According to a recent article in the Austin American Statesman, the Texas agency responsible for setting standards for and licensing Texas law enforcement officers has some serious issues. The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education (TCLEOSE) has kept inaccurate or incomplete data on issues such as how many complaints have resulted in officer discipline, how much the agency spends resolving such complaints, and the number of police training academies that officials have inspected.

The findings were made public in a recent state audit. In the 22-page report, the state auditor’s office said officials with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education don’t have the tools they need to assess their performance on such matters and have no procedure in place for double-checking themselves. Local law enforcement agencies frequently rely on the commission’s database to verify employment histories and disciplinary actions, arrests, or criminal convictions of officers they are considering for positions.

The commission’s executive director, Tim Braaten, said that the agency has about 30 performance criteria and that auditors reviewed only a fraction of those. “We’ve got some work to do, but I’m confident it is doable,” he told the Statesman’s Tony Plohetski in a recent interview. “We just need to make sure, for anybody, they could measure it the same way and have the same accuracy.” The state auditor’s office considered five key measures in its report on the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education.

Among other findings, the audit concluded the following: • TCLEOSE accurately tracks the percentage of licensees without recent violations. However, the commission lacks controls over the collection and calculation of this performance measure. • The commission inflated the number of complaints it resolved by adding in-training violations, which it wasn’t supposed to include. • The reported number of on-site academy evaluations conducted was inaccurate.