Mix Up

Houston Police mistake advertising tape for crime tape, creating an awkwardscene

The Houston Police Department is scratching its head as to how a roll of yellow crime scene tape was replaced with caution tape reading "GarageFloorCoating.com" during a recent investigation of a fatal roadside crash.

Around 4:30 a.m. on Monday, police officers arrived at a horrific accident site near the intersection of Holman and Dowling.

Four Houston Fire Department crew members were treating a person for cardiac arrest in the back of a parked ambulance when their vehicle was struck by a speeding Dodge Journey crossover. The Dodge driver was pronounced dead at the scene, while five firefighters as well as the heart attack patient and his wife were rushed to nearby hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries.

"I don't know if that's the best advertising for us to be around a crime scene."

"It appears to have been an isolated incident," HPD spokesperson John Cannon tells CultureMap. "Right now, our division commanders are instructing all officers to check their vehicles for the wrong tape."

But as reporters and passers-by flocked to the scene, many noticed that the usual yellow caution tape surrounding the wreckage was promoting Garage Floor Coating.com, an Arizona-based company that provides special flooring products for garages.

"The Houston Police Department does not purchase crime scene tape with advertising on it," Cannon says.

According to an early internal investigation, Cannon says that due to the severity of the accident, there was an immediate need to rope off the crash site as the crowd of onlookers and emergency workers grew.

Apparently, one of the two on-duty officers simply grabbed the tape from the back of the police car, not noticing the advertisements until the yellow caution tape was removed.

Both HPD and officials from the garage floor company are miffed by the situation, each suspecting that a mistake was made further up the police tape supply chain.

"I don't know if that's the best advertising for us to be around a crime scene," Joyce Chmura from Garage Floor Coating.com told the Houston Chronicle, which first reported the tape switch up. "This had to be a mix-up with the manufacturing facility. That's my best guess."

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Thanks, Queen Bey

Pop icon Beyoncé donates $100,000 to University of Houston Law School

Photo by Erza Shaw Getty Images

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Pop megastar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has donated $100,000 to the University of Houston Law Center Criminal Justice Clinic through her BeyGOOD Foundation. The gift will allow the clinic to hire fill-time faculty to head it, benefiting the students who study there.

“I am delighted that the BeyGOOD Foundation has made this very generous gift to the UH Law Center,” said Leonard Baynes, dean of the UH Law Center. “Not only will this funding help establish a full-time criminal justice clinic that provides pro bono legal services in our community, but it will also supercharge our already excellent criminal law and justice programming.”

The clinic is one of nine at UHLC. It helps students learn to navigate the criminal justice system, especially on behalf of clients that are underserved by skilled attorneys. People of color are affected disproportionately by a lack of good, ethical representation.

Beyoncé, the most decorated artist in Grammy history and easily the biggest musical star native to Houston, has a long history of advocating for criminal justice reform. She was a staunch supporter of the police reform following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, asking law enforcement to “stop killing us” in a web post. In 2020, she penned an open letter to the Kentucky attorney general asking for justice in the death of Breonna Taylor.

Through her BeyGOOD Foundation, established in 2013, Beyoncé has focused mostly on expanding the prospects of Black-owned business and offering education opportunities to students. Forwarding the cause of legal representation in Texas while also helping out marginalized communities compliments her other philanthropic work.

“At UH Law, we envision a legal profession where ‘everyone has the opportunity to prosper,’ as BeyGOOD envisions, and we will achieve this vision by providing access to strong and effective legal representation in criminal proceedings,” Baynes said. “And together, through this gift, the BeyGOOD Foundation and UHLC will shepherd the next generation of criminal justice attorneys in the city of Houston, the state of Texas and the nation.”