More Hickman Hot Water
I am told by my sources that deputy Bible has filed a Federal racketeering complaint against Ron Hickman and some of his command staff. The complaint concerns a scheme in which neighborhoods are charged for a full shift of patrol as part of their constable contracts, but instead of delivering a fill shift of patrol, the patrols are split between two or more adjoining neighborhoods. Therefore Hickman and his staff have conspired to shortchange neighborhoods that have contracted for deputy patrols. This complaint also gives Deputy Bible federal whistleblower protections from retribution arising from his involvement with the Sharon Grady case.
I have always found this practice of contracting with the constable's office for patrols, a bit ethically murky. It feels a bit like a protection racket. Either you pay for extra patrols, or they might not get around to responding to your calls for help. The Constable's office is not under obligation to respond to calls, they can refuse to and often do. The Sheriff's office MUST respond if the constable will not. Because of Hickman's refusal to communicate with the Sheriff's department on any level, often both a constable AND a sheriff's deputy responds to a call. This is inefficient and a waste of resources.
I have always found this practice of contracting with the constable's office for patrols, a bit ethically murky. It feels a bit like a protection racket. Either you pay for extra patrols, or they might not get around to responding to your calls for help. The Constable's office is not under obligation to respond to calls, they can refuse to and often do. The Sheriff's office MUST respond if the constable will not. Because of Hickman's refusal to communicate with the Sheriff's department on any level, often both a constable AND a sheriff's deputy responds to a call. This is inefficient and a waste of resources.
posted by Rorschach at
2/21/2008 10:11:00 PM
14 Comments:
When a subdivision has asked for an audit, records and time sheets, because we just flat had not seen much of any visible presence of a patrol car in weeks, we were told that that information is "confidential" law enforcement information and to divulge it to the public would just give the criminal element an advantage.
"Precisely" the criminal element of the constable's office was the one to be protected so that they could continue their little game of extortion with little chance of any alternative. We were told that the Deputy assigned was doing paperwork of processing criminals, court time etc.; but one would not think that we would be paying for the arrest processing once someone crossed the line.
Are we next going to be billed for the jail space, court time, prosecutor and prison space just because the criminal element was caught here in our neighborhood?
Like where do we draw the line? I am already paying $2,000 a year in the county tax that is supporting the Constable's office anyway, so should I be getting a refund when the criminal element is caught some place else, and should then they be billed for the arrest, prosecution and court, prison costs, pro-rata?
I've noticed that patrol around my neighborhood has picked up some, or maybe I've just been more cognizant of their presence. However, this could have something to do with the recent vandalism of a few hundred vehicles a week or so back. A car load of punks who are students at Spring High skipped classes to shoot out car windows with pellet guns (even while people were DRIVING their automobiles). Thankfully a couple of those drivers followed the miscreants and they were apprehended by Precinct 4 constables.
I have my own issues with Hickman's goons, but not all of them are without merit.
I will be voting in the primaries, but not for Hickman!!!!
Constables were an often ignored civil paper servers that seldom were seen except to serve papers. In the recent 2-3 decades they have been used to fill in where city patrols were non existent and where Sheriff patrols just could or did not cover.
The sort of grew into their prominence and wealth now, yet with laws and controls that were written 60-80 years ago.... time for a review and Civil Service...
Lets see here. There is some false information here. First of all Deputy Bible that you speak of is a cancer that has bounced from department to department for years. Also anyone who knows the truth knows that Pct 4 responds to all calls the are recieved directly! The only calls that are sent back are calls for service that are sent to us by the S.O. that they are trying to get us to run that are not in our contract area. The only other kind we send back are calls that are in HCSO contracts. All other calls that we recieve directly we run period end of discussion! This includes the thousands of district alls we run. That has been the motto at Pct 4 for years. They call and we come. Any other take on that subject is just plain wrong and uninformed.
False information eh? Let us fisk shall we?
As to your assertion that Bible is a "cancer". I would suggest that a constable that authorizes the destruction of evidence is the cancer. If Bible was such a bad seed, why was he hired in the first place? He did not choose to respond to the Grady house, he was dispatched there. I would argue that a man with enough principle to go against his own command structure to try to do what is right should be rewarded, not derided.
Secondly, you admit that the constable's office picks and chooses which calls they run based on where they have contracts. So in other words, if I am robbed in a parking lot of a store that does not have a contract with the constable's office, I'm just shit out of luck right? Why in hell am I paying taxes if you can't be bothered to respond?
Third, how does my statements of the facts and your admission of the facts differ? I stated:
"Either you pay for extra patrols, or they might not get around to responding to your calls for help. The Constable's office is not under obligation to respond to calls, they can refuse to and often do. The Sheriff's office MUST respond if the constable will not."
You stated:
"Pct 4 responds to all calls the are recieved directly! The only calls that are sent back are calls for service that are sent to us by the S.O. that they are trying to get us to run that are not in our contract area. The only other kind we send back are calls that are in HCSO contracts."
So you admit that the contracts influence whether you run the call or not. And as a point of information, 911 calls do not go to the constable's dispatch directly, they go to the HCSO. And if the sheriff's office does not have a deputy in the area and the constable's office does, does it not make sense that the constable should run the call?
Rorschach;
Reminds me of Tom Cruise in the move "A few Good Men" When Jack Nicholson was on the stand and in the heat of argument admits to ordering the "CODE RED."
The character calling the cancer is admitting the denial of service. I don't give a rat's ass where a call for help comes from... if you are the closest "gun" near the call for help, you'd better have your tail there. PERIOD END OF STORY, or I will make sure you are drawn up on the yard arm and keel hauled at the ballot box... of which I am working to do in this case.
The Hickster refuses to produce the documents, video, audio and the details and that invokes the "rule" of more questions and trying to find the rat hole in this office. We will now look at every action, purchase record and refusal as suspect. Perhaps we need to look at purchases, wrecker service relationships etc.
We will certainly now demand all the way up the food chain of appeal, if necessary the records, time sheets, and payroll ledgers for all subdivision contracts to see if we were properly served and or billed... and if we got what we paid for, as I can tell you I have not seen a Deputy in my subdivision for weeks, and I am in and out daily....
Hickman "Can't handle the Truth!"
As an S.O. Deputy who works the Spring area in Dist. 2, I can say this as a statement of FACT: C-4 DOES NOT run every call for service received in one of their contracts. I have had frank discussions with some of the C-4 Deputies (who are good people working for a true IDIOT) and have been told, directly from them, their Sgt's send the calls they don't want over to S.O. dispatch. If, as was suggested in a previous post, C-4 answers every call for service, then why are they not tied in to the 911 call system? Also, if "They call, we come" is truly their motto, then why was I sent to a weapons disturbance which was clearly in a C-4 contract after being told C-4 had REFUSED the EMERGENCY (read life and limb at stake) call? Why was I sent to a burglary of a business when the business owner (who also sits on the MUD board paying for a C-4 contract in which his business is clearly located) called C-4 dispatch "directly" and was told THEY REFUSED to send a unit, even when he REQUESTED one be sent. That happened in the last two weeks, Ror....I'll e-mail the callslip numbers to you if you like.
Also, you do know of the Texas AG opinion which ruled the contract systems operated by the Constables' Offices and the S.O. were illegal, right?
I think it's a crock that you should have to pay for law enforcement service TWICE! And I'm proud of what I do as a district patrolman. I'm just tired of doing double duty for shirkers taking YOUR money.
A Dedicated Patrolman
Anon, I would be interested in seeing the AG opinion you mention. I was unaware that there was an AG opinion on that. Can you point me to the opinion?
A Dedicated Patrolman.. If it is a messy call, as you state, I too have been told that "Hicksters" don't want to handle it, yet they want to buy all of the gear, equipment to fight the "fire" but when there is evidence of "flames" it is a different story.
If we take the number of County tax funded positions in C-4, then that would not even have 2 people on duty to cover the north 1/4 of Harris County. Constable, like the Mexican Policia, are left to fend and fund their operation off of a hidden extortion tax of the subdivisions within their precinct. When I was on a board, we were faced with no pay no play and that was long before the current incumbent was in office.
Any facts, dispatch slips or data I encourage to be sent to:
redinktexas@gmail.com
The problem is not only with the current officer holder, but the system itself.
Hickman's office only enters the contracts when they are up for renewal. They will send several cars, their bike teams into the subdivision and saturate it. They are too busy sitting around and doing nothing the majority of the time and when they do something, they tend to do it wrong and then as the Sheriffs Office to come and help them clean up their messes and handle the investigations.
The State of Texas has been allowing Constable offices to be done away with with their powers being shifted over to the Sheriffs Office. This should and needs to happen within Harris County.
What a silly lawsuit. The way the contracts are set up allows for something like 70/30 whereby the deputies are supposed to be in the contract 70% of their time, but they get "off" for court, school, illness, special assignments, etc., etc. Our deputies are with the SO and they cover a lot of "stuff" that's not in the contract because a) some of them choose to go where the "fun" is and b) they are dispatched out of the contract. There is a shortage of law enforcement in ALL the organizations and it's not uncommon for those that actually work to work their Sam Brown's off. ALL the organizations have slackers and they are very adept at finding ways not to work. As for the refusal of calls, true the SO has to answer anything that HPD or C4 won't, but if you get a chance to listen to a scanner you'd be stunned at what you hear. Pity the poor soul that's caught on the boundary line and everyone refuses to show up. Sooner or later someone will show up, but to listen to them whining about how it's not their area is disheartening to say the least.
Another thing I've heard more than I'd like is the childish way the patrol deputies try and look down on the contract deputies. It's the same way with the jail deputies and the patrol deputies. Take it all with a grain of salt. As for C4, I feel sorry for the deputies because they are strictly at the whim of the Constable. BTW, I've already cast my vote early for Louis G.
TXgoodie, The reason behind the federal complaint (it isn't a lawsuit BTW, although it is conceivable that the HOA's in C4 could sue for possibly up to triple the amounts of their contracts as far back as the statute of limitations allows based on TXDTPA.) is really about the Sharon Grady case I suspect. Bible was the deputy that responded to the call and was told to destroy evidence and balked when he was told that. I don't know, but I suspect, that he was the person that wrote the anon. letters to the DA and news media. I expect he has been threatened with all sorts of retribution because of that. The Federal complaint makes him fall under the whistleblower protection laws.
I was just advised of this link and I see that my name is on here several times. I would like to thank the many people who took a moral stand and spoke up for me. I simply did my job and made an arrest that I felt should have been made. I did not ask for the call or the contraversy that comes from arresting folks with high connections. I became a police officer with the belief that campaign contributions or wealth would not prevent a police officer from making a just arrest. We all know what can happen when the violent aggressor in a family disturbance is not taken into custody. I made the arrest because I have common sense, not because I am any better of a cop than the next guy. The problem here is that the people in the high ranking positions failed to bring their common sense to this situation. I made the arrest and I told the truth when I was called before the grand jury. I left Precinct Four because no paycheck is worth losing my integrity over. Precinct Four used every underhanded stunt in the book to keep me from getting hired at my current employer. Fourtunetly I work for an agency that supports doing the right thing even when it's not the easy choice. I took a pay cut to leave Precinct Four. While I suffer from a finacial loss, It feels good to be proud of who and what I am.
Bible
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home