When we spoke to the METRO board of directors last week, it struck me that some of the things that I consider common knowledge might not be. Chairman Gilbert Garcia asked me for links to my blog posts on the subject of the meeting, by which I think he meant TSA and its VIPR teams. I'm not the best resource for either, but I can point the

Reports are that yesterday (30 April 2012) at about 3pm three uniformed METRO police officers accosted about a dozen passengers getting off the #219 bus from downtown to the West Road Park and Ride and asked for ID. What does this have to do with METRO's mission? Not a thing. METRO should be encouraging ridership, not discouraging it by demanding riders' papers. (The comparison is inescapable: requiring

[Update: A federal statute, 28 USC §1442, allows removal to federal court of any civil or criminal case against: The United States or any agency thereof or any officer (or any person acting under that officer) of the United States or of any agency thereof, in an official or individual capacity, for or relating to any act under color of such office or on account of any

At the METRO Board meeting yesterday, we met some non-lawyer members of the community who shared our concerns about the creeping police state. The best comments to the METRO Board were, in my view, not made by the lawyers but by these free thinkers. Amberia Smith: Derrick Broze: (When the METRO chairman, Gilbert Garcia, was clearly trying to cut us off, Derrick got up and insisted that

I wrote: METRO says they went where the crime is, but if they had spent eight hours running drug dogs through Park-and-Ride buses they probably would have made as many weed cases, more cocaine cases, and some gun cases for good measure. But affluent white folk ride Park-and-Ride buses. Affluent white folk don't do their prostitution business on the bus, affluent white folk don't plead guilty at

https://www.ridemetro.org/AboutUs/BoardVideoStreaming.aspx

A Tarrant County jury awarded Mark and Rhonda Lesher of Clarksville, Texas, the sum on Friday after the couple filed a lawsuit against people writing anonymous, hurtful comments about them online. (KHOU.) One of the defendants, Shannon Coyel, had accused the Leshers of sexually assaulting her in 2008. The Leshers were indicted, went to trial, and were acquitted. Anonymous commenters called the Leshers sexual deviants, molesters and

HCCLA President Earl Musick's letter to the Houston Chronicle on the subject of METRO VIPRgate: Objection to searches Regarding "Undercover officers ride buses in anti-terror effort" (Page B2, Thursday), the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association (HCCLA), which represents more than 600 area criminal-defense lawyers, is alarmed that Metro Police Chief Victor Rodriguez invited Transportation Security Administration teams to conduct operations at Houston's bus stops. The TSA is

Last month I blogged about the Harris County Republican Party and the Harris County Public Defender's Office, talking about what I called "the greed angle": that former HCRP chair Gary Polland, who is still influential in the party, is trying to use the party (by, among other things, deceiving the party's constituents) to protect his court-appointed income stream: Sometimes good policy happens to be good for the

Friday's operation occurred from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eight felony arrests were made in one shift, compared to five last month. (METRO blog.) Here's a PDF of an Excel file METRO produced in response to a request for a list of arrests made in the course of "Operation Bus Safe" 13 April 2012. (NB it's METRO, and not I, that abbreviated "Bus Safe" to BS in