At least once a week, Bryant Reed of La Porte finds himself wondering how many police agencies we have watching us and why we need so many.

Reed recently wrote in an e-mail, "In this area, we have HPD, Sheriff's Department, Metro PD, constables, U.S. Marshals, the Houston ISD PD, highway patrol, the Texas Rangers, the FBI, and, I swear, the other day I saw a Harris County Hospital District police car."

I, too, have wandered down the trail of speculation about law enforcement proliferation. Writing down just the agencies that came quickly to mind, I came up with more than 20, including district attorney investigators, game wardens, postal inspectors and federal officers with the INS, DEA, ATF, CIA ...

Once, some time ago, I decided to make a few calls and find out just how many policing agencies and the total number of cops of all kinds we have in our town.

That would include all levels -- city, county, state, federal. And it also would count some cops that wouldn't fall precisely under those umbrellas, such as those who work for public school or university police forces.

In other words, I was after a total of all officers with badges and guns who are empowered to enforce laws, investigate crimes or pursue criminals. It would not include the employees of myriad private security companies.

(Someone at the Harris County Hospital District said the security department uses contract security officers, so I might not count that as a police agency. On the other hand, a friend who has for years been a public information officer for the police department and the sheriff's office, in another city, noted that railroad companies have private police departments whose officers have "full-blown" commissions. So I might count them.)

Coming up with an inventory of police agencies and a total number of cops initially struck me as a simple task. It is a basic element of policing, after all, to keep detailed records. And since police are employed by the public and were created to serve the public, I figured the public ought to have little trouble getting the information.

I figured there must be someone somewhere in town who had a reason for maintaining the sort of listing that I sought, and would have made it widely available, and with a phone call or two, I could find someone to fax me a copy.

But if any such person and any such list does exist in Houston, my attempts to find them were fruitless. I wound up putting that idea on a back shelf until Reed's message provided the motivation to try again.

This time I decided to try an indirect approach to finding out about police agencies in Houston. I called Huntsville, where Sam Houston State University has the College of Criminal Justice and the Bill Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas.

No, they told me. They didn't have the Houston statistics I was after, but they suggested trying a couple of other places, starting with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education in Austin, which wouldn't have any federal agencies but might be able to provide much of the rest.

So, as much as I hated doing it, I called Austin to ask for information about Houston. A fellow there said they might be able to pull out of the computers the numbers I was after. But I must first file a formal Freedom of Information request, telling precisely what I want, and they will look it over and let me know if they can provide it and how much it will cost.

Proving yet again that we should never have allowed the capitol of Texas to be moved out of our town.

The other suggestion was that I call Stevens Point, Wis., where the National Public Safety Information Bureau publishes the National Directory of Law Enforcement Administrators, which lists more than 35,000 agencies all over This Great Land. I did call Wisconsin for information about Houston, though it seemed even stranger than calling Austin, and they said the new book with updated statistics won't be ready for a month or so and will cost pretty close to a hundred bucks. And I'm not convinced it would contain the exhaustive count of all police agencies doing business in our town that we are after.

So let's just make it a project to compile our own inventory of police agencies and officers from all levels of government in the greater Houston area. Anyone with information to contribute can send it, and I'll keep making calls, and we'll see what we come up with.

June 08, 1999, 07:40 p.m.

One night about a year ago a police officer in one of the suburbs thought he had collared a burglar, but released him when the guy produced a badge and identification and claimed to be a deputy constable in another county.

The policeman, not entirely convinced the fellow was a legitimate peace officer, later called the appropriate constable's office to report the incident.

He spoke with Fort Bend County Deputy Constable Mike Denham, who mentioned this little encounter to me to make a point. He has faced similar situations and had similar doubts. He said there are so many law-enforcement agencies in the Houston area, officers need a book that lists them all and provides pictures of their uniforms, badges and ID cards.

"If we as police officers can be fooled by impostors," Denham said, "the general public has no hope of distinguishing between real and fake."

Many other interesting and helpful responses followed Sunday's announcement that we are trying to count just how many law enforcement agencies there are in the Houston area, and how many cops are employed by them.

Raymond Teske Jr., a longtime professor of criminal justice at Sam Houston State University, offered several good tips about where to search for information. One is a book he authored, Crime and Justice in Texas. He said it contains a list of all types of law enforcement agencies in Texas, but the latest edition is several years old and numbers would need updating.

Teske said we have our work cut out for us in compiling a list of Houston-area cops. He said he has spent weeks at a time in similar pursuits, and, "It is not an easy task to find out who are peace officers or their exact jurisdiction, much less how many exist."

Houston police Sgt. G.L. "Buddy" Williams, publisher of The Blues Police Newspaper, said that his conservative estimate of the number of state-certified, full-time, professional law enforcement officers in Harris County is 25,000.

That is an impressive figure, considering it is almost five times the number of Houston Police Department officers, which averages about 5,250 over the year, according to an HPD spokesman.

At the opposite end of the police agency manpower spectrum, we have the Houston office of the Department of Veterans Affairs, with three agents to cover half of Texas, enforcing federal laws as they apply to the VA, said Phillip Eubanks, resident agent in charge.

Harris County sheriff's Deputy Stuart Campbell said that three years ago he helped put on a lawenforcement rodeo to benefit the 100 Club and to the best of his recollection, there were 72 agencies in Harris County on the mailing list.

Capt. Tim Kelly of Houston Metro's Department of Police and Traffic Management said he went through a list of law-enforcement agencies provided by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education and counted 82 in Harris County.

Private investigator Danny Lang Jr. said, "I don't think that there are many agencies that I have not worked with" in Harris County, and he sent a list of 88.

Kenny Rogers, chief investigator of the Harris County district attorney's office, said he keeps a current list of all agencies capable of filing criminal charges through the DA's Intake Management System. He said that he recently counted 125 police agencies -- federal, state, local -- in Harris County. Rogers said he is confident no agency has been left off this list and he will provide me a copy.

So we are making some progress on this cop-counting project. Next comes the tedious chore of contacting each agency to get the number of cops working there.

By the way, when I spoke with Rogers, I asked how many investigators are on the DA's force and he said 55.

As the project progresses, we can take a close-up look at some of the agencies that don't normally get much attention. For example, I heard from several Fire Department arson investigators. There are about 60 of them, and they, too, are certified peace officers.

June 22, 1999, 07:31 p.m.

One day a couple of years ago, Lt. Carl Crisp of the La Porte Police Department was driving across the area and started noticing now many other cops were sharing the road.

While heading west on the South Loop he first passed a Houston Police Department motorcycle-mounted traffic cop, and a little later passed an HPD cop in a patrol car. Shortly after turning to head south on 288, he saw a Metro transit police car, and a bit farther down the road came across one of the constable's traffic cars. Next, he noticed a Harris County Sheriff's Department patrol car. And then, right at the county line, he saw a Department of Public Safety trooper.

"It stunned me," Crisp said, "the number of different agencies in that short distance."

All the police from the various agencies apparently were legitimately doing their jobs, each working independently from the others.

Crisp, who was on his way to a meeting, said he was traveling in an unmarked car with a La Porte police radio, but he likely could not have communicated directly with any of the officers if he had passed a situation that warranted an exchange of information.

He said he might have been able to talk to the DPS trooper, or maybe the Metro cop, but more likely would have been required to go through dispatchers. That is because of the many frequencies and the four different bands in use by police agencies.

Crisp mentioned his freeway observation when I called La Porte to find out how many officers work in that police department. You may recall my self-inflicted project, trying to determine precisely how many different police agencies we have in our neck of the woods, and how many officers work in each.

Curiosity is why. Bryant Reed of La Porte mentioned recently that he often wonders how many police and kinds of police there are. Since that is something I, too, have wondered -- and since I found no place with an accurate inventory of city, school, county, state, federal, and other police agencies -- I decided to give it a go.

To start with, I concentrated upon city-level agencies operating in Harris County, including public school and college police departments, fire department arson inspectors, and city marshals. I got nearly all of them from a list of agencies provided by Kenny Rodgers, chief investigator for the Harris County district attorney's office, and based upon agencies that can file criminal charges through that office.

Following is a progress report of the agencies I have contacted so far and the number of officers each reported:

Aldine ISD PD, 22; Alief ISD PD, 30; Alvin PD, 39; Alvin Community College PD, 11; Baytown Fire Department, four; Baytown PD, 145; Bellaire FD, five; Bellaire PD, 38; Deer Park PD, 49; Dickinson PD, 25; Friendswood PD, 41; Hedwig Village PD, 17.

Houston Baptist University PD, nine; Houston PD, 5,390; Houston FD, 61; Houston ISD, 175; Humble ISD PD, six; Humble PD, 49; Jacinto City PD, 18; Jersey Village PD, 20; Katy ISD PD, 21; Katy PD, 34; Klein ISD PD, 21.

La Porte PD, 62; Manvel PD, 11; Memorial Villages PD, 31; Metro Transit Authority PD, 191; Morgan's Point PD, six; Nassau Bay PD, 13; Pasadena ISD PD, 18; Pasadena PD, 238; Pasadena FD, five; Pearland PD, 65; Port of Houston PD, 47.

Rice University PD, 25; San Jacinto College PD, 19; Seabrook PD, 29; Shoreacres PD, 10; South Houston PD, 32; Southside Place PD, 10; Spring ISD PD 20; Spring Branch ISD PD, 22; Spring Valley PD, 19; Stafford, 35.

Tomball PD, 28; Texas Southern PD, 25; University of Houston Clear Lake PD, 21; University of Houston Downtown PD, 18; University of Houston main campus PD, 40; Webster FD, one; Webster PD, 35; West University Place PD, 21.

I'll bet some were left out. It wasn't intentional. If you work for a city level or school police agency that operates in Harris County and it is not included, please e-mail me with the agency name, the number of officers, and a phone number.

I'll add them and then move on to inventory the police agencies at the county level.