MIDLOTHIAN – In Midlothian Police Chief Carl Smith’s absence at this week’s City Council meeting Administrative Patrol Commander Nick Harp gave the city council an update on the 2022 racial profiling and juvenile curfew annual reports.
Harp said the Police Department’s racial profiling results met the requirements of the Texas Racial Profiling Law.
Midlothian PD uses Barilla Consulting for the analysis report. That company collects the data to provide the appropriate end of year results.
Harp said the department has policies in place that continually identify and prohibit racial profiling as well as a racial profiling complaint policy when necessary.
Overall, the department saw no racial profiling complaints in 2022. Harp did mention there were a few complaints in 2021.
The department made 11,000 traffic stop contacts in 2022, which was slightly down from the prior year. From this number there were 4,300 citations written with the remainder of the stops serving as warnings.
Midlothian Mayor Richard Reno asked if there were any comparisons regarding Midlothian and other cities in the nation, but Harp did not have that information.
Two Enforcements Of City Curfew
Regarding the city’s curfew impact there were only two incidents that directly involved the enforcement of curfew in 2022.
One incident involved four juveniles who were located on the street and as soon as they saw police they ran. Midlothian officers chased the juveniles, caught them and Harp said, “recognized who they were.”
The juveniles were individuals the department had dealt with multiple times in the past. Police cited the juveniles for being out past curfew, then took them home to their parents.
Harp also mentioned one of the juveniles had been in trouble prior regarding vandalism, and another had seen 19 contacts with Midlothian PD including assault, burglary, runaway, and injury to a child issues.
“This gives us a chance to enforce an ordinance that allows us to get the juveniles where they need to be and check up on what they are doing,” Harp added.
The second incident was a report of shots fired. No guns were located, but in the area where the shots were reported to have been fired officers arrived and did make several traffic stops. One stop resulted in a juvenile who was intoxicated. That juvenile received a DUI and a citation for curfew. The second stop was a citation issued for a muffler violation and a curfew violation, but the curfew violation was dismissed because the individual was one month over 17 years old.
Midlothian Councilmember Place 3 Anna Hammonds asked if when the PD sees children out after curfew do they just tell them to go home or what is done?
Harp said they are told to go home and in some cases patrol even takes the juveniles home with no warning issued.
He added that in the prior year the department was dealing with much more because of issues at the parks.
“It gave us a tool before we were able to clean up some of the park ordinances to deal with kids hanging out at the park after hours,” Harp concluded.
