Julián Castro says police unions and qualified immunity are part of the problem

.See Castro questions San Antonio police officers’ use of non-lethal projectiles by Scott Huddleston of The San Antonio Express-News

"Former Mayor and U.S. Housing Secretary Julián Castro said San Antonio has a racially diverse police force that is a model for dealing with people who have mental health issues.

But the department has a high rate of terminated and disciplined officers returning to work, through a local union contract and provisions in state law that allow them to seek relief through arbitration, he said.

In a frank hour-long discussion via teleconference Friday with the Express-News Editorial Board, the former presidential candidate said officers with the San Antonio Police Department “made a mistake” in using rubber and wooden bullets against demonstrators Tuesday night in Alamo Plaza.

“I’m convinced that they went overboard,” Castro said, referring to a confrontation at Alamo and Crockett streets that now is under review by SAPD.

“They need to finish the investigation. They need to be transparent about the findings of that investigation,” Castro said. “If, in fact, it reveals that officers used inappropriate force, then my hope is that if they can identify who that was, who started that, that they’re disciplined. And that the community understands that there will be accountability.”

Beyond that, Castro said the city should set a higher standard for use of non-lethal projectiles, partly because their trajectory is less predictable than that of a standard bullet.

Julián Castro, recent Democratic Presidential Primary Candidate and former U.S. Secretary for Housing and Urban Development under President Obama, photographed at his campaign headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, on Saturday, January 4, 2020.

He cited recent incidents in Austin and Dallas where protesters were badly hurt by such projectiles, and mentioned a study estimating the projectiles can kill 3 percent and severely injure 15 percent of people who are struck.

“I don’t think that somebody throwing a water bottle or even two water bottles should necessitate using rubber bullets, wooden bullets, pepper balls and tear gas on a crowd 99.9 percent of which had nothing to do with the plastic water bottle that was thrown,” Castro said.

“Over the last few days, all of us have seen and I think felt a sense of urgency about reforming policing in this country,” he said. “The death of George Floyd, which came after the death of so many others, especially young black men and women, at the hands of police officers who utilized excessive force, has I think woken up a lot of people in this country to the fact that we can’t let things go on the same way.”

He had general praise for Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Police Chief William McManus for their efforts in reducing excessive use of force by police. But he said San Antonio, like many U.S. cities, has been hindered by police union contracts and state laws often supported by law enforcement lobby groups that protect wayward officers.

One specific problem is “qualified immunity,” a once-modest legal doctrine that has “gone off the rails in the past 15 years,” Castro said. He was hopeful it could soon be ended or restricted through the courts or federal legislation.

“Qualified immunity has protected police officers who have engaged in excessive force from being able to be sued in civil court, by victims of that excessive force and their families, for way too long,” he said.

He also said he supported better public access to records concerning disciplinary actions taken against police officers.

“There’s a lot that is done to shield discipline that is handed down on the officer, including wiping away the record of that discipline after a certain amount of time, that makes no sense in protecting the public from cops that shouldn’t be in the department,” Castro said."