“By the time I realized it wasn’t going to stop, it was too late,” Henderson said. The patrol car slammed into Henderson, breaking bones in his foot, lacerating his face and causing a hematoma in his leg.

The driver of the car was a deputy for the Harris County Precinct 7 Constable’s Office, and according to a police report, she was responding to an emergency call. The constable’s office said the deputy, whose name has not been revealed, was responding to a “priority two call.” According to the constable’s office, deputies responding to a priority two call are required to have emergency lights on but not the siren.

Henderson is adamant that the deputy had not activated the vehicle’s lights or siren at the time of the collision.

“I watched the car all the way through the intersection,” he said. “She never turned the lights or siren on.”

Henderson is one of hundreds of pedestrians and cyclists hit by automobiles in Houston every year. From May 2026 to April 2026 there were 950 reported collisions between automobiles and cyclists in the Houston city limits, according to HPD. Of those collisions, 213 were hit and runs.

In 2026, there were 13 automobile and bicycle collisions per 100,00 residents, according to the Texas Department of Transportation. The department also reported that last year saw 30 automobile and pedestrian collisions during the same time period.

Despite the 2026 adoption of a safe passing ordinance, which requires automobiles to give vulnerable road users – cyclists and pedestrians — three feet of space when passing, the number of automobile and cyclist collisions has increased over the last few years.

“We’ve had 10 fatal accidents this year,” Richard Tomlinson of Ghost Bike Houston said. Ghost Bike erects a white bike at the scene of a fatal collision between an automobile and cyclist. “Right now we are on pace to equal the number of fatal accidents from the last few years.”

In 2026, TxDOT report the number of auto-pedestrian collisions was at 18 per 100,000. Even with the lower number of collisions, Texas was still a dangerous place for non-motorized traffic. In 2026, the U.S. Department of Transportation reported that Texas was the number two state in the country for auto-pedestrian fatalities.

Part of the increase in auto-pedestrian and auto-cyclist collisions could be attributed to an increase in the number of Houston residents walking and riding bikes. According to Metro, the number of people boarding a bus with a bike more than doubled from 10,000 in 2026 to 25,000 in 2026.

As non-motorized forms of transportation increase in popularity, some fundamental questions about how Houston’s infrastructure can contribute to pedestrian and cyclist safety are being asked.

“Safe streets are streets that are designed for people in bikes and in cars,” Mary Blitzer, director of community and governmental relations for Bike Houston, said. “It means designing a street for people to drive at the speed limit and not above it.”

Blitzer cited TC Jester, a designated bike route, as a “race way” where the speed limit is 35 mph, “but most people regularly drive 50 mph.” She added that Houston will need to adopt different approaches when it comes to engineering bicycle safety by adding protected and unprotected bike lanes to some streets and turning others into “bicycle boulevards, where bicycles and cars can comfortably share space because cars are going less than 25 mph.”

Another tactic that can be deployed to curtail the number of auto-pedestrian and auto-cyclist collisions is increased enforcement of state laws regarding speeding, running red lights or stop signs, and drunk or distracted driving, according to Blitzer. The highly vaunted safe passing ordinance, a piece of legislation supported by both Bike Houston and Ghost Bike Houston, has also been one of the least enforced in the city.

From April 2026 to May 2026, Houston police officers wrote only eight tickets for violations of the ordinance, according to figures from HPD and the Houston courts. Tomlinson believes that enforcement will pick up now that Houston residents have had a chance to become familiar with the ordinance.

“I spoke for a long time with HPD bike patrol about the enforcement of the safe passing ordinance and they told me that they’ve increased the number of citations they’re writing,” Tomlinson said. HPD public information officers did not return request for comment regarding the number of safe passing ordinance violations issued since May 2026.

But promises from law enforcement officers are cold comfort for Andrew Henderson. Henderson described some of the officers as part of the problem.

“When you have police officers that are hitting pedestrians it speaks very loudly about how dangerous it is to ride bikes in Houston,” he said. “If the people who are here to serve and protect are hitting bike riders that’s a big problem.”

Henderson will be having a benefit to raise money for medical bills at Double Trouble on Nov. 19.

Which is why, in July 1970, two Houston Police officers picked the church’s high, flat roof for a sniper nest. The officers took position on the rooftop on July 26, 1970 in anticipation of a coming showdown between HPD and members of the Black Panther Party offshoot People’s Party II, headquartered a block away at the intersection of Dowling and Tuam.

Although media reports of the shootout would later claim that the confrontation had been building for a little over a week — since HPD officers began harassing young black men for selling The Black Panther, the official newspaper of the Black Panther Party — it had actually been building for years.
It would be an exercise in understatement to say that the late 1960s and early 1970s were a tense time between HPD and the black community. In 1967, Police Chief Herman Short’s officers pumped 3,000 rounds of shotgun and carbine ammo into a men’s dorm at Texas Southern University, the year after that outspoken black activist Lee Otis Johnson received a 30-year prison sentence for giving an undercover cop a joint.

By the time Carl Hampton came to Houston in 1969, the distrust between the community and the police had reached a fever pitch. Hampton, who had grown up in Pleasantville (east Houston) before moving to California in his teens, considered himself an urban guerilla fighter and was determined to set up a chapter of the Black Panther Party in Houston.

Unfortunately for Hampton, a previous attempt to organize a Black Panther chapter in Houston ended in disaster after accusations started surfacing that Willie “Iceman” Rudd, the chapter’s founder, was on HPD’s payroll. Although Rudd said he was an organizer for the AFL-CIO, he drove a new car and never seemed to go to work.

When Hampton tried to recruit TSU and UH students to start a chapter he got coldshouldered. Hampton ran into further problems in early 1970, when the Panther’s national office in Oakland issued a freeze on the admission of any new chapters. Undeterred, Hampton and some associates rented an office about 1.5 miles from the UH campus on Dowling.

When the People’s Party II opened shop, the area was primarily a black working class neighborhood with an open air drug market, one known for its robust trade in cough syrup. All accounts paint the first few months of the People’s Party II as fairly quiet, Hampton and his associates spent their time helping neighborhood residents recover stolen items from pawn shops and distributing food and clothing.

Things changed after two HPD officers allegedly beat Bobby Joe Conner, a young black man, to death. On April 4, 1970, HPD officers A.R. Hill and J.A. McMahon received a request for assistance from the Galena Park Police Department. The Galena Park officers were attempting to stop Conner and Taylor, another black man, for running a red light.

At the time, Conner was wanted on an auto theft warrant. According to a statement Taylor gave at the time, when the Galena Park Police officers tried to pull them over, he and Conner “panicked and ran before police caught up with them.”

Conner and Taylor fled on foot. According to his autopsy report, Conner ingested morphine while he was on the run. Galena Park Police were able to locate Conner and Taylor, arrest them and take them to a Galena Park Police station.

After the arrests, the stories begin to diverge. According to Taylor, when the HPD officers arrived, they allegedly began kicking him and Conner. Conner “fell on the floor…he was kicked when he didn’t get up. They kept telling him to get up and kept kicking him,” Taylor said at the time.

According to the theory Hill and McMahon’s attorneys presented at their trial, when the HPD officers learned that Conner and Taylor were going to be transferred to the Harris County Jail they immediately left, and Conner received his injuries from running through rubble and died from a morphine overdose.

Conner’s death created a furor in Houston’s black community. His death became a symbolic injury, his funeral a military affair. The People’s Party II served as pallbearers and provided an armed honor guard.

The Harris County District Attorney’s office was able to use the furor to get Hill and McMahon’s trial moved to relatively white town of New Braunfels.
At the 1971 trial, testimony from two additional HPD officers who responded to the call for assistance and from a Galena Park police officer, all of whom implicated Hill and McMahon in Conner’s death, failed to sway the jury who found Hill and McMahon not guilty.

While Richard “Racehorse” Haynes and Mike Ramsey, Hill and McMahon’s attorneys, spent May and June of 1970 preparing their case, the Houston black community spent the summer protesting Conner’s death. The People’s Party II organized protests in black neighborhoods like Clinton Park that attracted hundreds of people, and with the People’s Party II’s increased profile came increased attention from HPD.

It became common for HPD officers to harass People’s Party II members for selling copies of The Black Panther outside of party headquarters.
On July 17, 1970, Carl Hampton drove up to the People’s Party II headquarters and saw two white HPD officers harassing a party member for selling copies of The Black Panther on the street. Hampton was open carrying a pistol in a shoulder holster when he questioned the cops about the harassment.

Although it was legal to openly carry a pistol at the time, the HPD officers still wanted to know why Hampton had the gun. Some sources say that Hampton tried to explain the law to a recalcitrant HPD officer only to have the cop draw his gun, others say that Hampton pulled his gun first. Either way, Hampton and the two HPD officers wound up in a Mexican standoff in the middle of Dowling Street.

It’s not clear how long Hampton and the police officers stared each other down, but the tension was broken when armed members of the People’s Party II came out of their office and escorted Hampton inside.

By the time the party members entered the building, HPD officers were converging on the corner of Dowling and Tuam. Before the cops could storm the People’s Party II headquarters, hundreds of Third Ward residents, many of them armed, had surrounded the building — effectively creating a human shield for those inside.

HPD officers in riot gear arrived on the scene and began positioning themselves behind buildings and cars. In an attempt to defuse the situation, an HPD commanding officer entered the People’s Party II headquarters to try to negotiate Hampton’s surrender.

Remembering the alleged beating death of Conner, Hampton said that he had better chances on the streets with his lawyer negotiating his terms of surrender, according to Houston historian Charles “Boko” Freeman’s telling of the events.

Seeing no hope of compromise, the HPD officer left the People’s Party II headquarters. Not wanting to open fire on an entire neighborhood, HPD backed down without arresting Hampton or any members of the People’s Party II. The police department’s decision not to try to arrest Hampton only emboldened the party members.

“On several evenings after that, armed party members and their sympathizers paraded in Dowling Street, sometimes stopping traffic and asking for donations to their cause,” according to a July 28, 1970 Houston Post editorial. The party members seemed to become bolder with each passing day, and neighborhood residents and those involved in revolutionary politics could see that a showdown was coming.

Ovide Duncantell, a black activist unaffiliated with the People’s Party II, appeared at a Houston City Council meeting to warn HPD to stay away from the party headquarters.

“The law will be enforced in the 2800 block of Dowling as it is everywhere. There is no place in this city where a policeman can’t go,” HPD chief Herman Short responded, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Although tensions between the police and the party members remained high for the next few days, there were no confrontations. On July 25, Carl Hampton even gave an interview about the situation to a reporter from KULF, according to media reports at the time.

On the evening of July 26, two patrolling HPD officers saw two armed black teenagers walking in the middle of Dowling near the Tuam intersection. One of the teens pointed a weapon at the officers before running to the back of the St. John the Missionary Baptist Church, according to an HPD statement from the time.

When the 19-year-old reached the church door, he allegedly leveled his pistol at the police officers again, but the officers refrained from shooting because two “church women were immediately behind the armed youth,” according to the Houston Chronicle.

Three male members of the St. John the Missionary’s congregation were able to subdue the 19-year-old and wrestle his gun away, the Chronicle reported. Within hours of the arrest, the People’s Party II had organized a rally at Emancipation Park to raise bail money.

As word of the rally spread, more than 200 HPD officers descended on Dowling Street, and two officers from HPD’s Criminal Intelligence Division, which works to shut down organized crime and terrorist groups, took up a position on the roof of St. John the Missionary Baptist Church, allegedly to provide cover fire in case of People’s Party II snipers.

The two HPD officers on the roof of the church also allegedly brought along the reporter who had interviewed Hampton the day before, according to reports in various black newspapers. The police allegedly asked the reporter along to identify Hampton for the CID officers, according to The Burning Spear, a publication of the New Uhuru Movement.

Hampton exited the People’s Party II headquarters around 10:30 p.m. to investigate rumors of HPD officers on the roof of St. John the Missionary Baptist Church. Hampton, who was armed, snuck behind a telephone pole and peered in the direction of the church. Hampton peering from around a telephone pole is the last detail that both the black community and HPD agree on.

The official HPD record of the event describes Hampton and other members of the People’s Party II shooting at the officers on the church roof and the officers returning fire out of self-defense; it doesn’t mention the reporter as being on the roof. The accepted truth in the black community is that the reporter identified Hampton when he stuck his head around the pole and the HPD snipers, outfitted with military surplus night vision scopes for their rifles, shot Hampton.

No one may ever know whether Hampton or the police first, but a Harris County grand jury believed HPD’s version of the story and declined to indict the officers for the shooting death of Hampton. What is known is that Hampton took a bullet to the shoulder and collapsed on Dowling Street, and the People’s Party II and HPD exchanged dozens of rounds.

In the middle of the shootout, Sophia Powell, a woman from the neighborhood, drug Hampton to her car and drove him to Ben Taub, where he died. How a shoulder wound killed Hampton has also been a source of speculation for Houston’s black community. Freeman alleges that the HPD snipers were using “illegal hollow point dumdum bullets.”

After the smoke cleared and the shooting stopped, four other people associated with the People’s Party II lay injured, although none fatally. In the hours following the gun battle, HPD would arrest more than 50 people, on mostly minor charges, from the 10-blocks surrounding the intersection of Dowling and Tuam.

It’s a classic conundrum for a music fan: how do I get people out to see the music I love? In the web 2.5 era–an era defined by social media and smart phones–it’s pretty easy: throw up a Facebook invite and start a twitter account. But back around 1999 and 2026 it was a whole hell of a lot more difficult. And the low turnout to shows at Last Concert Cafe pushed a couple of the least likely guys into the cutthroat world of music promotion. In 2026 physician Alan Friedman, then 43, and law school dean Gary Hartman, then 52, got together to promote a show by the David Nelson Band. The show went off without a hitch so Friedman and Hartman decided to keep promoting and booking shows. Since both of them were tapers–for people who came of age after the turn of the milleninum,  before everyone had video cameras on their phones tapers were people who brought mics and tape decks to shows to record and share them–Friedman and Hartman opted to name their fledgling venture Taper Productions. They quickly decided to change the name to an animal based pun and called the company Tapir productions. And the rest, as they say, is history. Except it’s not.

Over a decade after promoting his first show Hartman, now 63, was still involved in organizing and booking shows. He and many of the others in the Last Concert crew had been working hard to put on a street dance on April 14. Called the Spring Fandango the event features about 10 bands, puppets, chalk artists and a celebrity fashion auction. The organizers behind the four hour plus event had secured permits from the city for a temporary stage on Nance St. printed up flyers and were all set to start running sound checks. And everyone knew that they had Hartman to thank for the event. As Last Concert regular Randy Woodard put it in an e-mail “this show was Gary’s baby he hand picked the bands for this event he put a lot of time and thought in making it a well rounded event for all ages.”

Unfortunately Hartman won’t be around to see the fruits of his labors. On March 31 he was struck down by an aneurysm. Woodard explained that Spring Fandango will still go on as planned, only now the tone might be a little more sombre. For more information about the Spring Fandango click here

Tobias Fike, “Landscape.

By Alex Wukman

While most people will be celebrating the highest of the High Holy Days this weekend a spattering of artists will be showcasing various on-site “environmental art” projects at Russ Pitman Park in Bellaire. The exhibit, entitled “It’s a Phase,” features work from notable local luminaries like Emily Sloan and Lina Dib. Curated by Houston based photographer Divya Murthy “It’s a Phase” is a series of collaborative pieces that encourage artists and audience members to explore the history and ecosystems of the four acre wooded park in the middle of the tony inner-loop suburb of Bellaire. In an interview with Arts and Culture magazine Murthy also said that while the exhibit is not primarily concerned with issues of green living and sustainability installing art in a nature preserve helped the artists to “fully consider the impact and integration” the various types of exhibits will have on the specific environment of the park.

Working with park staff–including on site naturalist Eric Duran–allowed the artists to begin making scientific investigations, explorations, and historical references through installations and time-based events. Among the features being highlighted in the show is cross-species collaboration and one of the installations that puts interaction with non-human organisms front and center is Caroline Collective founder Ned Doddington’s interactive piece “Urban Aries” which he describes as “a collaborative cross-species approach to architecture and design” that will allow both birds and humans to engage in “the time-honored tradition of watching.”

At the opening reception on Saturday, April 7, Lina Dib and Abinadi Meza will be exhibiting an interactive sound station and Barna Kantor will have a time-based installation from 7:45 p.m. to 8:45p.m. Allison Hunter, who has not revealed much about her installation, will be including the video “I remember fireflies” in the show.

Full information:

“It’s a Phase–On-Site Artist Projects at Russ Pitman Park”

April 4-May 13 2026

Opening reception Saturday, April 7, 6 p.m.-8 p.m. at Russ Pitman Park and The Nature Discovery Center–7112 Newcastle Street, Bellaire, TX 77401–713.667.6550 www.naturediscoverycenter.org. After party from 9:30 p.m.-12 a.m. at The Fairview, 315 Fairview St., Houston, 77006

Event page here

When the Bootown crew decided to give their Benshi inspired treatment to the Patrick Swayze classic Roadhouse it seemed like it shouldn’t work. After all, Roadhouse is a beloved part of the 1980’s canon–right up there with The Terminator, Red Dawn and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogalo. For anyone not familiar with Benshi, or those too lazy to click the link, when silent films first came to Japan they were accompanied by a live narrator who–drawing on the Kabuki and Noh tradition–would act out the film by playing characters and relating the film to the audience. In some cases the benshi would provide a different, or abbreviated, plot than the one in the film. It’s this tradition of treating film as an interactive, instead of passive, medium that Bootown draws on with Mijo: A Roundhouse Goodtime.

Helmed by Bootown’s Assistant Artistic Director Lindsay Burleson Mijo cuts Roadhouse’s running time from 114 minutes down to just an hour, a decision that surprisingly tightens up the film without losing too much of the plot, and provides a group of four actors to reinterpret the dialogue. Despite the fun and frivolity that Mijo offers there were a few problems, the main one being that the loose script–held together by the entertaining performances of Blake Whitaker, Emily Hynds, Joe Wozny and the musical stylings of Grandfather Child’s Lucas Gorham–feels like a second or third draft of a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode with some of the jokes killing and some bombing. Another problem is that for anyone unfamiliar with the benshi tradition the performance of Mijo can come across as a derivative take on the granddaddy on American interactive film–Rocky Horror Picture Show. And Bootown admits to the similarities, going so far as to have members of the Houston Rocky Horror community come to Rudyards for a shadow cast performance. At times Mijo has the feeling of a show being put on by a group of talented college students, and if it was being performed on a Thursday night in San Marcos it would be the biggest thing in town.

Mijo is being performed Friday, March 16 at Rudyards, 2026 Waugh. Show times are 10 p.m. and midnight. For more information go to Bootown’s website.

HPD released his name: Officer Penrod

By Alex Wukman

Over a month has passed since an HPD officer pulled a shotgun on a party being thrown by the Houston Free Thinkers. In that time the story went viral and prompted an internal affairs investigation. At the height of the media coverage Free Press Houston did our due diligence and sent in an open records request to get HPD’s side of the story, they just sent it over. And while the results of the investigation and the final outcome of the court case won’t be known for some time, the initial incident reports created by the officer who arrested Free Thinkers member Derrick Broze seem to go out of their way to portray Broze as the bad guy who turned a simple request to turn the music into something that was bordering on a riot.  The non-public Current Information Report filed by officer J.W. Rosemon on January 28 states that a neighbor, Latrona Deaver, called in a noise complaint about the party at 2305 Wheeler.

Rosemon’s report describes Deaver as “a repeat caller” who is “tired of this on going noise problem.” Rosemon also wrote that Deaver felt that the owner of 23065 Wheeler, a man only identified as Mr. McReynolds, was “very rude to her” and wouldn’t “tell the band to turn the music down a little bit.” In a prose voice that seems to bounce between wide-eyed wonderment and overly detailed analysis, Rosemon writes that he was initially dispatched to the party at 9:46 p.m. and when he arrived he found that McReynolds had cordoned off his driveway with “large cargo boxes” to make a “stage area for the band so as not to be visible from the street.”

Rosemon’s goes on to state that between the “stage area” and the street there were about 40 to 50 people and that they were “causing a huge noise disturbance.” In perhaps the most description-less description of a party ever put to paper Rosemon says that once he entered the “stage area” he found “a live band with drumsets, guitars and large speakers” and that “the crowd also had an open camp fire in the stage area.” He mentions that “the crowd shouted out upon my arrival ‘here come the haters,'” and that the patrons “attitude was very hostile towards the police presence.” Rosemon writes that once he entered the party “most of the citizens at the party began to pull out their camera phones to record our activity” and said that the police “have no right to be there.”

Rosemon’s report goes on to say that he spoke with McReynolds and “settled the scene” by having the band “dis-assemble.” By 9:57 p.m. Rosemon felt that the issue had been addressed and cleared the call by tagging it “Settled at Scene” before leaving to continue his patrol. The report states that about 15 minutes later, 10:12 p.m.,  a second officer, Sgt. Jackson, to “see what was going on” and to see if the band and McReynolds had complied with Rosemon’s order and the city ordinance. Upon arriving at the party Sgt. Jackson immediately requested backup prompting Rosemon to do a u-turn.

Rosemon writes that once returning to the party he and Sgt. Jackson spoke with McReynolds and Broze, whom Rosemon identifies as “the band leader.” According to the report McReynolds was “very compliant” with Jackson and Rosemon’s requests and questions while Broze “felt we had no reason to shut their band down since it was not midnight.” Rosemon describes Broze “as very aggravated” and “raising his voice very loudly, making a scene causing the crowd to surround us.” According to Rosemon’s report, while Broze was allegedly shouting at him and causing the crowd to turn around the third HPD officer, Officer Crawford, arrived on the scene.

Rosemon writes that Crawford asked Broze for identification and Broze “stated that he does not have one because it was stolen.” However, Broze’s version of events differs pretty wildly from HPD’s record on this point. In a written statement, available here, Broze writes that HPD asked for his ID only after “aeveral officers began looking around the private property of the compound” and he “inquired if they had a warrant to be doing so.” While Rosemon alleges that Broze said he wasn’t carrying ID because he claimed it was stolen Broze states that he “informed the officer I was not operating a motor vehicle and therefore was not carrying ID.” Both Broze and HPD agree that Broze he told the police officers his name and birthdate, however in HPD’s version Broze “blurted his name and birthday out really fast in a manner which we could not make out.” Broze goes on to say that after offering his full name and birth date he “made it clear to the officers I was not failing to identify myself.”

HPD then says that Broze “refused to repeat himself and became very agitated” that he was being questioned. The report alleges that Crawford attempted to disarm the situation by asking Broze to lower his voice and to “stop trying to get a rise out of the crowd.” Rosemon goes on to say that Broze started “to walk up on us in an aggressive manner.” At this point the differences between Rosemon’s version of events and Broze’s become so massive that it’s best just to put them both up without comment or analysis.

First Rosemon’s:

Officer Crawford then asked Derrick to walk to the patrol car so he could run his name to the person’s check and Derrick said “No. I already told y’all my information.” Derrick would not comply with any of officers direct order therefore Officer Crawford escorted Derrick outside of stage area and I assisted him in doing so. Derrick was then placed under arrest for failure to obey a lawful order.

Now Broze’s:

The same officer asked me to come with him to his car, and I asked if I was being detained. Upon being told I was not being detained I told him I would remain where I was. He then grabbed me by the arm and attempted to pull me to his car. I stepped back and asked why I was being assaulted. I informed the officer that I respected him but was not going anywhere. He then grabbed me and dragged me out the back to the street and pushed me to the backside of the car.

The report alleges that while Broze was at the patrol car he continued shouting out to the crowd, which was now following the trio into the street. “Derrick shouted ‘this is a police state’ and the crowd would repeat ‘this is a police state.’ This then caused the crowd to become unruly,” writes Rosemon before stating that it was this shouting and unruly behavior that required a fourth officer “to come to the scene to help clear the crowd.” In Broze’s statement “the crowd become upset at seeing someone from the community taken away without being told why, essentially kidnapping a citizen off private property.”

In Rosemon’s account after arriving on the scene Officer Penrod “noticed how intense the crowd was getting so he pulled a out his shot-gun not pointing it anyone, but in the air and racked a round into the chamber and this helped move the crowd onto the sidewalk for a few moments.” Rosemon’s account fails to mention the arrest of Micah Jackson who, according to Broze, was grabbed from behind by Penrod and told “you’re freedom ends tonight.”

“As he swung Mr. Jackson around other officers joined in and slammed him to the back of the police car I was being held in. I watched his face slam on the window. The officers then handcuffed him and put him in the back of another car telling him he was being charged with resisting arrest. He inquired as to what the offense was, and he was also told he was attempting to incite a riot,” writes Broze. Rosemon states that after taking Broze into custody “the crowd continued to surround us trying to get a rise out of us while they were still recording our every move” which prompted night shift commander Lt. Nguyen to come to the scene.

In Rosemon’s account McReynolds “was the only one the crowd would listen to and was able to calm the crowd down.” Broze’s account ends with a statement that “this is not the kind of interaction the Houston Free Thinkers are seeking from law enforcement or the city, but we have often interacted with officers overstepping their bounds and restricting freedom” while Rosemon’s account ends with an alleged quote from Broze in which he supposedly describes the mission of Houston Free Thinkers by saying “our whole purpose is to bring awareness to people as well as police that the government is trying to create a police state.”

This shit is getting too predictable. Honestly, another week brings another report of HPD overreacting to the noise ordinance. Last week it was a cop pulling a gun this week it’s a report that Dubstep DJ Badbwoy BMC was arrested for an alleged noise violation. Apparently a little after midnight on Wednesday, February 8, an HPD officer rolled up to Mango’s where BMC was working some tracks from his upcoming “Dubbed Out” LP, which drops in March from Swisha House, into his weekly gig. According to BMC, real name Billy McCain, HPD stopping by is all too common. In an e-mail sent to FPH, BMC states that HPD has been coming by Mango’s almost every week to “see if the bass can be heard from outside”  since he “won a noise violation ticket in court,” on April 5 of last year. BMC says that the cop sat outside of Mango’s for about 30 minutes before coming inside and telling him to come outside.

BMC goes on to write:

“So I grabbed my jacket and lit a cigarette thinking this would be another ticket. As we were walking outside he asked me to get rid of my cigarette and told me to put my hands behind my back. I asked him if he was serious and he said yes. So I threw my cigarette down and he said he was gonna give me a ticket for littering. As he began cuffing me I told him that this was harassment. I explained to him that I would lose my job if i went to jail. His reply to me was too bad shouldn’t have been loud.”

The rest of BMC’s tale is all-too-familiar to anyone who’s been in HPD custody, 10 hours to get processed in and six hours to get processed out even after someone posts bond. And like anyone who works in music knows, spending 24 hours in jail isn’t a vacation when you’ve got gigs lined up. “I ended up losing my gigs for the rest of the week because there was no way for me to contact my employer,” writes BMC. He goes on to write that HPD giving out tickets to enforce the noise ordinance has become commonplace. The arresting officer “comes to Mango’s almost every Tuesday to give out tickets for noise.” According to BMC on October 12, the night the new noise ordinance went into effect, “he gave out six tickets for the same noise violation. Micheal Watts, myself, the sound guy, the bar manager, the owner of Mango’s and the person who owned the sound system” were all ticketed.

With the amount of tickets that are being handed out at Mango’s it would be easy to assume that the club is just blasting out the music and not making any concessions to the neighbors. That’s a wrong assumption. Since the new ordinance went into effect in October 2026 the owners of Mango’s have spent over $3,000 to improve the club’s sound proofing. BMC says that they added “double doors on each of the exits and also putting up bass traps through out the building” as well as enclosing the front patio to try and contain the sound. “These are all guidelines that the city has told club owners to do so they won’t have any more issues. But that’s not the case,” writes BMC.

According to BMC’s lawyer Jonathan Landers the arrest itself wasn’t illegal, just uncommon.

“A person in Texas can be arrested for any offense, with the exception of speeding and open container.  However, for offenses punishable by fine only, an officer is given the option of issuing a person a citation which requires their appearance in court.  This is the standard practice throughout the state.  In the past, Badboy has followed the law and appeared when he was given a citation.  The officer in this case apparently decided to arrest Badboy to make a point.”

He goes on to point out that currently “there are over two hundred ways to violate this statute” and that since it’s easier to break this law than it is to obey it he feels that the noise ordinance is “unconstitutionally broad.” Landers says that since conviction under the new ordinance only requires the testimony of a single officer saying he or she “was ‘aware of the vibrations’ caused by my music,” as opposed to say a reading from a decibel meter, means that the law “possibly does not put a person on notice of what is being outlawed.”

“In the past, I could go outside and make sure I was not in violation of the law by measuring volume myself.  Now, I am forced to guess at whether a random officer will be able to feel the music,” wrote Landers.

Image appropriated from Texas Tribune

By Alex Wukman

An ambulance and four HPD cruisers roll up to a non-descript lemon yellow faded-to-almost-white building on Branard, a quiet side street in Montrose. The two or three cars doubling back down their interrupted shortcut doubtlessly think they’ve stumbled onto the scene of an overdose/drug bust. The only detail that doesn’t fit that assumption, a detail all too easily overlooked in the midst of a panicky U-turn, is the long handicapped railing extending from the building. The railing is the only clue that the building is more than just another post-war Faux Victorian in a rapidly gentrifying Inner Loop neighborhood.

The yellowish-white building serves as a dormitory for a little know mental health facility with the generic name of the Mental Health Co-op, or MHC. The primary offices and residential treatment facility of MHC are located a block north of the Branard building at 503 and 501 Sul Ross. Like many mental health facilities, MHC keeps a relatively low profile—a feat in and of itself since MHC’s primary offices have been in the same location for over 30 years. However, in that time it hasn’t always been known as the Mental Health Co-op. According to MHC’s website and staff the facility was founded in New York in the early 1960s by Grover Shaunty before he moved it to the Sul Ross location in 1980. Shaunty, who has a Masters of Social Work, claims to have lived in Montrose for 74 years and to have been treating the mentally ill in Texas, New York and Washington State for 53 years.

Despite Shaunty’s claims of longevity in the community the earliest mention of someone named Grover Shaunty isn’t from Houston. Shaunty’s name first appears in a listing in the December 15, 1963 edition of the Big Spring Herald from Big Spring, TX. In the listing a person named Grover Shaunty is said to have participated in a week of prayer sponsored by Big Spring’s First Baptist Church. A few years later Shaunty’s name pops up in the minutes of an August 1967 meeting of the Austin City Council. Shaunty requests, and receives by a vote of 3-2, $40,000 from the City of Austin to fund treatment for Mental Health and Mental Retardation.

Less than a year later, March 1968, Shaunty’s name makes a second appearance in the minutes of the Austin City Council. At the March meeting the person named Grover Shaunty is helping to spearhead the committee behind Austin’s application for the Federal Government’s Model Cities Program, one of the initiatives that came out of LBJ’s Great Society plan. In September of 1968 Shaunty appears again before Austin City Council to discuss recent developments in Austin’s Model Cities Program.

The first time Shaunty’s name is mentioned in relation to Houston or Harris County comes in the form of a lawsuit filed in April 1983 in the 133^rd District Court of Harris County. In the suit Dr. Howard D. Sirak, of Columbus Ohio, alleged that Shaunty borrowed $4,500 from him and was late in paying it back. Court documents show that, since Shaunty failed to respond to the suit, a default judgment ordering Shaunty to pay the money plus interest and attorney’s fees was entered.

Shaunty’s lack of appearance at the lawsuit could be explained by the fact that just two months later he was being served with divorce papers by Kathryn Ann Shaunty. A review of court documents shows that from June 1983 to February 1984 Shaunty was involved in three separate Family Court cases, including one that appears to be a custody dispute. The first non-court related mention of Shaunty in Houston comes from a 1985 Houston Chronicle article in which Shaunty is quoted on the subject of teenagers and Satanism. The Chronicle reports there were concerns over a purported link between “Satanic beliefs” and the murder of Dennis Keith Meddler, 19. At the time, police were operating under the theory that Medler was lured to a cemetery by five teenagers, aged 16 to 19-years-old, who beat Medler with a pipe, choked him with a scarf and then stabbed him in the eye with the pipe. The police also stated that after his death Medler was stabbed and slashed with a pocketknife. Aside from statements about the suspects behavior prior to allegedly committing the murder, the Chronicle article doesn’t indicate what led law enforcement to the conclusion that Medler’s killing had anything to do with the occult.

In the article Shaunty, who is identified as working almost exclusively with teens, is credited with saying that experimentation with drugs is “usually coupled with a teen’s interest in Satanic beliefs since both are forms of rebellion.” The mother of one of the teens accused of the murder said her son smoked marijuana, wore a black wizard’s hat, painted his face with mascara and chanted as he walked around the apartment. She assumed that the chants were Satanic in nature, although the Chronicle doesn’t indicate whether he was chanting incantations or just choruses from Judas Priest records.  A year later Shaunty was once again called on by the Chronicle to offer his expert opinion on teen drug use.

In 1986 15-year-old Paul Amyx overdosed after huffing Freon. In the Chronicle article on the case, Cathy Gordon describes how Paul’s parents were distraught by their loss and saddened to learn that it could have been prevented if they’d only known about involuntary commitment. Shaunty, who is identified as a social worker at a private psychiatric drug-treatment program called the Houston Clinic and claims to have “helped commit more than 200 drug-dependent children,” tells parents throughout Houston that they don’t have to let drug dependent children make decisions about their care.

His next mention in the media comes in a 1987 Texas Monthly article about companies profiting off of the AIDS crisis. In the Big Business of AIDS Shaunty, who identifies himself as a psychotherapist with 29 years of experience, tells Patricia Sharpe about his plans to open a private AIDS residence in Houston. He explains how he wasn’t worried about making a profit and that he was planning on funding the facility with earnings from his work at the Houston Clinic and the dividends from his own treatment center A Counseling Place. He also said that he wouldn’t be providing medical care, just room and board and he was planning on charging $1,200–$2,272 adjusted for inflation—per month.

For Shaunty money and courts would come to define most of the early 1990s. And, like most things in the 1990s, Shaunty’s court case had roots in the late 1980s. In July 1989 Shaunty approached Ethel Bowman, the mother of one of the residents of A Counseling Place, about a $40,000 loan. Court documents state that Shaunty claimed he needed the money to “improve the financial statement” of the facility so he would qualify for federal funds that would allow him to expand the operation.

Sometime after Bowman cut him a personal check for $40,000 Shaunty gave her a promissory note saying that he would repay the loan, plus interest, in 90 days. In October 1989 he gave Bowman a $1,500 check to cover some of the interest. Court records say he gave her another interest payment in January 1990 and the check bounced. Bowman did what most people do when they’ve been given a bad check; try to talk to the person who gave them the worthless piece of paper.  And Shaunty did what most people do when they owe someone money—let them know you know you owe them money. Or in the legalese language of lawsuits: Shaunty reaffirmed, in writing, his obligation to repay the debt owed to Bowman in February and April of 1990. A few days after the second time Shaunty told Bowman he hadn’t forgotten about the money she went and did what rich people do when they’re owed money—she got a lawyer.

Bowman’s lawyer sued Shaunty for $55,000, the full amount plus interest and attorney’s fees. Before the suit even made it trial Bowman’s lawyer filed motions to freeze Shaunty’s bank accounts and go after his cars. About six weeks after the suit was filed it came up for trial and Shaunty was a no show. A default judgment was entered against Shaunty awarding Bowman the full amount, and giving her the right to go over Shaunty’s financials with a fine-toothed comb. After the judgment was handed down Shaunty made sporadic payments to Bowman—$1,200 in September 1990, $20,000 that December another $4,300 in January 1991. Shaunty paid over $35,000 to Bowman throughout most of 1991, the only problem was most of what he paid only went to the interest on the debt. After the payments stopped, Bowman’s lawyer sent over some fact-finding documents.

The documents asked for an overview of his personal financials, as well as those of A Counseling Place. And the records indicate that the only time Shaunty initiated any hearing during the whole four years Bowman was trying to get her money back was after he was presented with documents compelling him to reveal his financial information. He then failed to appear at the hearing he requested. Almost two full years after Bowman was awarded her $40,000—plus interest, attorney’s fees and court costs—Shaunty still hadn’t paid up. And Shaunty’s lack of payment pushed A Counseling Place into two years of receivership. Just four years after paying off Bowman, and getting A Counseling Place out of receivership, Shaunty decided to try his hand at the restaurant business.

A gossipy Houston Business Journal column quotes a very recalcitrant Shaunty as saying that he had been in the food service industry for 39 years and that he owned and operated a “home-delivery food service.”  The article goes on to say that Shaunty was thinking of turning a former restaurant on West Alabama into an off-campus kitchen for his food delivery service before family and friends convinced to open a cheap comfort food restaurant. Shaunty decided to name the place Podmore’s, after an English short story called Podmore’s Thatch about an older woman who leaves London to open a restaurant in a mythical town. Despite a remarkably low price point of $5 to $6 for staples like meatloaf and spaghetti and meatballs Podmore’s didn’t fare well.

One of the only records of Podmore’s that exists is a $50,000 slip-and-fall lawsuit filed against Shaunty and the restaurant by a “business invitee” named Ana Lozano in November 2026. In the suit Lozano alleged that she was at Podmore’s in 1998 when she was injured. Unlike in the two previous lawsuits, Shaunty showed up to defend himself against Lozano’s accusations and he hired an attorney. In April 2026 a judgment was issued for Shaunty that absolved him of having to pay Lozano but also required her to pay all the court cost.

What celebration Shaunty had was short lived. In May of 2026 he was sued again for failing to pay back money he had borrowed. This time it was for an unpaid loan of about $39,000. A few months after the suit was filed it was dropped with Shaunty agreeing to pay back the principal plus the interest. For most of the 2026s Shaunty faced a near constant stream of lawsuits, and more than a few of them alleged he had failed to pay what he owed. In 2026 he was sued for breach of contract for failing to pay $100,000 in rent to Janet Freidman. As in previous lawsuits a default judgment was issued when Shaunty failed to show up and his facility was sent into receivership for the second time in a decade. A little less than a year after A Counseling Place re-emerged from receivership in 2026 Shaunty was sued; again, over $40,000 he’d borrowed to start Podmore’s. After three years of lingering around the courthouse that suit was dismissed in 2026 for want of prosecution.

In 2026 the State of Texas stepped in and sued Shaunty for what looked like the last time. Surprisingly the lawsuit brought by the State had nothing to do with Shaunty’s spotty history of repaying his debts and everything to do with him operating an unlicensed mental health facility. Apparently, over all the years that Shaunty had been running A Counseling Place, and despite it going through multiple receiverships, no one had ever thought to check and see if the facility needed a license to operate.

In the court documents the State’s Department of Aging and Disability Services said that, under the law at the time, Shaunty had to have a license to operate. Shaunty responded that he didn’t need a license to house, counsel and dispense medication for over 20 people. After lining up witnesses and entering in various treatment records detailing how many patients suffered from schizophrenia and how many suffered from bi-polar disorder, in September 2026 the State was able to secure an agreed upon order that permanently prohibited Shaunty from operating an assisted living facility without a license. And then the State Legislature met.

In 2026 the Texas Legislature passed H.B 216, a bill that was designed to make it easier for assisted living facilities and adult boarding houses like the Mental Health Co-op to be regulated. When it was passed the bill’s sponsor, former State Senator and possible gubernatorial candidate, Elliot Shapleigh celebrated it as a triumph. In a press release about the bill Shapleigh wrote, “So often, the elderly, veterans and those with mental illness end up in boarding homes where unscrupulous owners take advantage. This bill will deliver protections for these vulnerable Texans.”

Despite its good intentions, H.B. 216 was flawed from the beginning. One of the biggest impacts of the bill was that instead of strengthening regulations on assisted living facilities at a State level, or appropriating funds for more inspectors, it created a framework that encouraged cities to take on the job of regulating so-called boarding homes. The only problem was that framework didn’t come with any money attached to it. Officer Douglas Anders of HPD’s Mental Health Unit put it succinctly when he wrote in an e-mail that “the State tried to rope in the unlicensed facilities, but were unable to due to size of the issue and a lack of funds.” Anders goes on to explain that with the passage of H.B. 216 cities have the right to create ordinances to address locally what had previously been the responsibility the state, but without any additional funding it’s a slow process.

And in Houston the responsibility of doing the legwork necessary to create an effective ordinance to govern the nearly 250 unlicensed assisted living facilities/adult boarding homes/mental health facilities, or whatever terminology lawmakers decided to use, isn’t being done by the City Health Department or members of City Council, it’s being spearheaded by law enforcement. Anders wrote that because the officers of the Mental Health Unit are partnered with mental health professionals from Harris County’s Mental Health and Mental Retardation Authority they are charged with responding to people in crisis. As such they “go into many of these locations on a daily or weekly basis.” Anders went on to state that, because of their familiarity with the issue, the City felt that the Mental Health Unit was uniquely positioned to act as “the ‘gate keeper’ in ordinance development.”

Until the City adopts an ordinance regulating facilities such as the Mental Health Co-op little can be done. As it sits now the City of Houston’s Health and Human Services Department, like so many other agencies, has no authority over unlicensed facilities. When asked about regulations and inspections for the Mental Health Co-op, and facilities like it, City Health Department spokesperson Kathy Barton laughed.

“The City Health Department doesn’t inspect mental health facilities. I’m sure everyone would love for us to get involved, but it’s not what we do…we don’t have any regulatory authority,” said Barton. Barton estimated that regulating mental health facilities is “a State or Federal issue,” but according to Allison Lowery at the State of Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services, the agency charged with performing bi-annual inspections of unlicensed assisted living facilities, the only thing the State can do is inspect to see if they need a license.

“As long as the residents don’t require personal care there’s nothing we can do,” said Lowery. She went on to explain that under Texas law ‘personal care’ is defined as needing help with basic things like getting dressed and eating. Lowery said that the State “just doesn’t have any regulations that apply” to facilities that cater to higher functioning individuals—those who can wash and feed themselves. The current underfunded, under-regulated patchwork nature of Texas’ mental health system is a crisis that’s been over a decade in the making. Draconian budget cuts have put Texas squarely dead last in the nation when it comes to mental health spending. The U.S. Census Bureau ranks Texas 50th when it comes to overall mental health spending and the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that Texas’ per capita mental health spending of $38.38 per person is the second worst in the nation.

The lack of funds has led some people, like Barton, to label Texas a “non-provider state” when it comes to mental health and others to woefully note that the largest provider of mental health services in the state is the Texas prison system. The main problem with relying on prisons to treat the mentally ill is that prisons aren’t designed to do it. Jailers aren’t trained mental health professionals; they can’t distinguish between schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder.  And a lack of beds at one of the few state hospitals means that those found incompetent to stand trial can wait in jail for over a year simply for being mentally ill.

For many families the burden of taking care of someone with mental illness is too much and the lack of a readily available public option has led to an explosion of unlicensed facilities. There is currently no way to tell how many facilities like the Mental Health Co-op exist in Texas, and because of the lack of hard data estimates vary wildly. A 2026 report from the Texas Department of Health and Human Services stated that the authors could only identify 845, and offered the qualifier that that was probably on the low end. Unnamed experts speaking to the Associated Press in 2026 estimated that there could be as many as 4,000 unlicensed assisted living facilities that could be housing as many as 60,000 people. Even the agency that is nominally in charge of seeing if a facility needs a license has no idea just how many facilities there are. Lowery said that the Department of Aging and Disability Services didn’t have any information about the number of facilities in the state “simply because we don’t regulate them.”

The lack of oversight and regulations is not lost on the people who live near facilities like the Mental Health Co-op. Jason Ginsburg is the president of the First Montrose Commons, the neighborhood that houses MHC, neighborhood association. Over the last few years tensions between Neighborhood Association members and MHC have risen considerably. Ginsburg said that “part of the problem is that businesses like the Mental Health Co-op are substantially unregulated, and a lot of their money comes from private individuals.” While deficit hawks may be pleased that the cost of caring for the mentally is being picked up by a patient’s family instead of by the state, the fact that the vast majority of for-profit-facilities don’t receive Medicare or Medicaid increases the difficulty of tracking them. According to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General, out of the estimated 250 facilities in Houston less than 25 receive government funds.

Ginsburg went on to state that it’s “the lack of information and government oversight” that his organization objects to, “not the mere presence of such businesses and their patients.” Shaunty claims that the tensions in the neighborhood are the result of gentrification. In an e-mail he cited recent demographic shifts in the neighborhood as younger, more affluent families moved in. Families that he said, “do not like transsexuals on the corner nor do they like the visibility of the mentally ill living in this neighborhood.”

Marie Bruns, one of the neighborhood residents, doesn’t think her problems with MHC stem from the gentrification narrative that so many in Montrose like to fall back on. In an e-mail Bruns described an incident that occurred in the summer of 2026 when she was out walking her dog. She says that on her walk she ran into a family she’s friends with and she did the neighborly thing and stopped to talk. It was at that point that shit, allegedly, got real. Bruns writes that while she and her neighbors were chatting “a strange man with wild long hair started running towards me and making strong sexual advances and screaming sexual words.”

She goes on to state that her “male neighbor tried to tell him to go away, but he did not listen, instead we all decided as a group to run away quickly into a neighbor’s house.” Bruns continues describing a scene that seems ripped from the opening pages of a self-defense manual. “The man continued to chase us making threatening remarks and more sexual advances and the husband screamed at him to leave him alone and the man got very aggressive and wanted to start fighting my friends.”

Dewey Paris, MHC’s clinical director, offered a different perspective on the incident, painting it less as a moment of potential sexual assault and more of a simple misunderstanding. Without offering any names Paris said that “a group of neighborhood residents were out for a walk and stopped under a tree for some shade when they encountered one of our male residents.” Paris goes on to say that a brief verbal altercation ensued in which “one of the ladies told our resident that he ‘needed to leave’ and he told her ‘I don’t have to leave I live here.’” Shaunty claims that, as far as he knows, in the 30-plus-years that his facility has been in operation there “have only been two incidents where a resident in one of our units was aggressive towards the property” of a neighborhood resident. He goes on to state that in both incidents the MHC residents claimed they were taunted by people in the neighborhood and that in both instances the patient was discharged and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. He also says that, as far as he knows, there hasn’t been any incident involving a resident of MHC exhibiting “aggression toward any person in the neighborhood.”

HPD’s dispatch logs tell a slightly different story. Over a two year period, from January 2026 to January 2026, officers were called out 170 times to the two main MHC buildings, over 100 times to 503 Sul Ross alone. The calls ranged from the mundane, reports of suspicious persons or vehicles, to the exotic, three reports of poisoning. Buried in the dispatch are reports of 14 assaults, one in-progress stabbing, one sexual assault and one “dead man.”

Despite Shaunty’s assurances, many neighborhood residents don’t feel safe walking the streets. Shaunty claims that much of that feeling of insecurity isn’t because of his patients but because of the way HPD responds to crisis calls. He explained that prior to 2026 MHC staff would take a resident in crisis to a local emergency room to be evaluated by medical personnel. Then in late 2026 “the city changed the way crisis intervention was to be handled.  They instituted a Crisis Intervention Team composed of a police officer and a trained mental health person who were to be called and who came in marked cars and in uniform to evaluate residents [in crisis] in their living units,” said Shaunty.

He goes on to say that this change led to a dramatic increase in both the visibility, and the amount, of police officers into the neighborhood. Shaunty claims that the dramatic increase in the police presence in the neighborhood that residents perceive is just that, only perception. “There is no increase in the number and type of mentally ill person being cared for, only the visibility of crisis services to that population,” said Shaunty. He went on to say that MHC has “always had the same percentage of clients who experience crisis during treatment.” However, before 2026 those crises used to be “just more quietly detected and resolved.”

Another issue that causes concern amongst residents is the size of the MHC campus. Bruns alleges that the facility “has taken advantage of our FMC environment” and slowly “infiltrated the entire district very silently.” “We counted the number of houses and rentals that they now occupy and it is scary,” said Bruns.  Shaunty states that aside from 501 and 503 Sul Ross, the two addresses that appear on almost all of the paperwork associated with MHC throughout its 30-year history, his program “operates in individual living units in 12 different [apartment] complexes in the Sul Ross/Branard area.”

Paris said that, on average, the facility treats around 50 individuals every month. Shaunty explained that “each resident, or every two residents, have an independent residential address” and because the 50-or-so patients treated by MHC all have different, independent, addresses the facility does not “qualify for group home living.” When asked about the legality of MHC Officer Anders stated that “Shaunty is totally legal, as for ethical that’s another question.”