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BRIEF: Two cases of high profile alleged police misconduct made it through Harris County Grand Juries this week. In late November, Houston Police officer John Wilbanks led a freeway chase to capture a fleeing robery suspect. [Most of] the incident was captured by television news cameras, including when the suspect raised his hands to surrender and was tackled by Officer John Wilbanks. Citizen watchdog group, Houston Copwatch, wrote a letter to HPD asking how the department planned to investigate the incident. Cases of physical conduct between detainees and an officer are generally turned over to internal affairs. In this case, the investigation recieved only a supervisory review before going to the grand jury. Copwatch member, Ernesto Aguilar: "Typically supervisory reviews are given to things like clothing infractions, not wearing a name tag. When violence gets equated with not wearing a name tag, HPD has a very serious problem." A Harris County grand jury also declined to indict three Harris County sheriff's deputies on Wednesday. All three were involved in a shooting of a suspected car thief. When one of the deputies ordered the suspect to get out of the car, the suspect drove toward him. During the confusion, the other two deputies shot the car's passenger in the neck, and accidentally hit the third deputy in the right thigh and left foot. Copwatch's Aguilar comments on the police behavior: "I think most of the public would presume that before an officer reaches for his revolver and starts firing off bullets he is going to make sure he or she is sure of the situation." The deputies were cleared by the grand jury of any wrong doing.
E-mail Renee Feltz at chickpea_@ziplip.com.
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