Austin News

A Texas House committee passed House Bill 830 (HB 830) last week, which bans arrests for Class C misdemeanor traffic violations.

The bill found bipartisan support, passing the Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee with a 7-2 vote. HB 830 was authored in collaboration by Rep. Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston), Rep. James White (R-Woodville), Rep. Matt Krause (R-Fort Worth), Rep. Briscoe Cain (R-Deer Park) and Rep. Rhetta Andrews Bowers (D-Austin), and originally sought to ban arrests for all Class C misdemeanors. The bill was then amended to focus on the ban of Class C traffic violations that account for approximately 95% of all Class C misdemeanor arrests in Texas. 

"We don't need to be putting people in the county jail or the municipal jail on tax dollars in an inefficient way," White said in a "Reasonably Suspicious" podcast March 8, as reported by Forest County News. "We don't need to be doing that. We don't need to be doing end runs around the Fourth Amendment."

According to a Lone Star Standard news story, of the 9.7 million traffic stops in 20019, 21%, or more than 64,000, were Class C misdemeanors traffic violations that ended in arrest, despite being fine-only offense violations. 

In recent weeks, even conservative voices such as Alice Marie Johnson, Matthew Whitaker, Derek Cohen, Charles Blain, James White, and Jeff Leach have come out in support of changing the laws on arrests for Class C misdemeanors.

“The problem is, of course, we are charging somebody with a crime and facilitating an arrest, a booking and whatnot for an actual offense that even if the person is found fully guilty, there would be no jail time," said Derek Cohen, policy director of Texas Public Policy Foundation's Right on Crime, as reported by another Lone Star Standard news report. "The punishment has already outweighed what the status of the crime is.”

Though data in 2020 did show a decrease to 41,000 arrests for Class C misdemeanors traffic violations non-jailable offenses during COVID-19, the arrests are still costing the state thousands of jail beds and millions in costs. Each day a person is jailed costs the state $60, the Forest Country News reported. According to Texas law, anyone found guilty of a Class C misdemeanor should face no more than fines of $500 without having to serve jail time. 

“Arresting people for Class C misdemeanors should be used only on very rare occasions," Matthew Whitaker, former acting U.S. attorney general, said as reported by the Lone Star Standard. "We need our police, whose job is becoming harder and harder, to be focused on the most serious crimes. There are opportunity costs to time being spent arresting people for traffic violations. As a prosecutor I would prefer that time is spent getting the real bad guys.” 

Light was shed on the issue of arrests for non-jailable offenses after the arrest of 22-year-old Dillon Puente and his father, Marco Puente, after a traffic stop 30 miles northwest of Dallas in Keller. The body cam footage, now posted on YouTube, shows excessive force being used in the arrest of Dillion Puente who was stopped on a simple traffic violation, the Lone Star Standard reported. 

Traffic stops pose much less of a safety risk to police officers as found in the research by Jordan Blair Woods.

According to the Grits for Breakfast blog, an analysis by Woods, who detailed traffic stops in Florida, concluded: "Using my most conservative estimates, I found that the rate for felonious killing of an officer during routine traffic stops was 1 in every 6.5 million stops. The rate for an assault resulting in serious injury to an officer was 1 in every 361,111 stops. The rate for assault against an officer, whether it results in injury or not, was 1 in every 6,959 stops."

Despite much debate about the topic in recent weeks, even those on the conservative side agree that this bill will help citizens, officers and the community as a whole. 

In the new few weeks, the bill is expected to be heard in the full Texas House and then move to the Senate floor.