Coastal Bend Peace Officers Association

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Hosted by the San Patricio County Sheriffs’ Office

  Time:   Registration 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. Serving at 7:00 p.m.

  Place:   San Patricio County Fairgrounds, 219 W 5th Street, Sinton, TX

Meal $10.00 per person

If you would like to be served you

Must RSVP 

RSVP by texting Lt. Adrian Rodriguez at 361-290-1803 or emailing him at Adrian.rodriguez@co.san-patricio.tx.us

 no later than noon on Tuesday, October 22, 2019.

New Member Fee:  $8.00  

Returning Member Fee:  $5.00

There are many truly inspiring police leaders, but there are a few who with their words become soul-crushing empty uniforms with rank.

Here are 12 examples of enthusiasm-bleeding statements made too often by “leaders.”

1. While pointing at their stripes on their sleeve, or bars on their collar they declare, “Because these say so.”

Have you ever suggested an alternative way to handle a call and had a commander point at their stripes or bars and say, “We’ll do it my way because these say so?”

End of discussion.

2. “We’ve always done it this way.”

There are times when officers come forward with a plan to solve a reoccurring problem in an innovative way and their suggestion is met with, “Why change the status quo? We have always done it this way.”

End of suggestions. The next three go together.

3. “Slow down. There is no extra pay for making the most arrests.”

4. “Big arrests, big problems, little arrests, little problems, no arrest, no problem.”

5. “If you keep that up (referring to a high volume of self-initiated activity), they are going to expect that of you every night.”

These three statements have been heard by most proactive police officers who love what they are doing and are extremely active on the street. Some supervisors look at very active officers as a problem rather than a solution and feel it’s their mission to slow them down. The sad thing is, these statements often come from peers as well.

6. “The job will never love you back.”

If any officer lets it slip that they love their job, there will be that wise old supervisor, who will point out, “The job will never love you back.”

Mic drop!

7. "Did you make that arrest 15 minutes before quitting time just for the overtime?"

Many officers never lose sight of their duty. For example, they realize that arresting an impaired driver saves lives. 

No officer motivated to aggressively pursue an impaired driver will hesitate to arrest said driver 15 minutes before quitting time. These officers eventually run into a commander who will suggest their motivation for the arrest was to “pad their check with overtime.”

8. “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Even though every leadership course in the nation says, “Don’t say this; lead by example,” there seems to be no silencing this refrain.

9. “If I’d have been there, I would have….”

Nothing irks a street officer more than when this statement is made by a commander who has maneuvered into a position where they will never have to handle a life-threatening call again. The statement is made worse when this commander does not even supervise the officers who handled the high-profile, life-threatening situation that he or she is criticizing. These personally boastful statements serve only to give officers that hear them a sense no one has their back.

When the actions of the officers are found to be justified, this unnecessary Monday morning quarterbacking will get back to the officers involved in the critical incident and it becomes a source of pain.

10. “You’re not a social worker!”

There are times in every officer’s career when they are moved to go above and beyond for a little boy, a little girl or even an entire family in need. They are motivated by the caring spirit that brought them to this profession.

An officer may take a Christmas tree to a house. They may buy a pair of shoes for a homeless man or drop off a couple of chili dogs to a down-and-out traveler. Most will see the extra effort as laudatory, but there will be that one commander who will proclaim, “You’re not a social worker!”

The truth is police officers are the only social workers who make house calls 24-7. Most of you are pretty damn good at it also, so keep up the good work!

11. “You can’t make a difference. When a cop leaves this job it’s like pulling your hand out of a bucket of water. No one will even notice you were here.”

Really? A cop can’t make a difference?

What about the officers who have dragged people out of burning cars?

What about the officers who have saved lives with Narcan and tourniquets, or delivered babies?

What about the officers who keep many women from being beaten or killed at domestics every night of the week?

What about the Dayton officers who dropped an active shooter just as he was about to enter a crowded night club?

American police officers do make a difference!

12. “Have you scheduled the lobotomy yet?”

Street officers can demoralize a new supervisor as well by asking in response to the announcement of their promotion, “Have they scheduled the lobotomy yet?” This can be especially troubling when the comment comes from a good friend.

Instead, consider saying, “Congratulations my friend. You earned it.”

CONCLUSION

The people who say these things are not being leaders. They are choosing to be bleeders. They bleed the enthusiasm out of the officers they are supposed to lead.

To supervisors who say these things, learn to be better. 

To officers who these things are said to remember to not let anyone keep you from doing what you love and loving what you do. When you hear statements like these just remind yourself not all supervisors are leaders and not all leaders are supervisors.

And then, regardless of your rank, be a leader.

President Donald Trump will appoint Victoria County Sheriff T. Michael O'Connor as United States marshal for the Southern District of Texas, according to a White House news release Friday.

O'Connor, a Republican, has served as Victoria County sheriff since 2005.

Previously, he filled various law enforcement positions in sheriff's offices for Refugio, Goliad and Victoria counties.

He also taught a class on law enforcement professionalism and ethics at Victoria College's Law Enforcement Academy from 2002 to 2004.

O'Connor has served as president of the South Texas Coastal Sheriff's Alliance, which includes 23 counties along the Coastal Bend, as a former President of the Coastal Bend Peace Officers Association, and  board chair of the Law Enforcement Alliance Project.

He earned a bachelor's degree from Texas A&M University, where he was also a former vice chairman of the university's board of regents.

In 2007, Gov. Rick Perry appointed him to the Texas Border Security Council, which creates performance standards, reporting requirements, audit methods and other procedures for the Homeland Security Fund.

This is a developing story and additional comments and details will be added as they come available.

Jon Wilcox reports on courts for the Victoria Advocate. He may be reached jwilcox@vicad.com or 361-580-6515.

NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) – Porch pirates beware, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed House Bill 37 into law, making it a felony to steal mail and packages from someone’s property.

Now anyone convicted of package theft will face anywhere from 6 months to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $10,000. The severity of the punishment depends on how many times a theft was committed and the value of the stolen item/items.

Currently in Texas package theft is prosecuted similar to shoplifting, with a Class C Misdemeanor ticket or a Class B Misdemeanor charge.

Under the new law if a thief steals from less than 10 people they will face a state felony charge; steal from between 20 and 50 people it’s a second-degree felony; and people accused of stealing from more than 50 people will face first-degree felony charges.

The incidents of package theft have risen as more people do their shopping online and opt for home delivery. A survey estimated that more than 25 million Americans had a package stolen from their home during the 2018 holiday season.

State Representative Gene Wu of Houston authored the bill that goes into effect on September 1.

Vehicle pursuits, drug trafficking, and dead bodies cast out by human smugglers are common occurrences in Refugio County

BY CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSONDecember 17, 2018 Updated: December 17, 2018

REFUGIO, Texas—An illegal alien must travel through at least five counties beyond the U.S.–Mexico border to reach Refugio, Texas, population around 7,300.

Most illegal aliens nabbed by local law enforcement were on their way to Houston, just 165 miles northeast, said Sheriff Raul “Pinky” Gonzales.

“Houston is like a staging area for them. And from there, some of them go to California, some go to New York, a lot of them go up north to Boston,” he said in an interview on Nov. 8. Vehicle pursuits are a common occurrence in Refugio County, which is just one of 254 counties in the state.

Just that morning, two different groups of illegal aliens were captured. In one instance, a vigilant driver saw a hand sticking out of the bed of a pickup truck and called authorities.

Nine illegal aliens and the smuggler, or “coyote,” were subsequently arrested.

In a second incident on the same morning, a vehicle pursuit from a neighboring county entered Refugio. The chase ended when the vehicle, carrying nine illegal aliens and their coyote, stopped and all 10 tried to flee on foot. Law enforcement scooped them all up.

Gonzales said he also has found the bodies of illegal immigrants dumped by smugglers.

“They put them in trunks in cars, they put them in trucks—where the temperature gets to 130, 120 something degrees—no water, no food, no air. And they die. And they’ll just throw them out on the side of the road,” he said.

On patrol, Sheriff’s Deputy Luis Flores aims for making two vehicle stops per hour—24 in a shift.

With 276 possible traffic violations in Texas, he has a lot to work with. Over several hours, he stopped vehicles that didn’t have a license plate light, or were missing a tail light, or whose plates were partially obscured, as well as drivers who were speeding, and more.

“I look for small violations, which gives probable cause for stopping,” he said. “I have a conversation—see where they’re going and what they’re up to. I look for cues and indications of other activity.”

But his goal isn’t to hand out tickets—most of the time, drivers get a simple warning or citation. The goal is to find the bigger crime—drugs, illegal aliens, warrants out for arrest, and so on.

“I love picking apart people’s stories,” Flores said. He listens for too much or too little detail in their explanations. Flores is ex-military and has spent two years as a deputy in Refugio. One of his most satisfying finds was during a traffic stop of an elderly women driving an old Nissan.

“I felt very victorious when we found $500,000 hidden in her bumper,” he said. “Money is super hard to find—it doesn’t have an odor and it’s easy to hide.”

The deputies patrol alone, but there are usually at least two vehicles out, as well as the local police officer. They back each other up constantly.

Flores said he calls for backup at the first sign of trouble, “ever since a group of aliens that I stopped told me that if my backup didn’t arrive so quickly, they would’ve got in a gun fight with me,” he said.

What the deputies do in Refugio might seem like small potatoes, but considering three of the 19 terrorists involved in 9/11 were pulled over in four separate incidents in the months prior to the terror attacks, a traffic stop could turn into something significant.

Gonzales said that if he wanted to, he could probably round up hundreds of illegal immigrants living in his county, but as a law enforcement officer, he concentrates on illegal activity.

“I don’t care if you come from Mars, if you’re committing a crime here in my state or my county, I’m going to tend to you accordingly,” he said.

On Nov. 8, local Refugio City police officer Tammy Gregory picked up a man for going 50 miles per hour in a 35 zone.

She discovered the man, Jose Carrasco Leon, was from Mexico. He didn’t have a U.S. driver’s license, but had lived in the United States for 16 years and was married to a U.S. citizen.

Gregory said it’s likely the man had not legalized his status, because Border Patrol contacted her to request custody of him once the police had finished processing him.

Gonzales said drug trafficking was common in his county. “We catch a lot of illegals with drugs,” he said. “We caught the cartel No. 2 drug runner here in my county. He was on a train smuggling drugs.”

In May last year, deputies seized 500 pounds of marijuana and a cartel member, after railroad officials noticed three people traveling on a Southern Pacific freight train that had originated at the border.

“They loaded up in Brownsville, heading to Houston. How much of that goes on and how much do we miss?” Gonzales said.

Recently, the sheriff had to deal with the slaying of two of his dogs by illegal aliens trying to evade law enforcement.

The two tracking dogs were trained to find lost children or Alzheimer’s patients, and they would bark once they located the person.

But this time, when the dogs found the group of illegal aliens in the brush and barked to alert the deputies where they were, they were killed.

“They strangled two of our dogs for no reason. These guys that killed these dogs, they could have very well killed one of my deputies or any other law enforcement,” Gonzales said.

“And these are the type of illegals that we deal with. … Not all of them come here in good faith. A lot of them come here to do wrong, get in gangs, and get involved with sex trafficking—they’re not all good.”

Gonzales is all too familiar with illegal activity on the southwest border. Before coming to Refugio County, he spent years as a boat captain on the Rio Grande in Texas—the dividing line between the United States and Mexico.

“We picked up bodies. Like in a week, we’d pick up to 10 bodies,” he said. “A lot of times we’d see kids that had drowned, trying to swim across by themselves. The parents are the ones that sent them by themselves.”

He said he helped a lot of teenage girls and would ask them how they got across, and why they were there without parents.

He was often told, ‘Well, our parents told us to come here.’”

“And they’d tell me horror stories about what they had to go through to come here. They were raped, they were vandalized, a lot of them. They’re used as sex slaves. [The smugglers] bring them across and use them as sex slaves here in the United States,” Gonzales said.

“So a lot of time, these people are victimizing their own people for revenue, for money, and that’s what people don’t understand.”

Gonzales said he would often stop at the grocery store before a shift to buy extra drinks and food for the illegal aliens he would undoubtedly encounter.

“I feel very sorry” for them, he said. “They’re human beings, you know. We’re supposed to love them. But we as law enforcement, we took an oath that we would abide by the law and protect and serve our people.”

He said it’s very hard to do that when you can’t track people who cross illegally and evade law enforcement.

“You know once they blend in with the population, they’re gone,” he said. “They can commit serious crimes, [then] they can just pack up and go back home and we’ll never find them.”

Gonzales said 80 to 90 percent of the illegal aliens he picked up on the river were not from Mexico.

“They were from El Salvador, Honduras, from India, China—we’d catch a lot of Chinese—people from all over the world,” he said. Many said they traveled by boat to Brazil, where they met a smuggler who escorted them through Mexico and to the United States.

“Some people are here to better their lives—and it doesn’t make it right—but not all of them,” he said.

Gonzales said he has caught a lot of gang members, especially MS-13, as well as criminals who had been deported. In one case, two men who had been deported after serving prison sentences were back a week later, illegally, with a group of Hondurans.

“These Hondurans weren’t the type of guys that came to look for work. They were tattooed up, you know. One of them didn’t have an ear, they were just scar-faced. I mean, you could tell they weren’t good hombres,” he said.

Gonzales said he is glad President Donald Trump has enhanced border security and sent active-duty military to help stop illegal crossings.

“We can’t [have] this group of people come and invade our country. This caravan, the majority of them are males—flying their flag,” he said. “To me, that’s intimidating.”

He said he thinks many of the politicians who often side with illegal immigrants are looking for future votes.

“The difference between these [illegal] immigrants coming in now, they’re trying to bring their country into our country,” he said. “We are the United States of America, and I think this oughta be a Christian country the way our forefathers perceived it to be.”

However, Gonzales said the illegal immigrants he catches aren’t as confident as they were during the Obama era.

“When Obama was in office, these illegal immigrants were very cocky with us. They went on about ‘the Dream Act, Obama, the Dream Act,’” he said.

“They were very cocky. Like, ‘hey, we’ve got our rights and we’re going to become citizens because of the Dream Act Obama’s introducing.’”

Gonzales said most Americans don’t understand what law enforcement deals with as far as illegal alien crime.

“It’s very, very hard to do our job,” he said. “We already have thugs that are citizens here, we already have bad people—we don’t need any more.”

“As a sheriff, as a leader in law enforcement, I’m very concerned about my people’s safety. I’d feel horrible if somebody got injured, seriously injured, or killed, because [of]—I don’t care if they’re illegal or not, but especially—an illegal person. They shouldn’t have been here to begin with.”

The sheriff provided a snapshot of what it takes for law enforcement to deal with one vehicle pursuit of an illegal alien.

“It costs a lot of taxpayers’ money chasing these people, [it] costs a lot of man hours. When a county deputy or a DPS state trooper gets on the chase, you get all different law enforcement agencies involved in the chase—you know, we’re trying to back each other up. There could be 12 officers for one chase, for four or five hours. A lot of times, they’ll wreck their vehicles, damage their vehicles,” he said.

“It’s a burden to us, it’s a burden to the people of the United States.”

Follow Charlotte on Twitter: @charlottecuthbo