Incumbent Harris County Constables Sherman Eagleton and Mark Herman won re-election Tuesday, and a longtime assistant chief won a promotion to the top job in Precinct 5.
Republican Terry Allbritton beat out fellow Precinct 5 Assistant Chief Jerome Moore, a Democrat, to succeed retiring Precinct 5 Constable Ted Heap, who had served in the position since 2017.
Neither Eagleton, Herman nor Allbritton responded to requests for comment Tueday night.
Eagleton, first elected constable for Precinct 3 in 2016, had faced a challenge from Erick Patino, whose campaign website said he had worked for the Precinct 4 Constable Office and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
Herman won comfortably against former Precinct 6 sergeant Samantha Hutchinson and will now begin a third term as the top law enforcement official for Precinct 4, which encompasses northern and northwest Harris County.
Allbritton was Heap’s chosen candidate to succeed him. Moore had wanted to shake things up at the Precinct 5 Constable Office, while Allbritton has said he will leave much of Heap’s operations untouched.
While all eight constable positions were up for election this year, only three were contested. In Precincts 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8, Constables Alan Rosen, Jerry Garcia, Sylvia Trevino, James Phillips, and Phil Sandlin were re-elected without opposition.
Constables and the deputy constables they oversee share many of the same powers as municipal police officers or sheriff’s deputies. The eight constable offices in Harris County collectively employ more than 1,700 deputies and have a combined budget of $236 million, according to the Houston Chronicle. Much of their funding comes from property taxes.
Critics of the eight constable offices have long contended that taxpayer dollars are wasted on duplicative services. In 2018, Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research said Harris County could save “considerable administrative expenses” by consolidating the patrol services of the sheriff’s office and the constable offices in some way.
However, supporters of Harris County’s constables contend that they play an important role in keeping the public safe, largely by responding to calls the sheriff’s office does not have the manpower for. They also say a contract program that allows municipal boards and neighborhood associations to pay for deputies to patrol specific areas increases public safety overall.
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