Tag Archives: DPS

State news

On the border: more of the same

1 Comment

A young man I know who is a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper has just returned from another deployment on Texas’s southern border.

He said he noticed that “it’s all the same down there. The same ol’ same ol’.” Gov. Greg Abbott has been sending troopers to the border to assist US Border Patrol officers and local police in rounding up illegal immigrants.

“Nothing is going to change until after the election if Donald Trump wins,” my DPS friend told me. Then he said two things are bound to happen. Trump’s get-tough policies will return and “those who now are trying to get into this country won’t want to come here” if Trump is elected.

He said DPS then won’t need to go to the border to lend a hand.

Hmm. Interesting, I thought to myself. I should have said that Abbott won’t send DPS troopers to the border because he won’t want to stick it in Trump’s ear the way he does with President Biden. I didn’t tell him so.

I guess it doesn’t matter to many Texans that Biden did issue an executive order that shuts down the border when crossings exceed a certain amount. Does that constitute an “open border policy”?

Not even close.

State news

State troopers to look for vote fraud? Please …

Someone will have to prove to me that the incidents of “widespread voter fraud” justify the deployment of Texas Department of Public Safety troopers to polling places to look for incidents of fraud.

Oh, brother. The ham-handed approach to this issue is disturbing to the max.

The Texas Senate has endorsed a plan to deploy the troopers. Why? Because Republicans — who else? — believe the threat of voter fraud makes the presence of troopers a proper deterrent to mischief.

The bill passed along party lines — imagine that, eh? One Senate Democrat, Borris Miles of Houston, calls it “another attempt of voter intimidation and suppression in Harris County.”

The bill’s GOP sponsor, Sen. Paul Bettencourt, also of Houston, said, “All too often, violations of election code occur and they’re not addressed.” Baloney!

I keep circling back to the dubious notion that the incidents of vote fraud justify this heavy-handed approach to solving a problem that truthfully does not exist.

Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, said the bill is “like taking a sledgehammer to swat a fly.” Yeah … do ya think?

The proposed law would allow the Texas secretary of state to appoint “election marshals,” who then would deputize other officers employed by DPS, who then would be authorized to order local election officials to halt conduct they believe violates state election law.

There just is something bizarre about the prospect of armed uniformed state police troopers patrolling polling places looking for mischief where none is likely to occur.

Weird.

This is what we’re getting in this new age of Republican government activism.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Border security? Yes, but …

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick laid out a mainstream agenda for the Legislature to consider when it convenes in January, and I want to endorse the tone of the items Patrick presented.

Border security — along with property tax relief and strengthening the state’s electrical grid — is a solid agenda item for the state to tackle.

I want to offer an important caveat in backing Patrick’s border security push. I do not want him to demagogue the issue — as he has done already — by declaring that President Biden favors an “open border.” Joe Biden does not favor an open border and his policies since taking office illustrate the point.

The feds continue to detain immigrants every day. They send some of them back, they send others to holding areas for processing. Our southern border — and northern border, for that matter — is not an open border.

Does the state have a role to play? Of course it does! Gov. Greg Abbott has been sending Department of Public Safety troopers to the Valley to lend aid and support to Border Patrol officers and local police. The state needs to buttress its high-tech surveillance as well to catch undocumented migrants.

Let us not concentrate on building walls along our border, which given the presence of the Rio Grande River along our state’s entire southern border, presents the state with a nearly impossible goal of keeping all migrants from entering the United States.

I want to encourage the newly re-elected lieutenant governor to take the high road when discussing border security.

Demagoguery only makes your foes angry.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, State news

Yes! on money for training center

Mention the word “Uvalde” and you’re going to get a smorgasbord of responses. One of them should be what the Department of Public Safety is asking of the Texas Legislature.

DPS is seeking that it calls a $466 million “down payment” on a statewide training center aimed at refining law enforcement responses to situations such as what occurred earlier this year at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

The money hasn’t been officially requested as part of the DPS’s funding package. But it’s a must-spend, given what transpired in Uvalde.

You know the tragic story by now. Nineteen fourth graders and two teaches were slaughtered by a gunman. The response — or lack of response — by the Uvalde school district police force, DPS, county deputies and city police officers has been the subject of considerable discussion and debate in the months since the tragedy.

The Texas Tribune reports: The Texas Department of Public Safety wants $1.2 billion to turn its training center north of Austin into a full-time statewide law enforcement academy — starting with a state-of-the-art active-shooter facility that would need a nearly half-billion-dollar investment from Texas taxpayers next year.

“You play like you practice,” DPS Director Steve McCraw told budget officials last month. “You need to practice in a real environment.”

DPS operates a training center in Williamson. The “down payment” request seeks to provide a dramatic upgrade to the DPS effort to prepare its troopers for future situations such as what occurred at Robb Elementary School. Make no mistake: there will be another explosion of violence.

As the Tribune reports: A “state-of-the-art” active-shooter facility would be built with the first round of funding next year and could be used “right off the bat,” independent of the rest of the proposed upgrades, to immediately enhance active-shooter response by Texas law enforcement, McCraw said in a brief presentation before the Texas Legislative Budget Board on Oct. 4.

If fully funded over the next three budget cycles, the training academy would cost $1.2 billion and eventually include dormitories, a cafeteria and other elements, McCraw said.

Texas DPS wants $1.2 billion for academy, active-shooter facility | The Texas Tribune

I want to offer a hearty and heartfelt endorsement of what DPS is seeking from our Legislature. They are going to report for duty in January with a substantial surplus of funds. Here is a wise way to spend some of it … to help law enforcement protect our children from future madness.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, local news, State news

‘Uvalde’ takes on added weight

Forgive me if I am overstating what appears to be occurring, but it seems to me that the very name “Uvalde” is taking on a significance given to few communities struck by the kind of tragedy that befell that small South Texas town.

It’s as if the very name of the town is becoming a rallying cry, kind of like “Remember the Alamo!” has become part of Texas lore. The Uvalde reference, though, reaches far beyond the state borders. It touches the entire nation, if not the world.

Uvalde no longer is just Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey’s hometown, which very well could have been enough to sustain it during another era.

It was the place where a madman opened fire in an elementary school and slaughtered 19 precious children and two teachers who fought to protect them. It was the place where combined law enforcement, in the words of Texas Department of Public Safety director Stephen McCraw, delivered an “abject failure” to protect those innocent victims.

Uvalde has become the symbol of the call for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special legislative session to enact laws that make it just a little bit tougher for individuals to purchase the kind of weapon the shooter used at Robb Elementary School.

And Uvalde has become the catalyst for school systems throughout the state and the nation to rethink their security protocols and to do whatever it takes to protect the lives of the children and those who are assigned to care for and to teach them.

I fear for the community’s sake that whenever any of its 15,000 residents travel and someone asks them, “Where are you from?” that they’ll receive a sad, but perhaps heartwarming response from those who pose the question.

The love that might come back to Uvalde is worth retaining. The sadness? At some level I hope it dissipates … but that it doesn’t disappear completely.

Society needs reminders, I regret to say, of the tragedy that can erupt in any community within this great country.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, local news, State news

Police chief just can’t stay

They were supposed to meet today in Uvalde, Texas, to decide whether to fire an embattled chief of police. The chief’s lawyer asked for a delay on “due process” concerns.

No one yet knows when the Uvalde public school board will meet to consider the fate of its police chief, Pete Arredondo.

I’ll just weigh in now with what I believe is patently obvious.

Arredondo did not do his job when a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in May, killing19 fourth graders and two teachers who sought to save them from the slaughter.

The chief choked. He didn’t know he was in charge. Actually, in my view, he should have seized command and ordered an assault on the gunman.

The community is grieving. When it is isn’t crying, it is full of rage. At the chief. At many of the officers under his command. At city cops. At Department of Public Safety officers and at the U.S. Border Patrol. All told, 376 officers responded to the carnage. They waited 77 interminable minutes before killing the gunman.

Arredondo — who has been place on unpaid administrative leave — has been at the center of the community’s grief and anger. From my perspective, there can be no way in the world he stays on the job. What’s more, I happen to believe his career as a law enforcement officer is over as well.

Uvalde school board postpones meeting to discuss Chief Pete Arredondo’s fate | The Texas Tribune

This man will be scarred for the rest of his life by the tragedy that unfolded in Uvalde. Talk about being a “distraction.”

When the school board finishes processing its “due process,” its task is clear. Fire the chief and look for a new school district top cop who will pledge to take command in a future emergency.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Uvalde’s loved ones need answers

Uvalde’s community of teachers, students and their loved ones and friends are demanding answers from the police who so far are acting as if they have many things to hide.

This is a travesty that needs instant repair.

The gunman who walked into Robb Elementary School and killed 21 children and teachers did so with apparent ease. Why in the name of truth and justice aren’t the cops telling us the whole truth about what wend down a month ago in that tightly knit South Texas community?

The Uvalde school district chief of police Pete Arredondo is on administrative leave. From where I sit, he needs to be fired. Department of Public Safety director Stephen McCraw is only a little more forthcoming, but he, too, is holding back. The Uvalde Police Department also has a dog in this fight, but where are UPD’s statements of clarification?

This outrage has gone on long enough!

The community is grieving. So is the rest of the state and the nation. We are getting some legislative help in the form of congressional action aimed at stemming the violence. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

I want to offer a snippet from the Dallas Morning News editorial that states: The families of the victims and every Texan deserve better from law enforcement agencies and politicians whose prime responsibility is to serve the public interest, not their own. The common public interest must be to determine how and why so many died when faster action in line with nationally accepted active shooter protocols would have saved lives.

Uvalde was an ‘abject failure,’ but there’s more to the story (dallasnews.com)

The cops sign on to “protect and serve.” They offered little protection for those 19 children and the two teachers who died in that massacre. They are derelict in their service to the state that is demanding answers to what created what has been called “an abject failure.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Top cop needs to start casting about

Pete Arredondo is now on what they call “administrative leave” as a result of the many questions and criticism surrounding his response to the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

If I were Arredondo, I would start looking for a new job and it had better not have a thing to do with law enforcement, which is what he does at this moment as chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department.

You see, Arredondo’s “abject failure” in commanding the response to the shooting at the school is why he is on leave. For my money, I cannot believe the Uvalde ISD board of trustees is going to keep him on the job. For that matter, the school superintendent needs to start drafting the letter terminating the chief from his job.

It’s been several weeks now since the gunman strolled into Robb Elementary and killed 19 precious fourth-graders and two educators who died trying to protect them. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott initially praised the cops’ response to the shooting before declaring he was “livid” over being “misled” about the response.

Now comes reporting about the police being able to have responded much more quickly than they did. Who was in charge of the police response? Chief Arredondo! He choked. He didn’t send in the tactical officers even after they reportedly had the equipment they needed to take the shooter out.

Arredondo has clammed up. He has refused to speak publicly. Indeed, the Department of Public Safety hasn’t exactly acted in the public interest, either.

Parents and loved ones of the victims are crying out for answers. They deserve them.

Pete Arredondo needs to be shown the door and told to do something other than police work for the rest of his life.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

We need answers! Now!

1 Comment

So help me, I could not believe my eyes when I read that the Uvalde police officials at the center of an investigation into what happened in that South Texas community a few days ago had stopped cooperating with state and federal authorities.

Specifically, the stonewalling appears to be occurring within the ranks of the Uvalde Independent School District police department and its chief, Pete Arredondo, who reportedly has gone missing for the past several days.

Meanwhile, rumors and gossip are flying all over the place about what went so terribly wrong with the police response as the lunatic shooter opened fire in a Robb Elementary School classroom, killing 19 precious children and two of their teachers.

A grief-stricken community is demanding answers from the chief. It wants to know why he waited so horribly long to “neutralize” the shooter. It seeks to know whether the department was on site with resource officers. Now come questions about a door that was closed, but not locked.

There appears to be a boatload of deception going on about the response. The U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation. The Department of Public Safety and its investigative arm, the Texas Rangers, are on the case, too.

Meanwhile, we have a Uvalde ISD chief of police who’s hiding in the weeds. Come out from your hiding place, Chief Arredondo, and talk to the community you took an oath to protect and serve.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Abbott is ‘livid’ over misinformation

“As everybody has learned, the information that I was given turned out, in part, to be inaccurate, and I am absolutely livid about that.”

That was Texas Gov. Greg Abbott today responding to reports that the police in charge of the response to the shooting rampage that left 19 children and two teachers dead at a Uvalde elementary school had lied to him.

Is it fair to call it a lie? I believe so. A lie is the deliberate and purposeful telling of a falsehood. A shooter entered Robb Elementary School on Tuesday and opened fire with an AR-15 rifle.

The cops told the governor that they responded so slowly because they believed the shooting had stopped. It hadn’t. Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw now admits to the mistake in delaying the DPS response. What he hasn’t yet copped to, though, is why he told Abbott a tale that prompted the governor to praise law enforcement’s efforts initially.

Some heads need to roll.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com