If you’ve been following along at home, you know that four Dallas cops sued D Magazine for libel in 2008. For those who need to catch up, you can read about how the whole deal started right here. Needless to say, we and our fine lawyers and Haynes and Boone believe the suit is without merit. Nonetheless, it drags on. We won a judgment against them. They’ve appealed. It’ll be another six months probably before we get a ruling from the appellate court.
One of the plaintiffs in the suit against us is Jeffrey Nelson, who is now known to the fine folks of Seven Points, Texas, as Police Chief Jack Nelson. Or he was until recently.
 Seven points is east of Ennis, out by Gun Barrel City. After a political shakeup in Seven Points, Nelson was installed as the top cop there in July 2010. But just five months later, in November, Nelson had to resign “amidst allegations that he had made a sexual and racial slur to a female officer in the department.”
Here’s an excerpt from the 2007 story over which we were sued. It was about a rookie cop named Shanna Lopez who lost her job on the force after she started questioning the way Nelson and the other three cops did their jobs.
One night early in Lopez’s training phase, in a parking lot at a 7-Eleven on Fitzhugh Avenue, Nelson put a prostitute in the back of his patrol car. Lopez sat in front. As Kattner [one of the other cops who sued us] stood inside the store sipping his Monster energy drink, Nelson proceeded with what he called “64 questions.” It was really a series of insults to demoralize the woman.
“Give me the four reasons why you hate to f— niggers.” “Give me the four reasons you hate to f— spics.” “What are the three things you like to do every day?” And so on.
After releasing the woman, Nelson told Lopez, “They know the routine. They do what we tell them. You break them down like that, and they’ll do anything you want. They’ll come when you snap your fingers.”
Our magazine has spent quite a lot of time and money dealing with the groundless lawsuit that Nelson filed against us. Reading that story from the Athens Review about the allegations against Nelson, the word “schadenfreude” comes to mind.
