Houston Matters for Wed., Oct. 23, 2013

On Thursday, Oct .24, Texas Southern University will host a community meeting called “Policing the Police” – it’s a panel discussion about police procedures. The event stems from recent articles about police misconduct published by the Texas Observer. On this edition of Houston Matters, in advance of the meeting, we talk with Texas Observer writer Emily DePrang, Sarah Guidry from TSU’s Earl Carl Institute for Legal and Social Policy, which examines allegations of police misconduct in its Criminal Justice Snapshot report, and Ray Hunt, President of the Houston Police Officers Union. We discuss how law enforcement, through training, seeks to prevent incidents of misconduct by officers, the review process for claims against police, the veracity of allegations of brutality, and what happens when some criminal suspects falsify claims about an officer’s behavior to help their own situation.

Also we discuss the latest developments here in Houston in research related to the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. We talk with a thoracic surgeon, and a thoracic oncologist from the Houston Methodist Cancer Center.

And we learn about a new public television series that features some Houstonian “Arab American Stories.”