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Jaime Monzon
Smoking Gun
A study shows Bexar County has the state’s second-highest number of officer-involved shootings. Black residents are disproportionately in the crosshairs. BY SANFORD NOWLIN
O
fficer-involved shootings of civilians in Bexar County were the second highest of any county in the state from 2016-2019, and their frequency increased in three of those four years, according to a new report by the nonprofit group Texas Justice Initiative. What’s more, while more white people were shot by law enforcement officers in Bexar County during that time, Black people were both shot and killed at a disproportionate rate, according to the data, which was culled from reports filed with the Texas Attorney General’s Office. TJI’s report comes amid a nationwide reckoning on police reform and racial justice with activists calling out departments for disproportionate use of force that targets people of color. Such issues came into even sharper focus locally when a Bexar County Sheriff’s deputy on August 25 shot and killed former Army sergeant Damian Lamar Daniels, a 30-year-old Black man, as deputies tried to detain him for mental health treatment. John A. Rodriguez, the deputy who fired on Daniels, also shot and killed another person 10 years prior who was suffering a mental health crisis, an Express-News investigation revealed. 12
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The same day as Daniels’ shooting, San Antonio Police Department officers wrestled Black jogger Mathias Ometu into the back of a squad car on an incorrect suspicion that he was a domestic violence suspect. “When I look at the data in this report, my deepest suspicion — and probably my deepest fear — is that we’re seeing a cultural problem inside police departments,” said Gerald Reamey, a St. Mary’s Law School professor who tracks policing issues. “It’s troubling that we’re seeing so many of these incidents in Bexar County.”
Big Numbers, Big Disparity The data broken out in TJI’s report includes both numbers from each county’s sheriff’s office plus every police department operating there, offering an overview of big-city, rural and suburban departments. A total of 72 civilians were shot by sworn law officers in Bexar over the previous four years, and 2019 marked the only one of those years that officer-involved shootings decreased, falling to 19 from 20 the prior year. Of that total, 38 of the civilians shot — more than half — died of their wounds. Statewide, the total number of civilians shot during
officer-involved incidents increased between 2016 and 2019. At the same time, the survival rate of those shot decreased, according to TJI’s analysis. The data also shows that Black people made up a disproportionate percentage of the civilians shot by police in Bexar over that time, accounting for 13.9% of the total, even though they make up just 7.3% of the county’s population, according to U.S. Census data. In contrast, Hispanic people made up 59.7% of the total number of civilians shot, roughly equivalent to the 60.3% they make up of the overall population. Whites made up just 22.2% of those shot, while they account for 27.3% of the overall population. On that front, Bexar’s statistics mirrored that of other big Texas cities, according to TJI. Black civilians were overrepresented in officer-involved shooting incidents in each of the five most populous counties.
Data and Facts San Antonio police-reform activists say the numbers back up what they have long argued: that Black people are more likely to face violence during encounters with law enforcement. The report, they add, is more evidence that San Antonio must shift funding away from its police department and into social programs. “This report is not just someone’s opinion or skewed to one side — this is data and facts,” said Ananda Tomas, community organizer for police-reform group Fix SAPD. “It bolsters our argument and shows that something substantial needs to change.” Valerie Reiffert, who leads Radical Registrars, a group that works to increase voter registration, said the disparity highlighted in the report is evidence of systemic racism in police departments. Those struc-
