51% Sign Improperly displayed?

[srothstein]

TABC rules allow them 30 days to make the first inspection of any premises when they receive a complaint and 60 days to follow up on it. They sometimes do not make their first inspection right away as a tactic to see if the owner is doing something where he will try to hide it when he knows a complaint was filed. It also may take time to get around to it if the office is very busy.

Houston is the largest regional office they have. It has about 50 agents in it. There is a outpost office in Dickinson, staffed by a sergeant and between two and four agents (that was the staffing when I was with them, anyway). The offices are so busy that the Dickinson office has to cover all of Galveston county plus the southern portion of Harris county. I don't remember the exact borders, but I think the Dickinson office covered all of Pasadena and the adjacent parts of Houston as well.

To show how busy that part of the state is, the TABC field agents are the ones that started that big slave trade (human trafficking) investigation a few years ago. The FBI and several other agencies got involved and made the news with it, but it started with that TABC agents recognizing that some of the prostitutes in bars were really victims and not there willingly and trying to work on that problem. Given how busy that part of the state gets, I can see them putting off responding to a complaint about signs for a couple weeks. One of the things I liked about TABC was that they did respond to all complaints within their time limits and not blow off some as insignificant problems. I cannot say that for many major city police departments.