5 February 22 - 28, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents I n 2021 when Senate Bill 476 was passed by the 87th Legislature and signed into law, all Texas counties be- came legally required to form an Sex- ual Assault Response Team (SART) in order to build a statewide infrastructure that would assist municipalities in combating adult sex crimes more effectively and efficiently. The bill mandated that each county commissioners court form a SART composed of people whose work is beneficial to sexual assault survivors, something that already existed in a number of Texas coun- ties. At a minimum, according to the state law, each county should enlist someone from a local sexual assault service, a prosecutor with jurisdic- tion over sex crimes in the county, a member of a police force from the largest city in the county, a sexual assault nurse examiner, a rep from the largest health care provider in the county, a staff member from the county’s largest behavioral health provider, and possibly other indi- viduals with positions that the county deems relevant. Also spelled out by the law is that the SART file “a biennial eval- uation through sexual assault case reviews of the effectiveness of in- dividual agency and interagency protocols and systems.” In other words, the team is legally required to file a report every two years. The required elements of SB 476 are clear, but some counties are not adhering to the law. The first SART reports were to be filed with each county commissioners court before Dec. 1, 2023. As of this writing, Dallas County and Collin County have yet to complete theirs. As defined by the state, the bi- ennial report “is a crucial docu- ment that provides an overview of the activities, achievements, and challenges faced by SARTs in Texas. This report should include the team’s progress and gives the opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of individual agencies as well as the inter- agency protocol.” The Denton County SART report, a 62- page document provided to us via email mere minutes after our initial request, in- cludes all that and more. It also provides “data and findings” that make note of trends in 2022 and 2023 relating to a number of factors, including the race and ethnicity of survivors as well as how many survivors en- dured strangulation during their attack, knew their attacker intimately prior to the assault and more. Both Dallas and Collin counties are among those that already had a SART in place prior to the state mandate. But after our calls and emails over the course of a few weeks, one fact is obvious: the Dallas County Commissioners Court isn’t clear on what the SART is, let alone that it was obligated to file a report before December last year. When reached via email recently, Lauren Trimble, the chief of staff for Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins, told us she would check with “some internal folks for addi- tional information” and get back to us. A few days later, we checked back with her. She didn’t have any information to give us regard- ing whether the report had been completed or who was on the Dallas County SART. We reached out to each of the county commissioners with the same questions. And again, more confusion and non-answers from the offices of the officials tasked with overseeing the SART. Tom Ervin, chief of staff for District 2 Commissioner Andy Som- merman, referred us to the Dallas County district attorney. He said that SART was “under their purview.” We had already done that, however, and Claire Crouch, a spokesperson for the DA’s office said simply, “This is not a report our office files.” She’s correct about that. When we clarified to Ervin that the SART differed from the sexual assault division, which is, in fact, under the DA’s purview, he replied that he was “doing a little research to find out the members of the team” but that he didn’t have names at that point. Blanca Torres, the deputy chief of staff for District 4 Commissioner Dr. Elba Garcia, had a familiar reply to our SART query when she informed us that she had copied Amy Derrick, division chief with the Dallas County DA, on the email. We received no re- plies to our calls or emails from the other county commissioners, John Wiley Price (District 3) or Dr. Theresa Daniel (District 1). By the time we heard from Commissioner Garcia’s office, however, we had finally received an update from Trimble. “The report is currently being fi- nalized by the Sexual Assault Re- sponse Team,” Trimble wrote two days after our initial request. “Once that report is received by our office, I’d be happy to let you know so that you can file a records request. The report should contain the informa- tion you are requesting.” We reached back out to Lewis Jenkins’ office to ask why the report was not completed by the Dec. 1 deadline, but the answer didn’t come from there. We finally gained some insight into why the Dallas County SART report has yet to be completed when we got in touch with Courtney Underwood, a current member of the Dallas County SART. Underwood was one of two in- dividuals specifically listed by name as possible SART members when the county issued a resolu- tion in March 2022, outlining its intent to continue the county’s SART as required by the new state law. The other, Dr. John Buruss of Metrocare Services, told us through a spokesperson that he had not been involved with SART in more than four years. “I think because our SART is so aware of how easily data and statis- tics can be misconstrued and mis- interpreted, we’ve probably had significantly more discussion than other counties, and there are other groups who feel much more comfortable providing an incomplete picture,” Under- wood wrote in response to our questions. She also described the difficulty involved when it comes to collecting data from myr- iad agencies and departments, especially ones over which the commissioners have no jurisdiction. She later added: “While we have taken a bit more time in putting to- gether our report, it’s because we had so much discussion and back and forth be- tween team members to ensure that the re- port was done to our standards and again not simply to check a box.” | UNFAIR PARK | Illustration by Alex Nabaum Searching For Answers Dallas, Collin counties blow deadline for state-required report aimed at combatting sexual assault. BY KELLY DEARMORE >> p6