Tuesday, March 19, 2024 Mar 19, 2024
42° F Dallas, TX
Advertisement
Publications

LAW EDISORDER

FOR TWO YEARS, COCKRELL HILL MAYOR SAM RODRIGUEZ HAS MEDDLED IN POLICE AFFAIRS-CANCELING DRUG RAIDS, SIDING WITH PRISONERS AGAINST HIS OWN COPS AND FORCING OUT OFFICERS WHO DEFIED HIM. HE SAYS THEY’RE RACIST. THEY SAY HE’S DRUNK ON POWER.
By Eric Celeste |

IN MAY 1991, ONE YEAR AFTER BEING elected mayor of Cockrell Hill, Sam Rodriguez walked briskly into the An-son Jones Elementary School auditorium escorted by his wife and flanked by two Cockrell Hill police officers. The cops were there as his bodyguards, he said, as well as to ensure that all the parents assembled would be allowed to participate in the serious matter at hand. The Dallas school, situated just outside Cockrell Hill city limits, was holding its PTA officer elections, and Rodriguez was worried that some parents who wanted to run would be disqualified by the current officers. He wasn’t there, he insisted, to run himself.

But when nominations were taken, Sam Rodriguez was indeed nominated for president by a friend who argued that, because Rodriguez was Cockrell Hill’s mayor, he was best qualified. Apparently. Rodriguez agreed. He accepted the nomination. The PTA officials, most of whom knew Rodriguez well, were baffled. They calmly explained that even though the youngest of his four sons attended the school, and even though he was a former officer in the organization. Rodriguez wasn’t a current member of the PTA. Therefore, he was ineligible to hold office.

Rodriguez exploded. He ranted. He flailed. He held high a PTA membership card, slowly tore it into tiny pieces and tossed them in the air. He vowed to start his own counter-PTA organization. He screamed at the officials, accusing one of stealing from PTA funds and all of conspiring against him.

As the crowd sat in stunned silence, the school’s security guard told the two Cockrell Hill officers standing beside Rodriguez that they were out of their jurisdiction and ordered them to wait outside. Before leaving, Rodriguez warned the PTA president, “Your ass is mine.”

It was vintage Rodriguez, typical of the roughshod tactics that have kept him in control of this one-square-mile hamlet of 3,700 for two years. In that time, Rodriguez, 46, has fought with many of the town’s police officers-much the way he battled the blue growing up in West Dallas in the ’60s. Many say his numerous encounters with the law-he was arrested four times and sentenced twice-have left him emotionally scarred and prompted his bouts with his own police force. But that’s conjecture. What’s known is that he has fired or forced to resign more than a dozen officers in a 10-person department, each firing a result of questionable circumstances. Now he’s the boss, the one who’s calling the shots, the outlaw mayor of Cockrell Hill, willing to shoot down whoever defies him.



SAMMY WELDON RODRIGUEZ-SOME-times he spells it Rodriquez-moved to Cockrell Hill in 1979. At that time the Cockrell Hill City Council was all Anglo, and the town was slightly more than 30 percent Hispanic. Cockrell Hill, named after Trinity River ferryman Alexander Cockrell, had been an Oak Cliff bastion where whites’ ways made right since the town was incorporated in 1925, disincorporated a few months later, then reincorporated in 1937. Through the years, the various oligarchies ran Cockrell Hill as they saw fit. The white, conservative mayors and council members raised and spent the town’s money at their discretion; the majority of citizens didn’t care much how it was being done, so long as they weren’t hassled. If minorities were singled out for traffic tickets, or roughed up in the jail so they’d pay bond that night in cash, so be it. Cockrell Hill was run like many small, isolated, nondescript West Texas towns that no one notices except to stop at a roadside Dairy Queen. It was a place where good ol’ boys ate at Deb’s Diner on Jefferson Avenue, then washed down the chicken-fried steak with a longneck from Deb’s Next-Door lounge. A place where cops did as they pleased.

From 1980 to 1990, the percentage of His-panics in Cockrell Hill more than doubled, reaching 67 percent. But the Anglo police and politicians still ran the town. The police helped raise the revenue through speed traps-not “Yankee traps,” but “Hispanic traps.” To Sam Rodriguez and others, those traps were nothing but harassment by police officers who were targeting Hispanics, impounding their cars and occasionally roughing them up. Because of this, Rodriguez, an impassioned spokesman, began haranguing city officials at public forums. And all the officials he confronted were white.

They thought Rodriguez was just a radical flake. “The thing that stuck in my craw more than anything else,” Rodriguez says, “was when Gordon Adams, the mayor, told me, ’If you damn Mexicans don’t like what’s going on in this city, then get your people out and vote for somebody.’” (Adams denies making the statement.)

Rodriguez used the police harassment and the bureaucratic arrogance to stoke the fires of indignation, calling for Hispanics, including himself, to be elected to the council. He asked his friend, veteran Democratic Party organizer Domingo Garcia (now a Dallas City Council member), to work out the nuts-and-bolts details needed to engineer a Hispanic political upheaval. Garcia suggested that Rodriguez and others use intensive drives to register Hispanics voters, then vote Hispanics into office.

The drive, launched in 1987, was a huge success. Hispanic residents registered in droves. Again and again, in public meetings and within his own political action committee (Concerned Citizens of Cockrell Hill), Rodriguez blamed the Anglos for the impoverishment of Cockrell Hill’s Hispanics. Change, he said, was just a ballot away.

Because of the town’s dwindling tax base and deteriorating business core, there were many poor for Rodriguez to champion. He took an interest in those residents’ kids, coaching Little League baseball teams. And if some citizens were still hesitant to back his fight for their own sake, he pleaded they do so for la raza, the Mexican people. Pressing the flesh, building up IOUs, Rodriguez succeeded on two levels: He got people registered, and these people identified their newfound inclusion with Sam Rodriguez.

As for Rodriguez’s criminal record, people were willing to forgive him if he could fulfill his promises and help bring equality and vigor to Cockrell Hill. Rodriguez promised to end the racial bigotry that resulted in harassment of Hispanics. He said he would stop the traffic ticket quotas that forced cops to play revenue gatherer. He said he would fire only bad cops. “We would what we call ’super-snoop’ on these guys [officers],” he says. “We knew which ones were bad.”

And while he appealed to ethnic pride and solidarity, Rodriguez, whose mother was white, managed to avoid alienating Cockrell Hill’s Anglos. (“Hey, I’m as white as they are,” he says.) He went to Mike McCoy, a 45-year resident and trusted city elder, and promised to help heal the town, economically and socially. McCoy believed him, as did most others. Clifford Webster, whom Rodriguez would appoint police chief and later fire, admired his message of hope. “He’s [still] the only person I’ve ever met who could bring the people in that town together,” Webster says.

Thanks to his persistence and message of inclusion, Rodriguez was appointed mayor by the City Council in January 1990 when Mayor Delores Singleton moved. During the honeymoon period that followed. Rodriguez listened to people and operated in a conciliatory style. Four months later, with a record turnout for Hispanic voters, a historic election swept Hispanics into four of five council spots, and gave the Dallas area its first elected Hispanic mayor. Although many whites still believed Sam Rodriguez was the right man for the job, some of his critics were stunned. Across from the city hall, a large sign was posted: “Thanks apathetic white voters for selling Cockrell Hill down the sewer.”

While that hasn’t happened, the mayor’s enemies-many of them officers whom Rodriguez has fired-are harshly critical of his politics and ethics. They say he has befriended prisoners in the city jail; encouraged officers to spy and snitch on their peers; overstepped his authority, going so far as to stop two drug busts; continued setting ticket quotas; and fired good cops because he deemed them untrustworthy. Some of those cops, in turn, ask whether the mayor has completely left his criminal past behind.



RODRIGUEZ GREW UP POOR AND ANGRY. His mother died when he was four, and his father taught him to be tough and provide for himself. Often that meant eating nothing but beans. At other times, it meant stealing what he needed or wanted and building a police record in the process. Rodriguez, who graduated from Adamson High in 1964, says he was last arrested a year earlier. In reality, he was arrested four times for theft and sentenced twice between 1963 and 1977. During those years, say people who know Rodriguez, he developed a hatred and a fascination for police. He was obsessed, they say, with obtaining authority over cops.

Rodriguez denies all the charges and accusations by former officers and disgruntled townspeople. He calls his accusers racist (“We’re dealing with some very racial, bigoted people here”). Then he says he has proof that his accusers are vile people who have committed illegal acts. Asked to show the proof, Rodriguez says the FBI is investigating the charges he brings against each accuser; until the investigation is complete, he says, he’s been told to remain quiet. “But it will hit the paper any day now, and when it does, it’s going to be big. Huge. You’ll see.

“I would love to tell you what is coming down,” he says. “No officer got fired because I didn’t like them. They fired themselves.”

Rodriguez admits to using prisoners to get information about his police officers. In August 1990, three months after his election, Mayor Rodriguez made clear his repeated intention not to take any disrespect from the Cockrell Hill cops he says used to beat and harass him. He posted a memo on the board in the police station that read as follows:

“I was informed by a Person in our jail that an officer stated that he would like to shoot the ’god-damn Mayor in the head” with a .45, well as soon as I find out who the big-bad officer is I will give the S.O.B. the chance. I am damn tired of our public officials being put down in front of our finest and from now on if I hear or see any more of this slander I will see that he or she is looking for a job. And if you think I’m bull shitting, try me! Respectfully, Sam Rodriguez.”

The letter illustrated Rodriguez’s self-described modus operandi: Stay close to the Hispanic prisoners-talk to them as a fellow pachuco, or gang member, if need be. He often went to their cells and asked them, in Spanish, what officers were doing. This was his way of keeping an eye on the cops he distrusted so much. “Hey, just because they are arrested doesn’t mean they don’t have rights,” he says. “They used to beat prisoners in here. They used to beat me in here. So, to this day, I still talk to prisoners.” (A civil suit has been filed in Dallas against former police chief Clifford Webster and five former officers by a man who alleges he was severely beaten in the jail.)

Extensive involvement in police affairs is not unusual for Rodriguez. The past mayors of Cockrell Hill, while possessing a lot of managerial authority in the absence of a city manager, left the day-to-day operations of the police department to the police chief. Not Rodriguez. He’s at the city hall/police station almost 40 hours a week, even though the mayor’s job is part time and pays only $1 a year. “He’s there because he loves every minute of it,” says Philip Terranella, a friend of Rodriguez’s for 10 years. “He loves power. He’d love to get to be somebody.’’

But early on Rodriguez needed more than his eyes, and more than prisoners’ accounts, to get the information to fire officers he felt threatened his power. So he hired two snitches: Linda McCoy and Tony Hunt.

Before being elected, Rodriguez had visited Mike and Linda McCoy, politicking for their support. He told Linda, a patrol officer, that he would make her chief of police-if she’d help him prove that Chief Clifford Webster was harassing citizens and prisoners. Linda McCoy agreed. Trouble was, just after he was elected. Rodriguez promised the chiefs position to Tony Hunt, a black officer, under the same conditions. He convinced Hunt, as he had McCoy, that Webster was a dirty cop. Hunt agreed to help. The mayor told Hunt to tape his conversations with Webster.

Of more than 25 people interviewed for this story, only Rodriguez accuses Chief Webster of wrongdoing. Both McCoy and Hunt say that, after a few months on the job, they realized that it was Rodriguez who was the problem, not Webster. “I just said, ’Sam, there’s nothing illegal or unethical going on,’” McCoy says.

In September 1991, Rodriguez decided he no longer needed Linda McCoy. McCoy had been moved into the warrants section, where she sat at a desk most of the day. On a taped office phone line, McCoy, during a 45-min-ute conversation, told a friend that Rodriguez was a thief and said that Hispanics were ignorant of politics. Rodriguez, who said he listened to the tapes in order to help a woman who had called in about a lost dog, fired McCoy for slander against him, the chief and the townspeople. (McCoy, who is considering a run for mayor in the May elections, says she will sue Rodriguez for wrongful discharge.)

But Rodriguez’s most curious series of ousters came a year earlier, during and soon after an aborted drug bust-an incident which caused officers to worry about not only his management style, but his possible involvement with drug dealers.

Late on a Saturday night in early September 1990, undercover Cockrell Hill and Dallas officers made a “buy-bust” drug deal with three Latin males. Cockrell Hill officer Kirby Rainey bought two “eight balls,” one-ounce rocks of cocaine, from the men. They were arrested and one, a scared 19-year-old, told officers that the group’s money and drug stash were at a house in Cockrell Hill. The officers went back to the station to make out a search warrant for the house. The prisoners were put in jail; one made a phone call. It was now between 1 and 2 a.m.

A few minutes later, Sam Rodriguez’s black pickup rolled into the station lot. He hurried inside and asked what was going on. Officers explained that they were preparing a warrant for a drug raid. Rodriguez then called Tony Hunt outside. That’s when he asked Hunt to turn over a cassette recording. What exactly was on that tape is in question, but Hunt indicated Rodriguez wanted to use information on the tape to fire Chief Webster. Hunt told Rodriguez the tape was secured as evidence and that Rodriguez needed a court order to get it. When Hunt refused to turn it over, Rodriguez fired him.

Rodriguez went back inside and explained to the officers still there that Hunt had been fired for withholding evidence and for “disrespecting” the mayor. He then called the drug raid off, according to officers who were there. He gave no reason. Then, according to officer Kirby Rainey, Rodriguez released the prisoners. On Monday, the mayor told Chief Webster and Sgt. Randy Coffey the news, and told them that from now on he would have to be notified at least one hour before warrants were acted upon.

Chief Webster, an 11-year veteran, couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had always done as Rodriguez told him. despite friends’ warnings that Rodriguez was out to get him. But this was too much. He told Rodriguez he didn’t think that it was correct police procedure to delay police actions so the mayor could be notified and that he wouldn’t do it. Rodriguez said he’d better.

Sgt. Coffey was more appalled that the bust was stopped. Coffey, a 12-year veteran and head of the city’s drug investigation operations, decided to begin his own investigation into Rodriguez’s acquaintanceship with drug dealers and users. He also decided that the town needed to get rid of Rodriguez. With Chief Webster’s knowledge, detectives Coffey and Kirby Rainey told officials at the Dallas district attorney’s office that Rodriguez was a convicted felon, and that meant he was holding office illegally.

Sam Rodriguez’s criminal history has been a hot topic in Cockrell Hill for many years. Rodriguez, as he did with D Magazine, at times acknowleges convictions, then later denies them. Adding to the confusion, some newspaper reports have said there is no Dallas County computer record of his criminal past. That’s true, but it’s because Rodriguez’s records are filed under the alternate spelling of Rodriquez.

Rodriguez was arrested at least four times for theft and sentenced twice, once in 1963 and once in 1976. Each time he was given a two-year probated sentence. Each time he served his probation. In 1978, a court “set aside” his ’76 conviction, which meant that he had served his parole and the conviction would not prevent him from holding office. According to Domingo Garcia, the lawyer who got Rodriguez’s 1963 conviction set aside, that case was not cleared until the summer of 1991-more than a year after Rodriguez had taken office. At the time, the Dallas district attorney’s office was looking into the matter at the request of the two Cockrell Hill officers, but ended the inquiry once the conviction was set aside. Contrary to Rodriguez’s claims, neither conviction has been expunged by the courts or pardoned by the governor. As for the year and a half he may have been holding office in violation of state law, the district attorney’s office says it would not pursue the matter any further.

Even though the DA dropped the matter. Rodriguez set out to punish the officers who went to the DA’s office. Coffey believes that someone within the DA’s office informed Patricia Aguilar, a Cockrell Hill City Council member who works for the Dallas County clerk’s office, and that Aguilar told Rodriguez. Whatever the chain of events, Rodriguez decided to move. On Monday, the week after Coffey and Rainey went to the DA’s office, Rodriguez had the locks changed on Chief Webster’s office door before Webster came to work. Rodriguez told the press that the town had “lost confidence” in the chief and that he was reacting to recent complaints against Webster.

Several months later, Linda McCoy says Rodriguez called off another drug bust. The officers were planning to raid a house they suspected was used by a prominent dealer. “While they were discussing tactics in the next room,” McCoy recalls, “Rodriguez leaned over to me and said, ’It doesn’t matter what they decide. I never intended to let this raid happen.’” Over furious objections from his officers, Rodriguez ordered them home, saying they weren’t properly equipped to handle well-armed drug dealers. (Which is why, he says, he later bought thousands of dollars of surveillance equipment.) And Rodriguez believes in being well armed. One officer who left on good terms but doesn’t want his name used says he recalls Rodriguez twice displaying a CAR-15 laser-sighted assault rifle-which, the officer says, Rodriguez claimed was his.



RODRIGUEZ FOUND TIME TO STAY IN-volved in the city’s budget decisions as well. According to several former officers, Rodriguez soon realized that the city’s declining tax base meant he could not afford to discontinue traffic ticket quotas, even if that meant large numbers of Hispanics would be fined. So Rodriguez-like the white, conservative mayors before him-set a monthly quota; his was $35,000. Officers understood what they had to do. Some even had ticket-writing contests. Rodriguez had Webster to post officers’ totals three times a month, highlighting the names doing well and circling those faring poorly.

Officer Ray Medrano, a Hispanic, didn’t care for the quotas, or for anything else about Rodriguez. While stopping motorists, he grew tired of hearing, “Hey, I know Sam Rodriguez; go ahead and ticket me. He’ll get me out of it.”

At first, Rodriguez was friendly to Medrano. When Medrano was about to go to a disturbance at an apartment complex, Rodriguez, the officer says, told him, “If you need to beat the shit outta somebody, I’ll back you up.”

Medrano didn’t believe him. He knew Rodriguez privately called him an “uppity Mexican” because Medrano gave no special consideration to Hispanics. “Cockrell Hill is mostly Hispanic.” Medrano says, “so about 80 percent of your stops were going to be Hispanic.”

“’Ray is not a Mexican, in my view,” Rodriguez says. “He didn’t know the culture of the people.”

When Rodriguez found out that Medrano had been eying another officer’s rifle, looking through the gun’s sights while in the station, he forced Medrano to resign for pointing the gun at another officer. Medrano admits he was looking at a gun but says he didn’t point it at an officer. One source says that the officer whom Rodriguez says lodged the complaint denies Medrano pointed the gun at him. Chief Webster, who was given evidence to support the forced resignation, agrees with Medrano. “I later found that the documentation was bullshit.”

But Medrano, Webster and the others were just early casualties in what became a long list of officers who were fired or forced to resign. First was Bobby Hall, fired in April 1990 by Chief Webster, on Rodriguez’s orders, because Hall released a white prisoner. According to Hall, the prisoner had been arrested for DWI and had sobered up for 14 hours. Before releasing the man, Hall says, he checked with his supervisor and the arresting officer. Hall says Rodriguez didn’t trust him because, among other things, Hall refused to give breaks to Hispanics when issuing citations or making arrests.

After they had complained to the Dallas DA’s office, Rodriguez fired Coffey and Rainey. A surprise drug test was given to all officers-to squelch rumors, Rodriguez told the press, of police drug abuse. Coffey, for unexplained reasons, did not produce a specimen that morning and agreed to do so in the afternoon. He left to meet with an informant who said he had information for him about Rodriguez. Coffey says he got into the informant’s car and immediately smelled marijuana smoke. The informant, it turned out, had no information.

That afternoon Coffey took the test. Rodriguez told him it had come back positive, showing marijuana use. Coffey said he had been exposed to marijuana but had not used it. Rodriguez said the doctor told him that was impossible. (The doctor, Henry Armstrong, says he made no interpretation of the results, despite repeated attempts by Rodriquez to get him to do so.) Rodriguez then calmly offered to “sweep it under the table” if Coffey would help him get information on the fired Webster, whom Rodriguez thought would sue the city for wrongful discharge. (By then, Rodriguez had named Kyle Cox-who was later fired-as chief.) Coffey said he had no information Rodriguez could use. Rodriguez said he was sure Coffey could find something.

Rodriguez called him several times a day over the next few days, asking for information. A few weeks later, Rodriguez, after getting no information, called Coffey into his office. Rodriguez said the press was breath-ing down his neck; the officer had to resign or be fired. Coffey asked for a lie detector test from DPS to prove he hadn’t taken drugs: he was denied, although the city attorney mentioned a private security firm that they would allow to perform the test. Coffey refused. Then he resigned.

Other firings followed. Two months after Coffey resigned, in December 1990, Sgt. Rainey went to a house that had been a target in a drive-by shooting. Rainey says the residents declined to file a complaint. Rodriguez says Rainey refused to take their complaint. He fired Rainey.

During 1991, there was more of the same. At least six others were fired or forced to resign. In April, Rodriguez fired all dozen or so reserve officers at once, telling them they could reapply immediately. Only some were rehired. In November, a new chief of police was named. He quit within a few days.

The latest firing came that same month. At about 11 p.m. on Nov. 5, reserve officer Paul Gaumond spotted two Hispanic men in a Thunderbird driving through the Cedar Square apartments. According to news reports, the apartment security guard told Gaumond he didn’t recognize the car. Gaumond followed the car. which took off speeding. Gaumond raced after the car. Several minutes later the car crashed into a utility pole, killing 24-year-old Robert Garza-on parole for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle-and 27-year-old Michael Contreras. The reports and Rodriguez said the officer followed procedure and broke off the chase two blocks before the car crashed.

According to Larry Baker, the dispatcher who was on duty that night, and officer Randy Coffey’s father Henry Coffey, who listened to the chase on his walkie-talkie, the chase was never broken off. “I heard sirens going full-bore when he crashed,” Henry Coffey says. Baker, after filling out his report, says he was called at home and told to come back to the station and change his log entry to corroborate the story the officers involved were putting out: The chase had been called off well before the crash. Baker rewrote his report to match the officers’, but kept his own personal log unchanged. “I don’t know about any of that,” Rodriguez says.

The next day, Rodriguez fired Baker. Then Rodriguez threatened to have Dallas County officials take Baker’s two children from him. (Some sources say county officials had questioned Baker once about possible child abuse claims, but those claims were never proven.) Baker didn’t show at a hearing to appeal his firing, although it probably wouldn’t have helped. Each officer who has appealed has lost.



THE POLITICS THERE ARE VERY PERSON-al,” says Dallas Councilman Domingo Garcia. “Sam is a strong individual, and sometimes that has ruffled feathers. But his detractors are in a minority.”

It’s true that most Hispanics in Cockrell Hill back Sam Rodriguez. “They [Hispanics] believe Sam is God,” Medrano says. Chavela Lozada, the “Mother of West Dallas” who has known Rodriguez since he used to hang out at the Anita Martinez Center where she works, agrees the Hispanic community backs him and believes his critics have mounted a racist vendetta. “They can’t stand to see a Mexican-American do good.” she says. Philip Terranella, his longtime friend, concurs. “He’s just trying to do the right thing, to clean things up.”

There are Hispanics in Cockrell Hill- Medrano and others-who do not believe Sam Rodriguez. Most, however, would not allow their names to be used in this story, fearing retribution. “There are people, Hispanics, who don’t like him.” says Leo Landin, a Hispanic resident and volunteer fireman who lost his 1990 run for City Council. “But they are scared.” Victor Bonilla Sr. says he has tried to stay out of the “petty” squabble. “Yes, a lot of people don’t like him,” he says, “but you’ve got to admire him.

Kim Pinkerton doesn’t buy that. Pinkerton has lived in Cockrell Hill for 15 years and, until recently, ran a profitable restaurant. In late August he witnessed a car accident and tried to help the injured passenger. When the Cockrell Hill police arrived, Pinkerton says, he tried to move his car, and the officer, thinking he was leaving the scene of the crime, choked Pinkerton, causing him to pass out. Rodriguez later warned him not to make waves. Pinkerton refused. Pinkerton was arrested a week later for resisting arrest. Suddenly, Pinkerton’s clientele, mostly Hispanic, disappeared. In November, he lost his plea to have the resisting arrest charge thrown out. He is now selling the restaurant-leaving a withering town with one less business.

Many residents say Rodriguez has organized boycotts against local businesses, like Linda and Mike McCoy’s Washeteria. Rodriguez denies this. “But,” he adds, “if you don’t like Hispanics, people are going to know-and [then] what happens to your business?”

“In 10 to 15 years” Pinkerton says, “after he [Rodriguez] has ruined everything, he’ll look back and realize what he should have done.”

What Rodriguez does now is blame. Sitting in the quiet Cockrell Hill council chambers, he denies the numerous claims made against him. Then he turns on his accusers. Ironically, he has been accused of some of the very same acts he accuses the officers of committing, such as stealing guns and covering up for friends. He admits to being a gun collector, but denies that he owns an M-16, an AK-47 and other automatic weapons former officers claim to have seen him carrying. Other accusations that the mayor makes against the officers are more sensational, and most of them-sex with prisoners, sex with minors, stealing drugs and money-would bring felony charges. Rodriguez says he can refute each claim against him and document his claims against the former officers. But most of what he offers either doesn’t check out or is not related to the reasons he gave for firing officers.

Not that all the officers bringing claims against Rodriguez have spotless records. As noted, Randy Coffey did test positive for marijuana. Minor complaints were filed by other officers against him. In 1979, Tony Hunt was indicted by a Houston grand jury for a civil rights violation-an alleged assault against a man Hunt says called him “a nigger pig.” The indictment was dismissed after Hunt complied with a court agreement forbidding him to work as a peace officer for one year and ordering him to undergo counseling. Rodriguez says he knows even more about the officers that he can’t say.

“I was willing to leave these people alone,” Rodriguez says. “Not now. It used to be persecution by them, now it’s gonna be prosecution by me.” He says the FBI will be coming down with indictments against all the officers soon. Very soon, he promises. Until then, he can’t show the proof, nor can he talk about the FBI “investigation.” An FBI spokesman refused comment.

What he can talk about, and often does, is the racism that he says spawns each of the claims against him, even those by Hispanic officers and citizens. “I didn’t used to be a racial person, but they are making me a racial person. This is racially motivated.”

“Cockrell Hill deserves better than that,” says Clifford Webster. “There are damn fine people in that city.” Webster knew many of them. He started a sponsorship program to get residents, mostly Hispanics, police training. He began a GED program and worked on a Toys for Tots drive. He says he’s over most of the bitterness now. He’s in a small town, some 100 miles from Dallas. Half his supervising officers are black. An editor for the local paper, whom Rodriguez suggested D Magazine call about Webster, says, “People here think extremely highly of Chief Webster.”

Tony Hunt, who was one of the few blacks in Cockrell Hill, grows angry when he thinks about it. He remembers the time Rodriguez told him and a black Dallas officer, “I’m going to get all these white motherf- , because they don’t know about this Mexican.” Rodriguez admits making the comment.

About Webster, whom Rodriguez often called racist. Hunt says. “There is not a racist bone in his body. I know racism when I see it. I know it when they hide it. I’ve seen it all my life. I don’t see it in Clifford Webster.”

He pauses. “I see deep, vindictive racial hatred in Sam Rodriguez.”

Rodriguez dismisses this. He’s the one who’s been targeted, he says. That’s why he parks his van in front of his bedroom win dow, to guard against drive-by shootings. No. it’s these people, these accusers who are to blame, who must be taken care of. “I’m like a dog,” he says. “You kick me in the ass, I’m not gonna bite you then; but I’ll get you. sooner or later.”

Related Articles

Image
Business

At Parkland Health, the End of Subjective Surgery

Artificial intelligence is helping trauma surgery teams make data-based decisions about when to operate at Dallas County's safety net hospital.
Advertisement