July 23--One Texas Department of Public Safety trooper forced a kiss on a stopped motorist. Another used his uniform to get a girlfriend released from jail. There was the trooper who took an inspection sticker off his patrol vehicle and stuck it on his personal car.
These were just among a handful of offenses that DPS cited for firing 37 employees since 2010 including patrolmen, investigators, analysts for everything from drunken driving to drug possession to watching porn online while on the job, according to recently obtained agency records.
Even a Texas Ranger, one of the most prestigious and highly vetted law enforcement positions in the state, was forced to turn in his badge last year after authorities arrested him on allegations domestic violence, DPS records show. The charge was brought against ranger Juan E. Lozano, who was stationed in McAllen when he was fired in January 2011. He could not be reached for comment.
"I can't comment on any of the specifics, but I can tell you in an agency as large as ours with 8,832 employees there are going to be some instances when people go out and use bad judgement," said Lt. Col. David Baker, the DPS deputy director for law enforcement. "But overall, I'm very proud of the work our men and women do out there."
The agency has fired a dozen troopers since 2010, including four from the Houston area, for various infractions including a pair of troopers who turned off the dashboard cameras in their cruisers as they made unwanted advances to women they stopped.
In one case, DPS supervisors apparently allowed trooper John Martinez to stay on the job until he made unwanted sexual comments to a West Texas police officer, the fourth woman who complained of harassment against Martinez going back to 2007, records show. Attempts to reach Martinez were not successful.
"It's a sad situation, that it even had to occur," said Chief Billy Myrick, of the nine-officer Eastland Police Department where the female officer worked. "We all (law enforcement) rely on each other across the state, but especially in a small place like this."
In May, DPS fired trooper Franklin Shanks, of Manvel, after investigators decided he used unwarranted force last November when he got into an argument with a business owner and forcibly restrained him.
"I feel like I was terminated unfairly, like I was picked on," said Shanks, who has appealed his dismissal to the Public Safety Commission.
Shanks said he briefly detained the owner of an auto repair shop who interfered with a traffic stop he made of three Houston gang members in the shop's driveway.
One trooper stationed in Amarillo was fired for associating with a sex offender, whom he later assaulted. Another trooper from San Antonio was fired last year for "rude and unprofessional conduct" when he demanded that South Texas police officers drop charges against his girlfriend.
Less than 1 percent
Baker said less than 1 percent of his troopers had complaints sustained against them in 2011. He said of the 365 complaints against all agency employees that year, 75 were sustained and 43 of those were committed by law officers, including 40 highway patrol officers.
"I was jumping up and down for joy when I looked at what our complaint ratio was. That's a stat that any chief, sheriff, or colonel or director would be proud of," Baker said.
Baker contrasted the misconduct with the successful work of 2,003 highway patrol officers last year, who together made 2.6 million traffic stops, filed 26,909 DWI charges and arrested 15,653 "high threat" criminals such as robbers, rapists and murders.
Earlier this year, the DPS inspector general urged the Public Safety Commission to hire more sergeants to increase the ratio of troopers they supervise. Stuart Platt, the inspector general, noted troopers generate the greatest number of complaints from the public, and that highway patrol sergeants are on call seven days a week and have very little time to mentor officers under their command. "Increasing the ratio of sergeants to commissioned troopers would have a fiscal cost, but so does the failure to mentor and manage law enforcement conduct," Platt wrote in the report.
However, Baker said the DPS supervisory ratio of one sergeant to every eight highway patrol troopers "is slightly lower than 25 states we surveyed on their span of supervision."
Jim Harrington, with the Texas Civil Rights Project in Austin, expressed doubts about what he considered a "shockingly low" number of disciplinary actions reported by the agency. The IG's office earlier this year provided statistics indicating 67 DPS employees had left the agency in 2010 and 2011, including 30 who were fired and 37 who either resigned or retired while under investigation. Another seven employees have been fired this year.
Call for transparency
"What is amazing to me is the small number. It raises the question about what's being sanitized or hidden from the IG," said Harrington, a longtime civil rights attorney. "When you have a police force that large you will have a lot of problems, that's the nature of the beast and that should be reflected in the number of disciplines. Until you get aggressive, outside transparency -- someone from the outside looking in -- you're not going to get effective discipline."
Five DPS employees who were disciplined worked in the driver's license bureau, including two from Houston, and were involved in some disturbing misconduct.
One of the Houston workers was fired in April 2011 for using the license database to give the confidential information of a license holder to a private individual. The license holder was later threatened. Another worker in Houston entered false scores on a driver's road test, issued a license to a woman who failed her test and then lied to superiors about it, the documents state.
DPS also fired clerk Kyle Pina in Liberty Hill in August 2010, after they found he had accessed the database and retrieved photographs of 175 young women, and had printed out their personal information. A message left at his residence was not returned.
The inspector general also warned the agency about misconduct in the driver's license bureau, noting the workers are among the lowest paid but "have an incredibly valuable item to dispense."
"The temptation to sell or improperly issue these valuable items is reflected in several of these driver license personnel being subject to serious sustained allegations and criminal charges," the IG report states. "It is a problem that driver license (division) has addressed with additional security auditing, but not a problem with an easy solution at current pay grades."
Copyright 2012 - Houston Chronicle
