TCOLE reform signed into law, expanding authority to set police standards

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation Sunday expanding the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement’s authority to set standards for law enforcement hiring, licensing, creating new departments and more.

Though the long-awaited legislation was expansive and touted by some law enforcement experts as a positive step, one union executive expressed concerns about how it could remove due process protections for officers with negative reports in their personnel files.

The bill, SB 1445 by Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, was built from years of work and recommendations made by the Sunset Advisory Commission. It was revised multiple times as it worked through both sides of the Legislature.

TCOLE was under Sunset Commission review for years. A previous bill to reform the agency failed to pass in 2021 when lawmakers and stakeholders – like police unions – struggled to agree on changes to TCOLE’s authority. The Sunset Commission found TCOLE was “toothless” and had hardly any power over licensing and the creation of new departments.

The Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas was optimistic about the law’s impact in a statement sent to KXAN. CLEAT is one of the state’s largest police unions.

“After 3 years of work and a fight bigger than Texas, we finally passed a TCOLE Sunset bill that advanced the profession in a positive direction,” said Jennifer Szimanski, CLEAT Public Affairs Director, in an email. “A bill that places value on rank-and-file officers and recognizes that the advancement of professional standards is of the utmost importance. We look forward to updating our membership on the work our Public Affairs team did to get this bill in its final form.”

Texas 2036, a nonpartisan advocacy organization, was also involved in TCOLE legislative tug-o-war. The group authored a lengthy study on TCOLE’s role in law enforcement, its shortcomings and potential improvements to the agency. Luis Soberon headed that effort and presented his group’s findings to lawmakers as they reviewed TCOLE. Soberon said the final bill was “leaps and bounds” better than what was considered two years ago and an improvement over the initially filed bill.

The legislation “makes excellent progress toward building the public’s confidence in law enforcement and establishing a regulatory structure rooted in good data, transparency and accountability,” Soberon said in a statement. “Texans, and the men and women of law enforcement who serve them, deserve nothing less than that.”

Important aspects of the bill include a new misconduct reporting system, requiring a new licensing status database and removing “problematic ‘discharge’ separation categories on the F-5 report,” Soberon said.

Kevin Lawrence – Executive Director of the Texas Municipal Police Association – has a mixed review of the TCOLE legislation. Along with CLEAT, TMPA is one of the largest police unions in the state and represents over 30,000 law enforcement officers.

Lawrence said he didn’t feel the legislation addressed everything it needed to, but, he conceded, that’s also a common issue with bills. The legislation did not include a blue-ribbon panel that the Sunset Commission had recommended for further review TCOLE. He also said there “is an argument to be made” that TCOLE already possessed much of the rulemaking authority that the bill appears to provide, but the agency did not utilize it because of a lack of resources or possibly direction.

“We're going to have to wait and see – I guess pretty much like all legislation – whether or not it has any real impact,” Lawrence said. “We are concerned that the changes to the F-5 process basically take away what little due process a lot of our cops have currently. That will be gone.”

The F-5 form is a sheet filled out by departments when an officer leaves their employment. It had three categories of separation: honorable, general and dishonorable. Those categories will be removed under the new law. Rather than categories on an F-5 form, an officer’s personnel file will contain information showing what led to their separation.

Lawrence said the F-5 process allowed officers to challenge a general or dishonorable designation in court in the State Office of Administrative Hearings. Now those administrative hearings will no longer happen, and officers will only be allowed to submit a written rebuttal in the file, he said.

What will SB 1445 do?

When signed into law, TCOLE will get input from an advisory board and set minimum standards for the creation or continued operation of a law enforcement department based on the size and function of that department. The minimum standards will include policies for determining the benefit to the community, sustainable funding sources and physical resources like weapons, facilities, vehicles and protective equipment, according to the bill.

In addition, TCOLE will also adopt a policy for conducting psychological and medical examinations of license holders to ensure they are able to perform their duties, according to the bill.

TCOLE will also establish a confidential database containing the license status of each licensed officer, records of any actions taken against the officer by the commission and the officer’s personnel file. The information in the database would be reviewed by hiring agencies.

The agency would make a publicly accessible database containing basic license information for all officers, such as the date they completed basic training, whether they are in compliance with continuing education requirements and their total number of training hours. Some officers, such as those working undercover, would not be included in the public database, the bills states.

TCOLE will also select at least one national law enforcement database to be referenced by law enforcement during pre-employment background checks. TCOLE will also submit its license revocations to a national database that maintains a registry of license revocations.

Before hiring a new officer, law enforcement agencies will be required to crosscheck a national database to ensure an officer’s previous license wasn’t suspended or revoked in another state for an infraction that would result in that same disciplinary action in Texas.

The new law also directs TCOLE to adopt model policies for investigating misconduct and sending completed investigation reports to the commission. Documents with a negative impact on an officer would be maintained in a personnel file, and officers would be notified when those types of records were put in their files. An officer’s personnel file would be provided to TCOLE within 30 days of their separation of employment or when TCOLE requests it for an investigation. Agencies hiring an officer would be entitled to view the contents of the personnel file, according to the bill.

The legislation provides TCOLE with the power to do an emergency suspension of an officer’s license for up to 90 days if the agency determines “the person constitutes an imminent threat to the public health, safety or welfare.”

The law takes effect Sept. 1.