Dateline Houston

Update (10:15)

Thus ends the short saga of reformer Pat Lykos, Harris County DA. The Houston Chronicle has called it for Mike Anderson. With 56 percent of precincts reporting, Anderson leads with 63 percent to Lykos’s 37.

Lykos may have been hurt by last week’s news about graduate of her controversial DIVERT program, which gives a treatment plan and probation to people convicted of DWIs. Erick Charles Erminger completed the DIVERT program in 2009, then was charged last week in his girlfriend’s murder. He was drunk when he allegedly strangled her. On Friday, Anderson remarked, “It’s a shame that (Erminger) didn’t get the treatment he needed.” Lykos blasted Anderson for politicizing the tragedy.

 

Update (9:38 p.m.)

It looks like Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos may not be back for more. She’s getting trounced in early voting with 35 percent to Mike Anderson’s 65 percent.

Meanwhile, Borris Miles, House District 146’s purportedly hard-partying Democratic incumbent, may hold on to his seat by more than eight votes this time. He leads Al Edwards with 57 percent in early voting, though that race could tighten as precincts report.

Over in Fort Bend, Rick Miller has confounded those who thought HD 26 would presage the ascendance of the minority Republican. The one white male in the four-way race has taken home 38 percent of the early vote, a substantial lead over Sonal Buchar (22 percent) and Jacquie Chaumette (27 percent) who were expected to end up in a run-off.

Also unexpectedly, Gene Wu has taken a dramatic lead in HD 137, picking up 45 percent of the early vote. He may even avoid a run-off with Smith and Madden, who have 25 and 20 percent respectively.

 

Posted earlier:

Tonight, the rest of the Observer staff and I will be live-blogging the primary as results come in. The four races I’ll have my eye on:

Harris County District Attorney: Pat Lykos vs. Mike Anderson—Will scandal and two grand jury investigations make besieged reformist Pat Lykos a one-term DA? Nostalgic long-time prosecutor and judge Mike Anderson hopes so. Background from Dateline: Houston here.

House District 146: Borris Miles vs. Al Edwards—Borris and Al, Democrats and demonstrably characters, are facing off for the fourth time in this primary. Last time, Miles won by only eight votes. This year, he outspent Edwards eightfold. Will it matter? Background from Dateline: Houston here.

House District 26: Charlie Howard’s retirement leaves a four-way Republican scramble for the rapidly evolving Fort Bend district. The two front-runners are both women of color: Sonal Bhuchar, former board president of Fort Bend ISD, is from India: Jacquie Chaumette, mayor pro-tem of Sugar Land, is from St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. They spent similarly and have similar cash on hand—unlike their opponents, who are considerably less flush. Rick Miller, former chairman of the Republican Party of Fort Bend, is down to his last five grand, and Diana Miller, real estate agent (no relation to Rick) brought in only $100 in contributions during the last reporting period. This race will likely end in a run-off between Bhuchar and Chaumette—and presage things to come. Susan-Smith Richardson has more here.

House District 137: The counterpart to HD 26 is this west Houston district, where four Democrats are vying replace retiring school finance guru Scott Hochberg. At this point, it’s a toss-up. Joseph Carlos Madden and Jamaal Smith are former Capitol staffers, Gene Wu is a Harris County prosecutor and Sarah Winkler is a Alief Independent School District board member, all with adequate funding and experience. The minority-opportunity district is likely to go Democratic in November.

Stay tuned!

Yesterday, an all-white jury found white Houston police officer Andrew Blomberg not guilty of stomping the head and neck of Chad Holley, a black, unarmed, 15-year-old burglary suspect, in 2010.

You can see surveillance video of Blomberg not stomping Holley here.

Last week, Dateline Houston reported on the Blomberg case, and how Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland told reporters that the behavior seen on the video warranted felony prosecution. Attorneys for the defense moved to hold Chief McClelland in contempt after his public comment, which the judge dismissed Friday.

But after a single day’s deliberation, the jury found Blomberg not guilty even of the one count of misdemeanor official oppression for which he was tried.

The video was shown several times in court. Blomberg is the first officer to reach Holley. It looks like Holley lies on the ground with his hands behind his head and Blomberg stomps his head and neck. Blomberg and his attorneys argued that Holley’s hand was actually beside his temple, and that Blomberg was trying to get his foot into the crook of Holley’s arm to move it.

Blomberg is the first of four officers who’ll be tried for their part in the alleged beating. Chief McClelland fired six officers soon after the incident.

After the verdict, local activist Quanell X told reporters, “What they did today is send a message to black people, to all of us, that our lives aren’t worth a damn in this city.”

Mayor Annise Parker, Houston’s State Senator Rodney Ellis, and U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee disagreed publicly with the verdict. Their responses emphasized, “Hey, he’s still fired you guys.”

A statement from Chief McClelland released after the hearing said in part, “It is important to remember that the officer that was the subject of this trial is no longer a Houston police officer… He will never again be a Houston Police Officer.”

As Blomberg left the courthouse, a reporter asked him what he’d say to people who think the Holley beating was racially motivated.

Blomberg said, “They weren’t there that day.”

Local activist Deric Muhammad told the Observer that this was “par for the course in Harris County.”

“When you look at the dozens of officers who have been on trial not only for beating suspects but for in some cases killing suspects over the past five years or so, I can only remember one being convicted, and the one who was convicted only got probation,” Muhammad said.

He sighed. “I didn’t expect it to turn out any other way, to be honest with you. I don’t even have the energy to pretend otherwise. This is about what we usually get. You’re not surprised when dogs bark. You’re not surprised when cats meow. You’re not surprised when birds chirp. And you’re not surprised when white officers are exonerated for beating, oppressing, and/or murdering black suspects in Harris County.”

The Houston Police Department doesn’t have a stellar reputation for behavior toward suspects. Pop quiz: what public figure thinks violent officers in Houston should be punished more severely?

The chief of police.

HPD Chief Charles McClelland testified Tuesday in the trial of former officer Andrew Blomberg, one of six cops caught on video participating in the March 2010 beat-down of an unarmed black 15-year-old suspected of burglary. Blomberg is the first of four officers being tried for official oppression, a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail. Chief McClelland, recapping his testimony for media after the trial that day, said that’s not enough.

“I just think what they did was felony conduct,” he said. “In my opinion, do I want them charged with a higher penalty? Of course.”

A conviction for official oppression requires only that the prosecution prove “mistreatment” of the subject, whereas for a felony, prosecutors would need to demonstrate “serious bodily injury.”

The video certainly looks serious. View for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdVLMgbQFsI

A less pixilated version appears here, within the context of its original airing by ABC 13 Eyewitness News on KTRK in February 2011.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvy976QKuS4

The video comes from the surveillance camera of a nearby business. It captures Chad Holley, fleeing, being clipped by a police car, then falling to the ground and lying face-down with his hands behind his head. He is swarmed by officers who appear to stomp, punch and kick his head, legs and back.

Chief McClelland fired six officers in the wake of the beating, although three appealed and two were reinstated by arbitrators.

Arbitrators commonly override the chief’s disciplinary actions. According to KTRK, ‘”For about 15 years, about a third of the cases that actually went to arbitration were overturned in their entirety, about a third were upheld in their entirety and about a third were modified,’ HPD’s lawyer Craig Ferrell said.”

Chief McClelland’s frankness may get him in trouble. On Wednesday, Blomberg’s attorney asked state District Judge Ruben Guerrero to hold Chief McClelland in contempt of court for his Tuesday comments to the media. Judge Guerrero said he would decide the matter Friday.

The arrest was Holley’s first. He was convicted of burglary of a habitation despite no physical evidence linking him to the crime and sentenced to two years’ probation, which he completed in April without incident.

Chief McClelland also spoke out in February about the beating of unarmed black Houstonian Sebastian Prevot, who failed to stop before the white line at a stop sign and continued a few blocks to his home before pulling over. Dateline Houston brought you this story at the time. Prevot was assailed by more than a dozen officers and taken to the hospital for, among other injuries, a torn ear that required stitches. His wife, hearing his screams from the front lawn, said she ran out and started to record the beating with her video phone. But she says an officer assaulted her, took the memory card out of her phone, and arrested her as well.

Chief McClelland met with activists who rallied behind the couple and released a statement assuring the public that recording police activity is legal and reporting police misconduct is encouraged.

Deric Muhammad, one of the activists who met with Chief McClelland, said he felt the chief was sincere, but perhaps out of touch.

“We believe if the police chief spent less time behind his desk and more time on the ground, that he could disturb the culture of corruption that’s on the ground,” Muhammad told KTRK.

In April, a former HPD officer was convicted of taking a bribe to escort narcotic shipments through the Houston area. He was sentenced to more than 15 years in federal prison.

In January, a former HPD officer pled guilty to robbing undocumented immigrants that he stopped while on patrol. He was given two years’ probation and a $500 fine.

Observers have long speculated that Houston’s famous weight problem might be due in part to its car dependency. Now we have proof.

A study of Texas drivers published this week in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, shows that—surprise—a long commute can make you sick. Researchers examined more that 4200 adults in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin areas and found long commutes correlated with high blood pressure, increased waist size, decreased heart function and lower likelihood of getting enough exercise. A driver with a commute of 16 to 20 miles is 52 percent more likely to be obese.

The average Houston commute? Twenty-one miles.

Research also shows Houstonians are sick of it. A Kinder Institute survey released in late April reported that 56 percent of Harris County respondents called development of better mass transit “very important” to Houston’s future, and 51 percent preferred taxpayer money go to improved rail and bus systems rather than expanding existing highways.

All of this may make Houston’s latest green move more likely to succeed. Last Wednesday, Mayor Annise Parker kicked off B-cycle, a program that lets riders check out bicycles downtown for up to 90 minutes for free. Full-day rentals are $5 and riders can buy a year-long pass for $50. The program is starting with just 15 bikes at three locations, but the mayor hopes to have 200 bikes available by the end of the year.

Fifteen U.S. cities have bike-share programs, and New York is rolling one out in July. So what if their obesity rate is only 20 percent? We got bikes!

In Houston over the weekend, patriots gathered for the national summit of True the Vote, the tea-party-affiliated poll watching outfit that might be saving democracy or destroying it, depending on whom you ask.

Reality was much in question during the two-day conference, where speakers made a sophisticated argument about the fundamental subjectivity of the human experience. In other words, they argued that if enough people think something, it must be true.

Coverage of the conference in the Nation focused on TTV speakers’ obsession with a recent Rasmussen poll that showed 64 percent of Americans believe that voter fraud exists. (Of course, an April 2011 poll found that a quarter of Americans think Obama was born abroad, so that means he’s definitely native, right?) Three speakers cited the poll as if it were actually evidence of fraud.

“They were stuck in a reality that was unfamiliar to anyone who’s been paying attention to voter issues,” writes the Nation’s Brentin Mock. “Speakers—among them Heritage Foundation’s Hans Von Spakovsky, Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton and former title-challenged DOJ employee J. Christian Adams—spoke about the voter ID cause as if they were failing, as if sixteen states didn’t pass photo voter ID laws, most of them in just the past eighteen months. As if a federal court didn’t just validate a strict photo voter ID law in Arizona the week before the conference.”

True the Vote is a project of the King Street Patriots, a supposedly nonpartisan group founded in Houston in 2009 that recently got called out by a district judge for being an unregistered political action committee (PAC) that illegally aided Republicans during the 2010 elections. True the Vote trained and dispatched about 1000 volunteers to mostly minority neighborhoods to look for voting irregularities and stare down would-be defrauders. As the Observer’s Patrick Michels reported, “[they] combined to send 800 complaints of improper voting to Harris County officials, who investigated a few but ended up taking no legal action.

“While it generated little evidence of voter fraud, the King Street Patriots’ effort did result in complaints about voter intimidation and breached ethics, a lawsuit from the Texas Democratic Party, and an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.”

Now True the Vote aspires to send a million volunteers to do the same at this year’s elections.

The progress or failure of voter ID efforts was but one of the conference’s conflicting realities.

A dispatch on Breitbart.com claims, “The event drew protests from paid union protesters and a few known Occupiers,” –which makes one wonder who’s keeping a list of known Occupiers— but adds, “the protesters were largely ignored and left after only an hour or two.”

But Mock reports, “The only people gathered outside the conference hotel were a bunch of African-American motorcycle clubs on their bikes, a few of whom told me they had no idea who True the Vote was or that they had a conference going on.”

Why is the presence of protesters even important? Because it’s so much more exciting be a group of freedom fighters, violently opposed, the underdogs holding back the hordes of evildoers, than to be 200 largely ignored tea partiers in the ballroom of a suburban Sheraton.

“We are talking about the demise of our democracy, and it is slow-motion suicide,” warned speaker Pat Caddell, a longtime Democratic strategist turned Fox News contributor.

But if this is true the way he meant it, the motion is very slow indeed. As the Houston Chronicle noted in March in the amusingly titled, “Facts elusive in Texas voter ID fight,” “Fewer than five complaints involving voter impersonations were filed with the Texas Attorney General’s Office from the 2008 and 2010 general elections, which drew more than 13 million voters.”

But that was enough to prompt Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot to pen, in an op-ed in USA Today that month, “In Texas, evidence of voter fraud abounds. In recent years, my office has secured more than 50 voter fraud convictions.”

But hey. Definitions of “abound” abound.

Another contested definition at the conference was “nonpartisan.”

The Chronicle’s Joe Holley reports cannily, “Several speakers were determinedly nonpartisan, or bipartisan, despite the rightward leanings of their audience. ‘We don’t take a position on President Obama’s election. We take a position on free and fair elections,’ said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a Washington-based government watchdog group.

“It was also Fitton, however, who delivered a warning: ‘I fear the Obama gang is setting themselves up to steal the election.’

“He also accused the president of wanting ‘to register the food stamp army to vote for him.’”

It may have been the day’s most reality-based statement—not regarding the president’s intentions, but True the Vote’s.

Poor people voting? Who wants that?