I read it when it came out a week or two ago. Pretty good read. Bottom line is that Harris County has empowered the constables to create a place in the law enforcement ecosystem that is unique in the state.
To your point about the constable being more helpful than calling HPD, that was one of the main points of the article. Basically, the constables don’t and won’t investigate real crime. They respond to nuisance shit which makes them viewed favorably in the community. All of these elected constables are greatly incentivized to go out and sell their services to neighborhoods to expand their fiefdom.
One of the funniest things in the series was about a particular precinct that doesn’t have any HCTRA roads in it. The constable was mad because his precinct wasn’t getting any of that sweet, sweet HCTRA ticket revenue so HCTRA carved off a few miles of BW8 so that this precinct’s deputies could patrol it.
it makes some pretty good points that lead you to question the expansion of constables into law enforcement instead of being process servers since it is diverting resources away from the sheriff’s office.