Texas Civil Rights Project Director calls for more diversity from Travis County Sheriff’s Office
Reported by Julie Musgrave
The Travis County Sheriff’s Office is under scrutiny Wednesday, after the Texas Civil Rights Project says Hispanics aren’t being represented in upper management.
This complaint follows the announcement that Captain Art Cardenas is retiring at the end of March. Right now, Captain Cardenas is the only Hispanic in his position.
The director of the Texas Civil Rights Project sent a letter Wednesday, basically asking Sheriff Greg Hamilton () to re-evaluate the leadership within his department and make diversity a bigger priority.
“This is the same old song,” says TCRP Director Jim Harrington. “If you want to bring diversity into your management team, then you work on bringing diversity . . . and there are a lot of ways to do it.”
Harrington’s letter called the loss and lack of a Hispanic replacement “disturbing.” He says he fears without Hispanic representation, it could hurt relations between sheriff deputies and the Hispanic community.
“When you have a management team that excludes people of your race or your ethnicity, that’s a message of why compete for it?” he says.
Sheriff Hamilton argues that he picks his candidates based off of qualifications. He says when he was hiring to replace Captain Cardenas; he had six applicants — none of whom were Hispanic.
“The only thing that I can do is do what I did this last time,” Sheriff Hamilton says. “I will forward the opportunity to everybody that holds that right — Sergeant and Lieutenant — to apply for this position.”
The person hired to replace Capt. Cardenas is not Hispanic, but the Sheriff stands behind the decision.
According to Travis County Sheriff’s Office documents, there are just more than 1502 employees. About 60% are white, around 23% are Hispanic, and about 16% are African American or Asian.
