Public safety committee.

We are joined today.

Councilmember Mary Nan Huffman and Councilmember Ramirez.

We're also joined by staff from Councilmember Kingman's office, Councilmember Castillo's office, Mayor Pro Tem Castax Tatum's office, and Councilmember Alcorn's office, and virtually by Councilmember Pollard's office.

I get everyone, I think I got everyone.

All right, we have two presentations today.

Um the first will be legislative updates and laws that have gone into effect since September 1st.

This is a presentation by HPD.

We have Chief Anderson and Lieutenant Carroll.

Good morning.

Great.

Uh again, my name is Jessica Anderson.

I'm executive assistant chief with the Houston Police Department, and with me I have Lieutenant Nathan Carroll, who is normally assigned to the South Central Division.

Um we were first thank you for having us.

We were asked to present today on noteworthy new laws that have passed since September 1st.

Um just for context, um we also wanted to provide this opportunity to kind of explain how we operate and what we do.

You heard from Josh Sanders and the IGR team earlier this year, but we do a very similar role, and so wanted to highlight that for you guys today.

Um next slide.

So just a brief overview.

Um I'm not gonna read the slide to you, but we tracked over 1,400 bills, and of those bills, only 180 passed.

You'll hear more from Lieutenant Carroll in a minute, but HPD has been involved with the legislature for I think this will this was my eighth session.

So as a collateral duty, um we spend time in Austin navigating all the bills that impact law enforcement and the criminal justice system, specifically those with HPD.

So we, as I said, we tracked over 1,400 bills that touched HPD or law enforcement in some form or fashion.

Just for context, the city of Houston, Josh and Alexa tracked 1,701 bills.

So we were tracking 1,400, they were tracking 1700.

Essentially, we split responsibilities where Josh and Alexa, the city's IGR team handles everything that's not law enforcement at the legislature, and we handle everything that does touch law enforcement.

Um traffic laws, but we also are paying attention to things like uh towing, nuisance laws, open records, uh court operations, grants, and the budget.

The other thing that I want to mention is that what's not captured in these numbers of what passed are the bad bills that did not pass.

We spend a lot of our time helping to um educate legislators on the things that may be well intended but are not necessary or need to be tweaked or just flat out killed.

As you folks likely know, people have lots of great ideas for lots of great bills, but they're not always as well informed as they could be.

Um, and so our job is to work with them in the legislature to either tweak the legislation or kill it.

And that's so as I said, a lot of um the bills that were passed don't reflect what did not pass, and that's probably more important than what did um as I mentioned um our role at the legislature is a collateral duty.

I'm regularly assigned to the strategic operations.

Lieutenant Carroll is normally assigned to South Central.

We continue in those jobs while also managing all that's happening at the legislature that impacts law enforcement.

And Lieutenant Carroll will touch a little bit more on what we do and how we do it there.

Uh next slide.

So as Chief Anderson mentioned, HPD's had a pretty constant presence in the uh capital trying to make sure that we can influence any legislation that impacts law enforcement.

And just to go over kind of what happens before, during and after the legislative session.

Um part of the start of legislative session, HPD engages employees to solicit suggestions for possible legislation.

Lots of officers have lots of good ideas on how we can change legislation to make the statutes more productive and effective for HPD.

And this has always been a good way to hear from people about what needs fixing.

The suggestions must be vetted by city hall, so we don't always get to carry all the ideas as official legislation, but it's still helpful way to identify the issues if and when other bills come up.

During session, we rely on our subject matter experts to review filed bills to determine the impact on HPD in our operations, as well as to identify the opportunity for changes.

This review helps form our activities in the Capitol as we try to educate lawmakers and others.

This is very similar to the IDR team's process.

So on the slide, you can actually see a form that's what we send out for analysis, and we also send out some circulars looking for suggestions on uh changes in in the upcoming sessions.

We can go to the next slide.

As previously mentioned, we monitored well over 1400 bills this session that had an impact on law enforcement or HPD.

We spend nearly all of the 140 days of session in Austin walking the halls of the Capitol.

We usually spend about four days per week in the Capitol, meeting with stakeholders and legislatures, testifying committees to make sure that any bill that passes does not have a detrimental impact on HPD or law enforcement in Texas.

We're not lobbyists, uh, we're liaisons, and we're also subject matter experts to the legislatures.

Our mission is to provide information to legislatures so they can make informed decisions on their legislation.

Sometimes this means arranging travel for other subject matter experts within our department to provide testimony on specific bills.

For example, you may have heard or seen some headlines recently about other cities across the nation grappling with how to deal with street takeovers.

HPD helped with this legislation in 2021 and again in 2023, strengthening our ability to address this crime.

It was thanks to our involvement in this legislative process and leaning on our officers to know the problems that allowed us to get ahead of the issue.

A lot of what we do is in partnership with other stakeholders, including HPOU, DPS, TBC, Dallas, the Texas Chief Police, uh Police Chiefs Association, and the District and County Attorneys Association.

We all have different roles at the Capitol and sometimes different interest, but for the most part, all the criminal justice partners are on the same page, and the coalition is very successful.

As you can see in the picture, Chief Diaz was able to visit Austin several times this session to give testimony and support for HPD at the Capitol, and it was very helpful for us.