As noted in our story, some large counties, including Tarrant and Denton, close to home, had submitted their SART reports before the Dec. 1 deadline. The reports were filled with valuable information on sexual assault reporting protocols, along with findings and analysis that shed light on each county’s recent history with adult sexual assault.
But not Dallas County.
When we began trying to get answers from the county Commissioners Court, the entity designated by the state law to oversee the SART and its reporting, we were met with confusion and silence. When we reached one of the current members of the Dallas County SART, Courtney Underwood, we were assured that their SART report was being finished and was being turned in later than other large counties, including Harris and Travis, only “because we had so much discussion and back and forth between team members to ensure that the report was done to our standards and again not simply to check a box,” Underwood explained.
But in a sense, simply checking a box is exactly what the Dallas SART did in the end. We found out just after our initial article ran last week that Dallas County's biennial report had finally been completed. And now that we’ve taken a look at it, Underwood’s explanation for why her team’s efforts were taking longer than other SARTs across the state isn't adding up.
"... the response they [Dallas County SART] provided signals that there is likely a significant gap in collaboration and dedication from the criminal justice side of the SART.” – Haleh Hekmat
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For starters, the entire report is a mere nine pages long. Before we get into why that might present an issue, we’ll note that Denton County’s report is 62 pages long and Tarrant County’s is 145. For additional head-scratching perspective, the document provided by the governor’s office to county SARTs to guide them on what a SART report should contain is 14 pages long.
Yes, that is correct: the instructional document for compiling a SART report is significantly longer than the SART report itself completed by Dallas County.
The cover page of the Dallas County SART report provided a statement vaguely explaining not why the report was months late, but why the SART did not include even a single data point, piece of analysis, case example or many of the other items the law requested be included. Instead, the Dallas County SART took full advantage of the final line in the Texas Government Code 351.257 where it says a SART can provide “an explanation of the reason the response team failed to provide the information” by including the following on its report:
“Dallas County is comprised of over 40 law enforcement agencies. Only three of those agencies regularly participate in SART. None of these three agencies or the non-participating agencies are under the jurisdiction of the Dallas County Commissioner’s Court and have not provided data to the SART. The various members of the SART do not have independent access to this data. The Dallas County SART is unable to provide any data regarding indictments due to a lack of personnel and technological capabilities. The Dallas County SART does not value the collection of insufficient or erroneous data that could be misinterpreted by members of the public and as a result, is submitting this statement in compliance with Texas Government Code § 351.252."
And to be clear, a high number of pages isn’t legally required, nor does more pages automatically equal greater detail and transparency. Collin County is one of the counties that was slow to complete its SART report along with Dallas. As was explained to us, there was some turnover in the leadership of the Collin County SART shortly before the Dec. 1 deadline that made the report difficult to complete. Before our original article on this topic ran, we were told that the completed report would be discussed during the March 4 Collin County Commissioners Court meeting. On Monday, we received a copy of the report, which came in at 22 pages.
But the 22 pages, although much more succinct than even Denton County’s report, indeed provides the information that honors both the spirit and letter of SB 476, without resorting to a statement describing why it could not or would not meet the requirements. Data and findings, breaking down numbers along racial, ethnic and age lines, can be found in Collin County’s report. So too can the number of sexual assault cases the participating agencies dealt with from 2021 to 2023.
What can be found inside the few pages Dallas County submitted? The majority of the report is taken up by a basic listing of the protocols and procedures for how each agency represented on the SART — including the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, the Dallas Rape Crisis Center and participating law enforcement agencies — are to respond to reports of adult sexual assault and how to connect and share information on sexual assault with the other entities involved in SART.
There’s very little in the way of language that does not read as standard boilerplate, let alone any findings or analysis that would’ve likely required extra time to gather and verify. In fact, several of the protocols listed for the various agencies are exactly the same as or very similar to others: “Designate a liaison to serve as a resource person for the SART” is one example.
In our communication with Underwood, who did not reply to our requests for comment after the report’s release, as well as what’s noted on the report’s cover page, the stance of the Dallas County SART is that it has met its legal requirements with its nine pages. But by law the report was to be filed prior to Dec. 1, 2023. And there is no information in the report that couldn’t have been compiled and filed before then.
How do we know that? When we received the report, we found out that four members of the DA’s office and a sergeant from the Dallas Police Department were members of the SART. We reached out to both agencies with questions about why so much information was left off. The DPD referred us to the county commissioners, but Claire Crouch from the DA’s office replied to us with a bit of insight into the difficulties the SART faced with its report.
In her email to us, Crouch explained that the technical issues mentioned in the report are referring to “the widely reported-on issue of the switch to the Odyssey case management system... Dallas County switched to the Odyssey system on May 22, 2023,” her statement noted. “The transfer to the Odyssey system has rendered our data inaccurate. Additionally, due to the numerous issues with this system, Dallas County has been unable to report any data to the State of Texas/Office of Court Administration since May 2023.”
As Observer readers might recall, Odyssey has been problematic for some time now. We reported in July of last year that “[t]he current problems arose when the county tried to implement the software in its jail management system and misdemeanor and felony courts.” The trouble with Odyssey was but one of many headline-grabbing technical difficulties that both the county and the city of Dallas faced in 2023.
Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins was called out in our original article by state Rep. Lynn Stucky, SB 476’s sponsor, for “continuing to fail from a leadership perspective” as it pertains to the delinquent SART report. The judge didn't give us any comment or information before our first article on the matter, but he did provide a statement this week in response to our questions about why so much data was left out of the report. His answer didn’t convince us that the commissioners court has yet gotten up to speed on what the SART report should be.
“It’s important that we have good data on sexual assault and sexual violence,” the emailed statement read. “I have reached out personally to the facilitator of SART and offered our assistance with additional appointments or whatever else is needed.”
Haleh Hekmat, the systems change strategist for the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault we spoke to for last week's article, has also seen the Dallas County SART report. TAASA supports county SARTs in fulfilling their requirements. She’s seen every SART report filed by Texas counties since the end of 2023, and she thinks the Dallas report indicates plenty by leaving so much out.
“The law allows for SARTs to provide an ‘explanation of the reason the response team failed to provide the information described’ above,” she explained. “So, technically Dallas SART is not ‘out of compliance’ for the data portion of the report. However, the response they provided signals that there is likely a significant gap in collaboration and dedication from the criminal justice side of the SART.”
