Quote:
They wear uniforms and are sworn to uphold the law, but Harris County Sheriff's Office employees have been disciplined for everything from giving cigarettes to female inmates in exchange for sex to arresting residents after making illegal searches.
They've gotten in trouble for conducting illegal surveillance, watching movies on the job, making life-threatening assaults and arresting people without evidence that they committed a crime. One deputy, a firearms instructor, was disciplined for accidentally firing her handgun in her house and hitting a neighbor's car.
Another deputy, Hall Ware, was fired in February for testing positive for cocaine use after the Sheriff's Office learned he was the last person to be with another young deputy who committed suicide the month before. Ware admitted sniffing cocaine with his law enforcement colleague shortly before the deputy shot himself, according to records.
A Houston Chronicle review of Sheriff's Office discipline reports from 2007 to August provides a sobering look into a department plagued by deputies, jailers and civilians accused of violating laws they are charged to enforce and breaking department policies more than 1,200 times in the past four-and-a-half years.
In all, Sheriff Adrian Garcia has fired 81 deputies and jailers from January 2009 through August, considerably more than the 36 employees let go by his predecessor, Tommy Thomas, during 2007 and 2008. Garcia, who took over the department in January 2009, has also suspended 273 employees without pay and given 414 written reprimands.
"That's incredible - it makes me wonder what kind of agency we have, with that much discipline going on internally," said Frederick Cooper, with the NAACP's criminal justice committee in Houston. "It strikes me as a really bad thing if you have law enforcement people in positions of authority who are having this level of discipline applied."
Complaint backlog
Longtime community activist Johnny Mata argues the U.S. Justice Department should investigate the Sheriff's Office, charge abusive officers and withhold federal policing grants.
Garcia, a former Houston police officer, offered no insight on why employees continue to be cited for serious misbehavior, anymore than he could explain the ongoing drought.
"I don't know why we haven't had any rain," Garcia said. "Why they make those decisions, I don't know."
He said he decided not to examine past disciplinary actions to identify and remove any "bad apples" he inherited when he took office in early 2009. Instead, he felt it was more important to triple his internal affairs unit to reduce a backlog of more than 160 internal affairs complaints pending against deputies when he took office.
Garcia said the county's hiring freeze has caused him, in less serious cases, to be lenient on employees because if he fires them they cannot be replaced.
As an example, Garcia said in past years jailers caught sleeping on duty would be fired.
'Mistakes will occur'
But he only terminated one of 18 jailers and deputies caught napping since 2009, the records show.
"One of the key mandates that I have continuously worked at is to make sure we are protecting the public's trust," Garcia said. "Unfortunately, since we are dealing with human beings, mistakes will occur. Poor judgment will occur. But what the citizens can take away is, even though I'm under a forced hiring freeze, even though I've lost hundreds of employees, I continue to investigate and terminate, where most appropriate, those employees who are making the most egregious type of misconduct."
Small car rammed
Half of the 1,200 disciplinary actions since 2007 involved accidents in which the employee was found at fault.
One deputy was given a two-day suspension for a March accident in which he rammed a woman's compact car on Antoine, while driving 65 mph in a 30 mph zone. The deputy, on his way to a call of a possible shooting, was driving without his lights or sirens on. The motorist and her passenger were hospitalized with injuries.
The records show nearly 30 instances of excessive force from 2007 to August, two cases of unnecessary force and one officer cited for failing to report excessive force.
Garcia's office notes that incidents of excessive force have dropped during his administration.
In some cases, the misconduct is serious enough that it may violate the law. But relatively few violations handed down to deputies end up in criminal charges.
Garcia said his office routinely forwards cases of wrongdoing for review, and the Harris County District Attorney's Office requests sheriff's files on internal investigations.
Official oppression
Of the 61 cases reviewed since 2009, criminal charges were returned in seven, and eight are still under investigation.
The rest were either declined for prosecution, no-billed by a grand jury or referred back to the Sheriff's Office for discipline.
The cases where employees were charged included two cases of official oppression.
Deputy Robert Goerlitz, president of the Harris County Sheriff Deputies' Organization, said he supported a "couple" of the firings by Garcia, but said he believes only half of the disciplinary actions are justified.
According to disciplinary files, deputies have at times posed a deadly hazard to unsuspecting residents - and in one case their own neighbor.
Deputy Kelley Hudson, while practicing a "weapons drawing drill" in her living room, drew her handgun and accidently fired off a round. The bullet went through her front door and into the back of her neighbor's car parked across the street.
Hudson was given a three-day suspension for failing to promptly report the October 2010 accident, which was called "especially troubling" since she is a firearms instructor.
Naked victim in dryer
Another deputy responded to a 911 call in April 2007 from neighbors who feared a woman had been harmed by her boyfriend.
Deputy Joseph L. Carson found the woman naked, unresponsive and stuffed into a clothes dryer. Assuming she was dead, Carson left her in the appliance for more than an hour. But when homicide investigators arrived, they detected a pulse and she was transported by ambulance to the hospital where she recovered. Carson was given a three-day suspension after admitting he did not take her pulse.
Two deputies were disciplined for failing to take action during a November 2007 call to the home of Katherine Bridges, who was deaf and mute. Bridges pleaded with officers to arrest her husband for sexually assaulting her, holding her at knife point, and hitting her on the forehead.
Deputy Robert Nesby called the prosecutor on duty and said he did not believe Bridges' allegations. He did not mention a weapon was involved, and the husband was allowed to leave. Her husband, Jeremias Fuentes, an illegal immigrant, stabbed Bridges to death two days later, the disciplinary records show.
Nesby was suspended for 10 days without pay by then-Sheriff Thomas.
Excessive force
Some deputies are abusive to residents, drink too much, get into fights and use excessive force on others.
Jessie Rodriguez, a Houston school district officer, is furious with the Sheriff's Office over a one-day suspension given to a deputy who he says broke his son's leg on New Year's Eve. Due to the injury, Joshua Rodriguez, 21, lost his job on an oil rig, and his father says he has paid thousands in medical and rehabilitation expenses.
Deputy Wilbert R. Mendez detained Joshua Rodriguez while the deputy was working an off-duty job at a club during a New Year's Eve celebration.
Mendez told internal affairs investigators he saw an intoxicated Joshua Rodriguez stumble and fall outside the club, and he asked him to sit on a bench while the deputy looked for the son's friends.
Joshua Rodriguez got up, wandered into the club's patio and threatened a bar employee, Mendez contends.
The deputy said he used a "leg sweep" to knock Rodriguez down and handcuff him, according to disciplinary reports.
However, when Mendez learned that Rodriguez's father was a police officer, he called Jessie Rodriguez's home and told him he would release his son to him, according to records. Mendez said he released the younger Rodriguez out of "professional courtesy."
'This dude is out there'
Jessie Rodriguez said he told Mendez if his son was intoxicated in public he should arrest him. The deputy then told him his son was hurt, and he needed to come get him.
When Jessie Rodriguez arrived his son had limped from the club and was at a cafe a block away.
"I found my son at Starbucks with a security guard who was taking more care of my son than a cop," said Rodriguez, who believes the officer kicked his son hard enough to break his leg.
"He didn't get punished for what he did, because I know what use of force is," Rodriguez said, adding he is most upset that the deputy remains in his job. "This dude is out there doing that to someone else."
