Mentally Impaired Clients

You probably have realized by now that your local law enforcement officers are required to have two days training in "de-escalation and crisis intervention techniques to facilitate interaction with persons with mental impairments," as required by SB 1473 (79th Legislature). There are a thousand good reasons for this, including officer safety, client safety, and the fact that a significant percentage (perhaps as large as 30% in some jurisdictions) of repeat law enforcement clients are from this population.

In addition to training officers in intervention techniques, many jurisdictions are now establishing (or have already established) various procedures to divert petty offenders with mental impairments from simply being arrested and jailed. Continually jailing persons with mental impairments is expensive, dangerous to both the officer and the client, and often simply inhumane.

You have probably also realized by now that code enforcement officers in Texas are currently NOT required to have similar training. This is in spite of the fact that code enforcement officers are likely to come into contact with mentally impaired citizens more frequently than peace officers.

Cops encounter mentally impaired citizens when their behavior has become disorganized to the point that a crime has been committed. Code enforcement officers are likely to encounter mentally impaired citizens much sooner -- when their mental confusion and disorganization has expanded into their environment, filling the house and spilling out into the yard. Police get involved at the point of crime; code enforcement often gets called when neighbors can't stand the disarray.

Nor should we overlook the point that while police are armed for personal protection, code enforcement officers are not.

If you are a code enforcement officer -- or know some -- we encourage you to raise this issue with them and their management. Training code enforcement -- and public health -- officers in "de-escalation and crisis intervention techniques to facilitate interactions with person with mental impairments" can only be a good thing. In fact, such training may save a life.

Getting access to this training should not be too difficult. Start with contacting the training provider being used by your police department or county sheriff about offering a one or two-day training in your community. Or perhaps there is a mental health professional at a local university or in private practice in your community who would be better.

This is one of those training situations where everybody wins -- and you can sleep better, too, knowing that you have gone the next step to make Texas a safer place to live.

Don't wait for the State Legislature to mandate this training -- and don't wait until a bad incident has happened in your community. Act now.

We've posted a list of bills we're watching as the State Legislature continues to do its thing. You can get them by going to our site at http://www.tidrc.org/ and clicking on "Pending Bills" in the upper right hand corner.

We think that all of the ones we've listed are of interest in environmental enforcement, but the following are particularly worth watching from this point:

HB 450, imposing a criminal penalty for possessing glass containers in Texas river beds, looks like it will make it through the process.

The two bills [HB 1172 and SB 196], extending the Class C misdemeanor for trash burning in parts of Montgomery County to Harris County, is not looking too healthy.

My favorite, HB 2703 / SB 239, extending the Class B misdemeanor in the Penal Code for interference with a public servant to local government employees enforcing state environmental laws, seems to be working it way along happily.

HB 2714 / SB 1324, creating an administrative enforcement process and regulatory framework for recycling consumer electronic goods, is an amazing piece of writing. If passed, local governments would have to make free consumer electronics recycling available to citizens, without quantity limits. This seems too progressive for Texas, but sometimes strange bills get approved at the end of the session. This would be an absolutely big deal if passed.

HB 3388 / SB 1864 is a also potential big deal. It would mandate solid waste permit reviews in three cases: (1) every five years for poorest performers; (2) anytime a state representative wanted such a review; and, (3) anytime the local government where the facility is located wanted a review. The results of the review could be restrictions on the permit. Sounds like a good idea to me! A public hearing on this one is being scheduled.

Please let me know if you ave any bills not on the list that could impact local environmental enforcement.

A couple of new bills of interest

Here are a couple of new bills recently introduced that we will be following:

SB 196 (Gallegos) would expand the current Class C Misdemeanor for burning household refuse in certain unincorporated areas of Montgomery County to also include certain parts of the unincorporated area of Harris County. Current law at Local Government Code Sec. 352.018 makes it a Class C Misdemeanor to burn refuse in "neighborhoods" and on "lots smaller than five acres" in unincorporated Montgomery County (the current law doesn't use the term "Montgomery County" but that is the only place meeting the definition). The areas of prohibited burning in unincorporated Harris County would also be "neighborhoods" and "lots smaller than five acres." Presumably burning trash on larger lots would not violate the Local Government Code. Throughout Texas, however, (including Montgomery and Harris County) burning domestic waste anywhere that the jurisdiction has "provided" or "authorized" waste collection service is a violation of the Texas Outdoor Burning Rule, which is, in turn, a violation of Texas Water Code Sec. 7.177(5) ... essentially an expensive Class B Misdemeanor. Clearly using a Class C Misdemeanor to stop rural trash burning is far easier that working through the "Texas Water Code and the Texas Outdoor Burning Rule" maze. At some point, one would like to think that the same Class C ticket that can be issued today in parts of unincorporated Montgomery County will be available as a tool for all enforcement officers. Extending this provision to Harris County is great, but doesn't go far enough. Text.

SB 239 (Gallegos) is a very important bill and deserves widespread support, as it addresses an officer safety issue. It seeks to modify Penal Code Sec. 38.15 INTERFERENCE WITH PUBLIC DUTIES, which establishes a Class B Misdemeanor violation with interfering with police officers, firefighters, emergency vehicle driver and others while they are undertaking their official duties. This bill would expand the protection to "a person with responsibility for assessing, enacting, or enforcing public health, environmental, or safety measures in a county or municipality while the person is performing a duty or exercising authority imposed or granted under Chapter 81, 121, 341, 343, 344, 361, 365, 366, 382, 431, 432, 433, 437, or 438, Health and Safety Code, or Chapter 7 or 26, Water Code." Since acting under these named statutes is what police, deputies and other city and county officials fighting illegal dumping do, this proposed change can only help matters. More and more cities and counties are discovering the "rights of entry" to officers doing environmental inspections and investigations that have been provided by the State Legislature at Texas Health & Safety Code Sec. 361.032, Sec. 382.111, and Sec. 343.024 and the Texas Water Code at Sec. 26.173. Sen. Gallegos' bill would provide support for those officers not already covered under the Penal Code where their jurisdictions have made the policy decision to use the entry provisions provided by the State. Thank you, Sen. Gallegos! Text.

Nothing New

We've been monitoring the various environmental categories of bills filed in the Texas House and Senate, and we see nothing new since the initial flurry in the week of November 13th (the starting point for prefiling proposed legislation in the 80th Legislature). No doubt there will be a flurry of activity after the holidays leading up to the kick-off in both houses at Noon on Tuesday, January 9th. If you haven't taken the time to look around the Texas Legislature website, we urge you to do so.

State Legislators Start Filing Bills

It's about that time again. The pre-filing of legislation for the 80th Texas State Legislature began on Monday, November 13th. The session itself will begin January 9th and run through May 28th. The gurus supporting the State Legislature web have really been putting in the effort over the past year, and the site is now absolutely great.

We'll be tracking any bills that may directly impact criminal environmental enforcement, and some that are just interesting from the environmental management viewpoint. If we miss one that you think is important, please let us know at ockels@tidrc.org and we'll add it to the list.

So far, we notice the following new proposed legislation:

H.B. 32 (Berman) would modify THSC Section 365.012(f) by creating a Class A misdemeanor to discard a "lighted match, a lighted cigarette or cigar, or other lighted smoking material" from a motor vehicle. More info.

H.B. 147 (Phillips) would add a new Texas Water Code provision [Sec. 7.034] that gives the TCEQ the option to let a municipality use any portion of an administrative penalty to fix the underlying problem in the municipal facility that resulted in the penalty being assessed. Currently, one of the statutory limits on Supplemental Environmental Projects (see TWC Sec 7.067. Supplemental Environmental Projects) is that "[t]he commission may not approve a project that is necessary to bring a respondent into compliance with environmental laws or that is necessary to remediate environmental harm caused by the respondent's alleged violation." Apparently the intention of H.B. 147 is to enable the TCEQ to allow a municipality to use administrative penalties to actually address the underlying issue, if TCEQ staff wanted to approve a S.E.P. project to do that. The proposal seems like a good idea to me. Given the limited funds of many small communities, and the regular turn-over in staff and elected officials who often inherit problems, it only makes sense to focus scarce resources on actually fixing the underlying problem. More info.

S.B. 93 (Gallegos) would add several new sections to THSC 382 (the Texas Clean Air Act) that would mandate increased daily fence-line monitoring of air emissions by "major sources," establish programs to study the impact of air contaminates on public health, and establish other parameters for commission actions related to air contaminants. This is a relatively long (nine pages) and though provoking piece of proposed legislation, and is must-reading if you have an interest in Texas air quality regulation and monitoring. More info.

Environmental Officer Health Risks

There is increasing understanding across America of the significant risks run by officers involved in raids on clandestine meth labs. Many officers have stories of everybody running into a house, and then everybody turning around and running out, hacking and coughing. More enlightened jurisdictions now have their officers conduct raids in some sort of protective suiting and self-contained breathing apparatus. Others, and too many in Texas, still do business the old fashioned, macho way: hold your breath and run in with guns drawn. As illness among officers involved in these raids has increased in the United States, so have the health claims against their jurisdictions ... and so have the rejections of these claims by insurance companies. It remains virtually impossible to prove in court than a particular illness is related to running into meth labs, as there are few long-term studies on exposure to the particular chemicals involved. Or as a recent MSMBC story concluded: take a bullet for the city and you'll be taken care of (sort of); take some chemicals and "good luck." I mention this because so many environmental enforcement officers, because of their special knowledge of chemical risks, spend too much time in too many meth houses.

But risks are not all confined to the closed confines of a meth house. Risks may also be encountered in investigating routine dump sites, sometimes where chemicals have been dumped and other times where there is no apparent danger ... until the hacking starts later than evening. Not all dangers are apparent, and, what's worse, we all get complacent. But I suspect that the difficulty in establishing a link between meth chemicals and illness will be far easier than establishing a link between illness and some stray chemical encountered in a dump somewhere.