For decades after he killed the University of Texas tower sniper, the late Austin police officer Houston McCoy dreamt he was drowning in a river as it filled with blood.

“When Whitman fell, he fell near a drain, and blood was going into the drain,” said Charley Wilkison, who sat with McCoy as he was interviewed about the shooting at least twice before McCoy’s 2012 death.

McCoy had just bought new boots, which were permanently stained after the nation’s first mass shooting on a college campus, said Wilkison, the executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas.

Officers back in 1966 weren’t expected to show much emotion, and little was known then about post-shooting trauma. After the shooting, Wilkison said McCoy’s sergeant sat with him on the hood of a patrol car with a six-pack and said, “Drink a beer, you’ll be all right.”

Another officer, Ramiro Martinez, was originally given credit for taking Whitman down. Later, McCoy was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome and battled alcoholism (Read McCoy’s personal account here).

These days, much more is known about what officers experience in a shooting, and many departments like Austin have peer support programs to address officers’ mental health.

“There’s a stigma attached to going and checking in,” Wilkison said. “Break their arm, go get a cast. Get depressed, go to the bar. So we’ve got to do better, and police departments are trying to do better.”

In a forthcoming reporting series on officer-involved shootings of unarmed people, I hope to explore what officers – along with the people shot, witnesses and relatives – go through. I’m seeking all the perspectives I can get.

Stay tuned for news on that soon – meanwhile, catch up on the media coverage of the tower shooting anniversary:

• The Reckoning, by Texas Monthly’s Pamela Colloff
• Memorial Day, by Texas Monthly’s Pamela Colloff
• A new kind of madness, by Austin American-Statesman (including video interview McCoy’s daughter, APD Officer Monika McCoy)
• Out of the Blue: 50 Years After the UT Tower Shooting, Texas Standard
• New memorial honors victims of UT Tower shooting, The Daily Texan
• Memorial plaque announcement (2007), UT News
• UT Tower Garden Re-Dedication (2016), University of Texas at Austin

I envisioned many different situations  en route to a recent assignment covering GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s trip to Houston. But my list didn’t include what I saw at the end of the exhausting night: democratic debate.

Trump first stopped by Houston attorney Tony Buzbee’s River Oaks home for a fundraiser, where attendees forked over thousands for a few moments with the mogul. Across the street from Buzbee’s lot, Houston police officers cordoned off protesters on one corner and directed Trump supporters to another.

The two sides had a terse face-off – protesters blasted Tejano music while Trump supporters spoke to reporters – at the fundraiser, but there wasn’t much actual interaction.

I then headed to Trump’s rally in The Woodlands, which attracted thousands of people. The line to get in started to form many hours before the 7 p.m. rally, and many people who’d waited in line in a scorching mall parking lot didn’t get in.

Since Trump has yanked The Washington Post‘s credentials, I covered the scene outside of the Waterway Marriott. While there were reports of a person temporarily detained, I found people to be fairly calm. Law enforcement saturated the area, directing traffic and keeping watchful eyes on people expressing their opinions.

I had been expecting confrontations to get heated after Trump’s audience filtered out, and there were passionate exchanges. But again, I found that law enforcement was vigilant while allowing for discord – at least once even standing between the two sides as they debated over metal barricades.

As the night went on, many people left, but plenty of others stayed. I spent my time floating from one group of debaters to another, staying to get the gist of the arguments:  immigration, LGBT issues, gun rights. All around me were clusters of people – again, with police watching closely – debating politics, of course some more crassly than others. I saw college students, hijab-clad women, people who were physically impaired and folks of all races, ages and shapes. Just as moviegoers might discuss a film on the way out of the theater, rally-goers and protesters seemed to want to talk it out, too.

Eventually, officers asked people to leave and the crowds cleared out. The mall was once again just a mall, and Trump was off to stir someone else’s pot.

Trump supporters, right, debate protesters, on far side, outside of a rally in The Woodlands June 18 while a law enforcement officer stands between the two sides.

Sign held by protesters at Donald Trump’s Houston fundraiser June 18: “El hijo del diablo Donald Trump”

Susan Edwards, her husband and their Yorkie, Ms. Veronica, speak to the media outside of a June 18 Donald Trump fundraiser in Houston.

Jacob Mingear, 22, said Trump pointed him out and asked him to stand up for the audience at his rally in The Woodlands June 18. “There’s a movement of LGBT that’s moving towards Trump,” he said.

Crowds of people outside of The Woodlands Waterway Marriott, where Donald Trump held a rally June 18.

Donald Trump supporters speak to the media and face protesters at a fundraiser in Houston June 18.

Protesters at a June 18 Donald Trump rally in Houston hold signs while broadcasting Tejano music through a speaker aimed at Trump supporters across the street

When talking about journalism’s role of being society’s watchdog, people often use the phrase “shed some light.” Well, this summer, I’m busy testing and retesting batteries, researching the best and brightest LED bulbs and otherwise preparing to do some illuminating starting in August.

Then, I’ll be undertaking a year-long reporting project thanks to a grant that will allow me to write while I continue chipping away at my Master’s degree. In general, I’ll be researching and reporting on officer-involved shootings in the Lone Star State – but I’ll explain more in detail later.

Meanwhile, I’m busy ramping everything up – but still can’t say “no” to a good freelance assignment. Last week, the Washington Post tapped me to help with their coverage of a training accident at Fort Hood in which nine soldiers were swept away by flood water.  On Sunday, I took Austin American-Statesman Travel section readers with me to Seattle to relive a terrific trip we took to Seattle last year for a friend’s wedding.

Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks about my upcoming project, I promise it will be worth your while. Until then, have a fantastic summer.

Once considered among the worst states in providing legal defense for the poor, Texas is recognized as home of evidence-based best practices for indigent defense.  To ensure improvements continue, the Texas Indigent Defense Commission and Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University will spend the next two years creating a statewide portal for all indigent defense-related data, thanks to a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Texas was at the bottom of the nation in per capita spending (for the indigent),” said Dottie Carmichael, PPRI’s lead researcher. “Now, Texas knows more and better information about how indigent defense services are being provided than a lot of other states.”

Strides have certainly been made since the 2001 Texas Fair Defense Act, requiring counties to create an indigent defense plan and report some statistics to TIDC, which posts that information online. According to the TIDC, state expenses for indigent defense have increased by 150 percent in the last 13 years, and the number of cases paid by the state has risen by 80 percent.

Still, there is much room for improvement, said TIDC Executive Director James Bethke.

“Most counties still administer their programs through an antiquated process rife with conflicts of interests,” he said. “Ideally, the portal will help us be able to measure if a program is accountable and measure it’s performance.”

Edwin Colfax, TIDC’s grant manager, said they’ll work with several counties that are already collecting a plethora of data about caseloads, appointments and how cases are adjudicated. Counties currently use one of two types of systems, which were built using TIDC’s discretionary grants.

Bethke said the portal is meant to be a repository of information for interested parties to dissect, “to make the local stakeholders aware.” His agency is responsible for auditing indigent defense systems across Texas’ 254 counties, and can withhold funding – about 10-15 percent of a county’s indigent defense budget – if wrongdoing is found.

“Our stick is withholding funding. But the bigger stick is sunshine. If they fall behind on legal requirements, this information is public in our reports, and puts sunshine on issues,” he said.

Currently, TIDC is auditing Harris County, recently highlighted in the Texas Observer’s “How Harris County’s Indigent Defense Penalizes the Poor.” (Bethke said the audit was planned before the story ran, and is one of a dozen audits TIDC will conduct each year to determine if policies are being followed. The State Commission on Judicial Conduct and State Bar of Texas police judges and attorneys, respectively).

A little background: Some 23 counties have a designated public defender, who only takes indigent defense cases. To handle the majority of cases, though, counties depend on a system generally called “the wheel” that intends to randomly assign cases to willing attorneys. Statewide, there are about 6,000 lawyers who take indigent defense appointments, Bethke said.