- Waco car burglary ends in chase and fatal police shooting
- Central Texas small town policing has it's challenges
- Fallen Washington officer originally from Killeen
Scott Henson runs the Grits For Breakfast blog and writes about criminal justice issues facing the state legislature. He had some good posts over this long holiday weekend. The first recommended post is a wrap up of all the noteworthy criminal justice stories from 2009 and there were a bunch of them.
He also had a post commenting on the 2009 annual report on the Texas judiciary that was worth the read. One of the most interesting tidbits from that one was on the rate of huge growth in municipal court fine collection.
In 2009, [municipal] courts collected approximately $734 million—an increase of 1.2 percent from the previous year. The amount collected in 2009 was 287.3 percent higher than that collected 20 years previously in 1990, or 123.1 percent higher when adjusted for inflation.Lastly, he commented on the difficulties on finding and hiring law enforcement officers, even in a tough economy. This was visibly demonstrated by the fact that Dallas County Sheriff's tested for openings as deputies but only 16 passed the test and met the physical qualifications to go forward with the rest of the process.
