Troubled police officers discovered as police departments merge

During an interview to become an Austin Park Police officer, Ralph Garcia talked about being fired from the Bastrop Police Department for viewing adult Web sites on a city computer, including possible child pornography sites, according to records in his personnel file.

Park Police officials looked into the matter, which had resulted in an investigation by the Texas attorney general's office but no criminal charges against Garcia. Then they hired him.

A few years later, Park Police officials hired Roger Aguilar, who had quit the Austin Police Department while under investigation for using his Taser stun gun on a handcuffed suspect.

And they hired Armando Valverde, whose personnel file at the Lockhart Police Department had several disciplinary actions, including one for accidentally shooting through the floor of police headquarters.

An Austin American-Statesman review of the 27 Park Police officers who joined the department during the past five years shows that the city has hired officers with problematic backgrounds and that a check of those backgrounds was sometimes inadequate. Tyra Hearns the president of background investigation firm Pebi Services finds these lapses in background investigations frightfully appalling. "The public trust is the core to all law enforcement endeavors and this creates a very untrustable situation." says Hearns

New supervisors overseeing Park Police officers acknowledge the lapses, but they said they have worked in recent months to create a more rigorous hiring process that includes comprehensive background investigations.

How Park Police officers have performed since going to work for the city and their records from other agencies are expected to face scrutiny in coming months as officials begin consolidating city marshals and park and airport police officers with the Austin Police Department.

The American-Statesman's review, which included hundreds of pages of personnel files from previous employers and background information collected by Park Police officials before offering jobs, found that:

The city has hired officers who have been arrested in connection with assault, theft and failure to pay speeding tickets. Much of that information was discovered as part of background investigations, but the city hired them anyway, sometimes after background investigators discouraged it.

Until late 2005, officials had no standard for doing background investigations for prospective park officers. Bruce Mills, the director of the Public Safety and Emergency Management agency, took over the Park Police that year from the Parks and Recreation Department. He said the agency previously had assigned the task to other officers, most of whom had no training or experience doing such checks. An experienced background investigator who works for the agency now performs the reviews.

The Parks and Recreation Department until 2005 had a 10-year pattern of hiring officers as temporary employees and not providing them insurance or other benefits, in an effort to cut costs. Sgt. Michael Hart, president of the union that represents Park Police officers, said the policy probably affected the pool of prospective officers.

Ten officers have an arrest history or some type of disciplinary action against them.

City officials have said they will negotiate with the Austin Police Association this year to determine what criteria park officers must meet before becoming Austin police officers. Some Park Police officers could lose their jobs.

"We are going to do some hard looking, and there is a lot of explaining they are going to have to do," said association President George Vanderhule,who will be negotiating for the union. "We want to make sure we get people who will meet our standards."

Two years ago, city officials combined city marshals and airport and park officers to create the Public Safety and Emergency Management agency and appointed new leadership to supervise it.

Since then, Mills and other officials said they have developed a selection process similar to the Austin Police Department's. They ask applicants to respond in writing to questions, including whether they have ever been arrested or convicted, whether they have ever been cited for certain driving offenses and whether they have resigned or been terminated from a job.

Under those guidelines, officials acknowledge that some of the current officers would not be hired.

However, since the new standards were put in place, the city has hired officers with questionable work histories, including Valverde.

Officials defend their decisions in those cases, saying that they considered candidates' entire work history, including commendations and positive performance reviews.

"The downside to someone who has 10 to 12 years of experience is that they are going to have histories," Mills said. "It's a judgment call. The best you can do is take the collective information and base your decision on their track record."

Cost-saving might have been factor

In Texas, officers can jump from one agency to the next, carrying baggage that can include anything from excessive tardiness to negligent car crashes, without generally drawing interest from the state agency that licenses them.

Only if officers are arrested or indicted are they required to notify the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education.

The agency and state law, in an effort to stop officers accused of misconduct from easily getting other jobs, require all departments supervising peace officers to submit documentation when officers leave explaining the reason for their departure, including whether they quit while under investigation.

But commission officials keep no record of excessive disciplinary histories, said Executive Director Tim Braaten. That means it's up to local agencies to research prospective officers.

Other factors, in addition to inconsistent background checks, could have led to the hiring of officers with questionable histories, Mills said.

As a cost-saving measure, he said, Park Police sought to hire people from other police departments, which probably limited the applicant pool. Other city law enforcement agencies, including Austin police and airport police, tended to recruit people with experience in civilian jobs and then pay for them to attend an academy.

Warren Struss, who started work as Parks and Recreation Department director in 2004 and retired in 2007, could not be reached for comment. Darryl Lewis, who was Park Police chief from 2002 to 2006, did not return calls seeking comment.

Assistant City Manager Mike McDonald, who supervised the Parks and Recreation Department from February 2002 to July 2006, said high-ranking city officials would not have been involved in how background searches were conducted. Those decisions were left to the department director and human resources officials.

Mills said he thought it was likely that when he took over the agency, some officers had extensive discipline histories at previous departments.

He said he and other officials began looking through the documents after receiving the Statesman's requests last year.

What they found in some instances "has caused concern," Mills said, and perhaps pointed up a need for additional supervision of those officers.

No more pornography found

Among the 27 officers hired in the past five years, Garcia was among those whose history troubled officials the most.

This month, after the Statesman requested his background file, Mills and other officials questioned Garcia about the investigation by the attorney general's office and his subsequent firing. Mills said they also checked his computer use but found nothing suspicious.

According to a report from the attorney general's office, Bastrop Police Chief David Board called the office in October 2002 seeking help looking into whether Garcia had accessed child pornography on the city computer.

Investigators used a computer program to view images on the computer and found more than 1,300 possible pornographic images, 277 of which could have been child pornography, according to the report. At the time, they could not tell whether the images had been downloaded onto the computer.

Several days later, investigators wrote in a report that they had found no "actionable child pornography images" on the hard drive.

They referred the case to the Bastrop County district attorney's office and closed their investigation.

Garcia declined to be interviewed recently. He has had no disciplinary actions against him since becoming a Park Police officer in April 2004.

At the time, he asked Bastrop city officials in writing to give him his job back.

"I'm sorry all this happened," he said. "I am glad that I was caught early before it got out of hand. I can tell you it won't happen again."

Two years later, in Aguilar's case, he told Park Police officials that he had correctly used his Taser on a suspect who was "high on drugs." He said he handcuffed the man, but the man continued to resist after he got him to his patrol car. Aguilar said he used his Taser again, in violation of department policy.

He said he decided to resign instead of appealing a possible firing.

Michael Hart, the Park Police union president who performed the background investigation, wrote that Aguilar "falls into the disqualifiers portion of the Park Police eligibility requirements" but recommended that he get a waiver from former Chief Darryl Lewis to proceed to an oral exam.

Aguilar, who declined to comment, was the subject of an internal affairs investigation after becoming a Park Police officer for a use of his Taser. However, officials said he was justified in the July incident because the suspect was resisting arrest.

According to documents from the Luling Police Department, Valverde was fired in 1998 after he had a witness sign a blank statement that the officer later filled out. Valverde also signed the document as a witness to the statement.

An interim city manager rescinded the firing, saying the punishment was "much too severe" and Valverde's error was a "major administrative mistake" but not a crime.

Valverde quit the next year to join the Lockhart Police Department.

His personnel file from Lockhart included disciplinary actions such as a 2006 reprimand for twice leaving evidence unsecured — one from a case involving a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

In 2004, he was reprimanded for not taking corrective steps concerning an officer who repeatedly left her duty belt at home and had to return to get it.

An August 2001 disciplinary memo about the incident in which he shot a hole in the floor of police headquarters said Valverde was running late to work and was trying to see if his gun was loaded. His supervisor found that the discharge was avoidable and that he didn't adequately check the gun to see if it was loaded before firing it.

Valverde declined to comment. He has not been the subject of any discipline or internal investigations since joining the Park Police.

Negotiations to start soon

City and Austin police union officials said they plan to begin discussing at the bargaining table in coming months which Park Police officers should — and shouldn't — join the Austin Police Department.

Negotiations for a new employment contract are set to begin later this year. The current contract will expire in September.

McDonald, who will lead the city's negotiating team, said he will soon begin meeting with human resources officials to get input on possible hiring standards for Park Police officers.

Each will probably face an extensive background check, he said.

Vanderhule, president of the police union, said he would probably support rules prohibiting officers from joining the department if they have been fired from the Austin Police Department or if they resigned while under investigation.

He said he also would support a rule that would not allow an officer with a history of lying to be hired.

"We want to bring people who are going to be good Austin police officers," he said. "That's the bottom line."