But, he didn’t win a second term and significant alterations to the law have not happened. Martinez said he passed the most robust bill he could at the time, with the intention of returning to improve it later. The information is available online, categorized and searchable by law enforcement department and deceased individuals’ names. To date, more than 13,000 custodial death reports have been filed, providing perhaps the most comprehensive collection of in-custody death records in Texas. “It was about trying to create some transparency and some accountability in the system and to hopefully use this data for future legislation.” “The purpose was to create a central databank and hopefully with that databank to begin to analyze it and look at what is the problem, and how can we begin to address future legislation to address this problem,” Martinez said in an interview with KXAN. At that time, the law required the reports to be submitted within 20 days of a death, but that timeframe was later lengthened to 30 days. The reports would be public, and the penalty for failing to file them a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail. The new law required law enforcement agencies to provide details about the incident and cause of death. Walter Martinez, D-San Antonio, carried legislation in 1983 that created requirements for Texas law enforcement agencies to report custodial deaths to the attorney general. With sponsorship from then-state-senator and current Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett, Martinez filed and passed Texas’ law requiring jails and other law enforcement agencies to submit a death report to the Texas attorney general’s office.įormer State Rep. Without that information, it was exceedingly difficult to analyze patterns of deaths or identify solutions, he said. He knew no state agency kept track of all the people dying in jail, prison and police custody. ![]() Questions over police tactics and public information are once again top of mind.īack then, Martinez was entering his first session as a Democratic state representative from San Antonio. That’s how Walter Martinez described a dark era in law enforcement transparency - the early 80s - a period, he added, that lately doesn’t seem so far removed from what’s happening across the state today. Such cases could easily be kept quiet, potentially swept under the rug and away from scrutiny. ![]() If someone died in police custody in a far-flung part of Texas in 1983 – and it didn’t make the news – you might never have known. When a person dies in police custody, Texas law mandates agencies submit details to the attorney general within 30 days, but our analysis finds consequences for thwarting this transparency measure are rare.
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