In 1977, a handsome young veteran named Jose Campos Torres was arrested at a Houston cantina after getting into a fight. Police hauled him, still drunk and angry, to a remote parking lot along Buffalo Bayou where officers beat him up. His injuries were so visible that a jailer refused to book Campos Torres and suggested taking him to a hospital. Instead, rogue cops returned to the bayou, continued the beating, and then threw him in the murky water to drown him and to cover up their crime.
Two years after the murder, which remains one of the most infamous in-custody deaths in Texas history, the Houston Police Department recruited a handful of young Chicano officers for a bold experiment in an attempt to solve murders in the city’s fast-growing Mexican American neighborhoods and build community trust. The Chicano Squad operated from 1979 to 2010. Its story provides new perspectives on enduring issues of police violence and unsolved murders today.
Two native Texans teamed up to tell that story in a new podcast called Chicano Squad.
