RISE Houston Speaks Out Against HPD Car Chase Policy in the Houston Chronicle

Yesterday, September 14, 2023, reporters Caroline Ghisolfi and Andrea Ball of the Houston Chronicle shed light on forthcoming “sweeping changes” to HPD’s car chase policy that “might have prevented hundreds of crashes had those changes been made earlier.”

When asked for commentary, RISE Houston Steering Committee members Christopher Rivera—of Texas Civil Rights Project—and Alfredo Dominguez—of Civil Rights Corps—made clear that these belated reforms are nowhere near enough.

Until Thursday, HPD’s policy gave “officers the discretion to escalate (incidents), to be violent and … act as a predator in our communities,” said Christopher Rivera, a criminal justice advocate at the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Alfredo hit the point home later in the article:

The danger those techniques pose to drivers is immense, said Alfredo Dominguez, an advocate with Civil Rights Corps and a member of RISE Houston. 

“We’re not in favor of car chases, but if they do happen they should be in very, very limited situations and only cases in which there is real danger possible,” Dominguez said.

After being contacted by the Chronicle, Alfredo had the following additional reflections to share:

As is true with non-safety traffic stops, the communities harmed by high-speed chases are Black and Brown communities. These chases are dangerous and traumatizing for the individual chased and they put everyone in the community at risk. As someone who has spent most of my life in the Houston area, I have seen the fear experienced by drivers who are almost hit in these dangerous chases while on the way home from work, and I’ve seen pedestrians who are nearly struck while walking to a corner store. Further, the racial disparities in who is chased follow HPD's trend of targeting Black and Brown drivers. It is because of the racial disparities in the enforcement and the danger it poses to residents in Black and Brown communities that RISE Houston wanted to tackle HPD's role in traffic enforcement. Seeing this trend continue here is disappointing, and we hope any policy change will be made with the communities most impacted at the center. 

Read more about RISE Houston’s work to change the way traffic safety is handled in Houston here.