it hasn't come back from the legislature. I got you the one that would amend the teacher's retirement system to allow the law enforcement personnel that are in that system to have some sort of a different or supplemental retirement allowance that they would have to pay for. They'd have to come up with more money out of their own paycheck, but kind of like DPS and Parks and Wildlife and TABC have under the ERS.
Speaker 1:Because, let's face it, trs is designed for teachers and school administrators. It's designed for people that have a much longer working life expectancy than cops do. Working life expectancy than cops do, you know? And so the rule of 80 that you have in the teacher's retirement system simply says once your age and your number of years of service total up to 80, now you're eligible to retire. That doesn't work out very well for law enforcement, so there need to be additional contributions in there to allow for 20 or 25 year retirement for law enforcement officers. So we're waiting for that bill to come and, by the way, it's based upon an interim study review that was done by TRS. Their report was issued, I think, in December, and so now we're crafting a bill so that we can work with our members that work for ISDs and universities and colleges that are in TRS to hopefully get that thing pushed through.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think Kevin's right. We're still waiting on the bill language to come out of ledge council to see what that picture looks like. You know, we, we, we came in this with our legislative agenda bills and you know, to date there's only one bill that has not been filed. It will be. We have a, we have an author's office on it on the house side and on the senate side. Uh, we're just waiting on, uh, that to actually make its way through the system and appear on the website. Do you want to?
Speaker 2:but it will be okay, it will be filed. I was going to ask what that is and but we're going to have a podcast soon, uh, on that piece of legislation. So maybe, maybe, yeah, maybe he did mention social security.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, uh, workers comp and I want to. I want to talk about that for just a second because john has been our resident expert and our point man on all these workers comp bills. There's still a lot of work to be done with regard to how workers come, but I just want to mention I was watching a particular popular television show the other day and there was a an incident in there where a dea agent was shot, ambushed and shot multiple times and then they track him having all his troubles with getting the proper medical care to get recovered and get back to work, and and I just wished that they had talked about the fact that those were workers' comp carriers that he was having to fight with, because they had a great platform there to start making this issue much more public than what it has been up until now. But that big problem is these workers' comp carriers will not allow officers, first responders, to get the treatment that they need in a timely manner so we can get them back to work.
Speaker 3:Yep, it sure has. So what Kevin's talking about from last session was House Bill 790, which would be a great opportunity to mention that it passed the House of Representatives unanimously, and that speaks volumes as to the work that the legislative team did on that bill last session. Unfortunately, it got over to the Senate and died a painful death on the Senate side. But yeah, we got that refiled this session. House Bill 2369, for our listeners and followers that are interested in what's going on with the workers' comp, Don't forget the watchers.
Speaker 3:And just to put it into perspective yes, the watchers. And what? The voyeurs? I think you called them before as well. Yes, voyeurs, yeah. So just a two-second cap of what this bill does is really simple. It does two main things. One, when that denial letter is issued, the employee can now if we get this signed into law the injured first responder can now take that denial letter and go to their local, have a fundraiser to pay for the surgery If they're on their spouse's insurance, use another insurance policy, whatever the case may be, but get fixed, get back to work, then go through the appeal process and if they win the appeal process, the insurance carrier is going to have to reimburse them the money that they're out. And, by the way, the insurance carriers do not want to do that. But then the second aspect of this bill that way they'll push this right.
Speaker 1:The reason they don't want to do that is because they will then be paying the rates that the individual employee had to pay to get these services, rather than the negotiated rates that they would have paid if they had covered it to start with Got you.
Speaker 2:That makes sense, yes.
Speaker 3:Yep. And then the other aspect that this bill does is and this is our argument to anybody that argues against this bill we have a 60-day timeline that's put in there. That basically says if the comp carrier does not accept the claim, accept or deny the claim after 60 days, then they own it. They cannot go back and deny the claim after 60 days, then they own it. They cannot go back and deny the extent of injury For years and years and years. That's the way that it was always done, but the Supreme Court of Texas abrogated that rule in the early 2000s.
Speaker 3:And so what this bill does is if the insurance carrier is doing the right thing, they don't have to worry about that 60-day timeline, because that 60-day timeline only kicks in when the injured first responder requests an examination to define the compensable injury. That has always been in statute, but the only people that could actually request that was the insurance carrier, and they have never to date requested that. Reason being is is because they know if they request that now there's paper documentation showing what the actual injury is. So what we did is we said okay, look, if the insurance company, if they're doing the right thing, there's no need for the injury first responder to request that. But if they're not doing it, then now the injury first responder can request that and that starts that 60-day timeline.
Speaker 2:Well, do we feel pretty confident about the Senate side this time, or is it just going to be kind of up in the air and, depending on how the wind blows, that day.
Speaker 3:You know I'm not going to mention the name of the Senate office, but I want our listeners to get an idea of what we're dealing with down there. Dealing with down there A senator's office staff. We met with them and their mentality was well hold on a minute here. Last session we signed a law that said any injured first responder has a year to get back to health and get back to work. They cannot be fired or they can't take a financial hit. If they have a year, why don't they just take that year? And you know your job wants to hit the floor. It's like well for one because they're in pain.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:You know. I mean, they're trying to get treatment. Two we didn't take this job to sit on a couch and collect a paycheck. We are public service. We want to get back to work and that's what we communicated to them.
Speaker 1:But let's also be honest. Most law enforcement officers still to this day they almost pay their bills with their paycheck. They finish paying their bills and pay for you know luxuries like gas and food and stuff, with overtime and extra jobs. If you're taking a year of you know injury leave, you're not getting any overtime or extra jobs and so you are suffering financially. Yeah, good point.
Speaker 3:Exactly Yep, so uh, but you know we're we're continuing to have those meetings on the Senate side and hopefully we can head off, you know, with it being filed. You know, last session we had to get it through the House first, right, and now that we know, we're pretty confident that we're going to be able to get this through the House this time, especially the author of this bill, representative Patterson, is also the chair of the local consent calendars. With this being the exact same bill. We're hoping we can push this bill local consent and get it passed out of the House much quicker so that that allows us to spend more time on the Senate side working those offices.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got you Makes sense. Makes sense Any other bills that are kind of on the horizon or on our radar that you want the listener to know.
Speaker 3:You know there's a there's a lot of bills that are out there. You know we have our legislative agenda bills. I don't really want to put them out there on a podcast because I don't want the enemies of and I don't want to say enemies, but those that may be not such big fans of law enforcement.
Speaker 1:Our foes. We don't want that.
Speaker 2:Our foes, yes, not our friendlies.
Speaker 3:But yeah, we are trying to get some stuff done, like on the Brady issue a couple different versions, the bills are out there on that. We're trying to find good legislation on that Another big issue that we had.
Speaker 3:Go ahead, just wanted to real quick. So after last session, the Tyler Owen bill, also known as the transfer of certain students, of children who are peace officers. What we did on that one is is we got that passed and then we ran into a problem where the school district was saying well, that bill doesn't say we have to enter into an agreement with this other district. And because we say we have to enter into an agreement with this other district, and because we don't have to enter into an agreement, this law doesn't apply to us. And so we've already got language that's already filed. It was filed during the pre-filing period by the same author that carried the original bill. Last session we made that representative knowledgeable of what these schools were doing. We made that representative knowledgeable of what these schools were doing, and the author's office is pretty much like hold my beer and watch this, let's go let's go right.
Speaker 1:I just want to point out one of the reasons. This is very important. We want our cops to actually live in the communities that they serve if at all possible. It makes for a better relationship. But we don't want our families to be and the communities that they serve if at all possible. It makes for a better relationship, but we don't want our families to be suffering or impacted because of that. If dad is out or mom is out arresting certain individuals within that community, we don't want their kid to have to show up at school the next day and suffer the fallout from that.
Speaker 2:I'll be real brief on kind of how this started. We've talked, we've discussed it before, but what happened to us and I didn't even think I was a part-time employee when it happened, I just reached out to my state rep. But what happened? As I was on a uh uh uh apprehension team for a warrant team, I didn't like to go to the Small town rule East Texas, and then my kids began to get bullied. I did some research and I couldn't transfer my kids and it was a problem. You could transfer your kids if you were military or if you were an employee of the district, and so that sparked a discussion and that discussion it highlighted the fact that this is not just a rural East Texas problem, it's a statewide problem. And so thankful that Mitch Landry, kevin Lawrence, john Wilkerson, all the ledge team kind of jumped on board and at that time Chris Paddy followed it and it passed. But, like you said, there's some loopholes in it, so our ledge team is trying to get those corrected.
Speaker 2:Another bill that's really important in this session is Senator Huffman's. Is it Senate Bill 9?
Speaker 2:You know, all these numbers. You're talking about bill reform. I'm talking about the bill reform bill. I'm almost positive, it's senate bill nine, that's talking about these rogue, uh, these rogue judges.
Speaker 1:You know last time and there's still a problem with rogue da's, but we've got some judges that just seem just to don't not get it and well, you noticed just this last week yes, guys accused of killing a harris county deputy sheriff was released on and it was originally no bonded but ultimately a judge down there decided to let him out and set the bond at $1 million and I don't know exactly what was done to PR bond after that. And then I see later on that he's supposedly on house arrest. But his house includes Harris County and every County that's contiguous to Harris County, which is a big area. But that's the kind of stuff. By the way, if you haven't noticed, y'all go to houston police officers union's facebook page. They've got a great dialogue going on on there between a local defense attorney and who's friends with the judge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's hilarious, that's good stuff but yeah, that's just kind of a an over 30 000 viewpoint of kind of what's going on there at the, at the uh, at the capital, with our ledge team and uh, for those that don't know, and I'm sure there's no question about it, they do a phenomenal job and I mean 40 hours a week is gone at that point because I'm sure you guys are blowing and going probably putting in 70 or 80 during session. So thank you all for doing what you do and, uh, I'm sure it's like playing chess in your mind every single day with all the bills coming in and out and having to analyze those. So thank you all from uh, from us playing chess on about 15 different chess boards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah, it's three-dimensional chess. Yeah, that's right exactly anything.
Speaker 2:I know you're busy. You've got some, uh, some committees you got to jump into today. Is there anything else you wanted to let the listener, viewer, watcher, voyeur know, uh, about what's what's going on the capitol, or how people can get involved, or if they have any questions on a bill that may pertain, or you know pertain, to certain situations within their region, uh, or law enforcement general, how can they get in touch with you and the yeah.
Speaker 3:So, uh, just a couple quick points to make on that. You can always go to tmpPA's webpage, go to the political lobbying subsection of our page. Yeah, and we have an interactive bill tracker there so you can see every bill that we are tracking. So if you're If you, you know our members out there if you're sitting there and you hear on the rumor mill, oh my God, a bill's been filed to you know, do away with my pension, all right. So, for one, go on that bill tracker list and see if we're tracking it. That's step one. Step two just because a bill has been filed does not mean it's going to become law. Correct, everybody needs to remember the way that our system is set up is to prevent laws from being passed. So for a bill to actually become law, it's got to overcome numerous, numerous hurdles, and the majority of people who get filed never even get a hearing right.
Speaker 1:John.
Speaker 3:Exactly yes. Until they get a hearing, we're not even going to worry about it for the most part.
Speaker 3:Exactly. We're going to ping it and that way, if it does get a hearing, now we know we've got to jump on it, and so if, if a bill does come up for a hearing. What I would ask is that our members you know you can reach out to any one of us on the legislative team Mitch Landry, john Siriga, myself or Brian and you know our website or our emails are on the website and our emails are on the website. I don't know, maybe Tyler. I don't know if you can put them on the podcast at the end of it or something. Yeah, I'll flash it up.
Speaker 2:I think legislative at. Tmpa is not concentrated just to y'all so I don't want to put that out there, but communications at TMPA certainly is. You guys got any questions, you can put that in there. Send us an email and we can get that to the right person there at the Capitol. This is Brian's first session.
Speaker 3:This is Brian's first session yeah. Yeah, he is drinking from a fire hydrant.
Speaker 1:How many pairs of shoes has he worn out so far?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I don't know. I've seen him in a couple different pairs, so I'm guessing they're wearing out pretty quick.
Speaker 2:Well, listen brother, we couple different pairs so I'm guessing they're wearing out pretty quick. Well, listen brother, we appreciate you jumping on, uh, and I'm sure you got some committees. You got going on again, uh, we appreciate it. We'll put all the information we need to here on the podcast episode absolutely.
Speaker 3:My friends appreciate the, uh, the ability to come in and talk and and bring things out to our members.
Speaker 2:Hey, man, it's your podcast. Just let us know whenever you're gonna jump up, jump back on, give us an update. We'll see you in a couple weeks. Get some sleep when you can, yeah, yeah, well, that was all right that was john wilkerson, again our legislative liaison. Uh, that works there at the capitol full-time. Him and brian flat, john seriga and mitch landry. They do a phenomenal job of tracking all that kind of stuff and and uh, testifying before committees every single day. It's a it's a fast-paced job. So, kevo, anything else you?
Speaker 1:wanted to cover today and always love being here. Just, you know, I want to, you know, make sure we remind our members this. This is the chance to see the sausage being made. So if you get a chance to come down to the capitol, yes, uh, do it, because you, you will, especially on mondays when those tea ladies are taking place I, you will really be in awe of just how hard these people are working and wear good shoes and advocating your interest yeah, and wear comfortable shoes. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, a couple things coming up. We've got the Texas Peace Office Memorial.
Speaker 1:I believe it's April 27th, on a Saturday it's going to be on a Saturday this year, which is different. We think we may get better participation because people are not trying to run and dance around. Get back to work on Monday morning.
Speaker 2:I think the only hiccup right now and I'm sure the intent was good was that the bicycle the fallen officer ride. The bike ride is going to be coming on Sunday. We'll put something out on our social media and on our website about those events that weekend. If you've never been to the Texas Peace Office Memorial, I strongly encourage you to go. We need to honor our fallen and most families need to see us honoring those people.
Speaker 1:TMPA Board of Directors. Spring Board Meeting will be that same weekend. Yes, it will. So we'll be coming in on Thursday, meeting Friday, maybe part of Saturday. And of course National Police Week is coming up. It is Starting in May May the 12th through the 16th, I think you're correct. So we will of course have our representatives there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. And then conference save the date that's shortly coming. We're working on the graphic. It is the it's not the 75th year for the conference, it is our 75th year of being in existence. But we're working on a pretty cool graphic for you guys for this conference, and there's going to be a storefront that you can purchase merch and proudly wear that across the state. So that's going to be coming out. That's going to be July 26th through 27th, that weekend there in Houston, and we'll push some information out whenever that graphic becomes available.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 27th that weekend. They're in Houston and we'll push some information out whenever that graphic becomes available. Yeah, it got me thinking. I think it technically is the 75th annual conference, because we missed a year because of COVID.
Speaker 2:We missed it. Well, maybe yeah.
Speaker 1:It may actually be.
Speaker 2:We may have actually gotten back on that Kevin is so, for those that don't know, he's so technical when I said that the other day. He's like whoa whoa, whoa, whoa whoa, I was like okay, boss, it's not exactly 75 years, but anyway, anything else you want to touch on.
Speaker 1:Yes, another thing coming up later this year is the National FOP Biennial.
Speaker 1:That's right, I forgot about that that will be in August and there's going to be some stuff on the agenda for that that y'all need to pay attention to, and all of you who are fop members please keep to it. I'm not going to bring it up right now, but there will be some uh contentious discussions during that conference, so we'll keep hell updated so anyway, hey, well, with all that being said, if you have nothing else, gotta go to work, gotta go to work.
Speaker 2:You guys, take care, stay safe. It's getting to uh be spring season, thank god, and it is uh warming up outside, so you know what that means more domestics, more violence, and uh it's about to get in in the busy season for law enforcement. So take care, stay safe. God bless you and, as always, may god bless texas. We're out the. The name Zafira means ''Pure'' Religion, ''mahdi'' Religion, ''mahdi''. The name Zafira means ''Clean'' in Arabic.
Speaker 3:Religion ''Muslim''. The Thank you.
