Latest / Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement / #141- "Why Open Dialogue Matters" with District Attorney Mike Holley

Transcript

#141- "Why Open Dialogue Matters" with District Attorney Mike Holley · Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement

0:00
SPEAKER_00: The deputy had talked to his supervisors, hey they plug this case in, talk to me.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: So Cam reached out to him directly, apologized.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Also, no, no excuse to apologize.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: I messed up.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: And then my pin command uh senior leaders talk to this deputy team.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: This previous and I preach that's the way it ought to be.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: We ought to own our mistakes.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: It's like that's the only way to get better.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: We just don't help anybody.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: Welcome back, viewers, watchers, listeners.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Tyler Owen, and our big boss in the house today, Kevin Lawrence, just joining us.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for coming in.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: Hope everything's going good.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: Well, we do have a special guest.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: We do have a special guest.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: Man, uh, let's do some updates real quick with TMPA, what's going on around the state.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: We've got our board spring board meeting coming up in San Antonio.
0:46
SPEAKER_01: For those that don't know, our board of directors, the elected board of directors by our members, meet quarterly and they go over our budget.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: They review our policies within TMPA and kind of what's concerns or what's going on around the state.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: And so we're having that board meeting coming up, uh, I believe the 24th of October, there in the San Antonio area, and we're going to be at the hotel that potentially our conference will be at.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: So looking forward to that.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, a couple of things.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: First of all, it's the fall board meeting.
1:11
SPEAKER_03: We should have that before we have the spring board meeting.
1:13
SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's true.
1:14
SPEAKER_03: That's why you get paid the big meeting.
1:15
SPEAKER_03: We have the winter board meeting.
1:15
SPEAKER_03: That's why you get paid the big bucks.
1:17
SPEAKER_03: It's been a long day.
1:18
SPEAKER_03: It's definitely the hotel that the conference will be at next summer.
1:21
SPEAKER_03: The contracts have all been signed.
1:22
SPEAKER_03: There you go.
1:23
SPEAKER_03: So we know exactly where the next five conferences are going to be.
1:25
SPEAKER_03: There you go.
1:27
SPEAKER_03: Is it the J.
1:28
SPEAKER_03: It's the Marriott Hill Country Resort and Spa.
1:31
SPEAKER_03: Beautiful.
1:32
SPEAKER_03: It is a beautiful place.
1:33
SPEAKER_03: It is a gorgeous piece of paper.
1:34
SPEAKER_03: You know what?
1:35
SPEAKER_01: It's really close to Austin.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: So we we don't have far to drive.
1:38
SPEAKER_03: Well, it's a good closer than Dallas.
1:40
SPEAKER_03: It is, it is.
1:41
SPEAKER_03: But uh man, what else is going on?
1:43
SPEAKER_03: Everything good with you?
1:44
SPEAKER_03: Well, it's budget time.
1:45
SPEAKER_03: And then as soon as as soon as the budget's over, now we're going to start you know working on the legislative session.
1:49
SPEAKER_03: It starts in January.
1:50
SPEAKER_03: And it's it is, and of course, we've got to wait and see how these elections turn out because we never know what that's going to look like.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: True, true.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: And and again, for the members out there that are listening, uh, I just want to let you just let you guys know though the the the board of directors, including the executive leadership, do a phenomenal job of being good stewards of y'all's money.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: Y'all's members do y'all's do's hard-earned money that's going to TNPA to protect you and provide legal services and member benefits.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: They do a really good job of being good stewards of your money.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: And so those decisions are made at some of the board meetings, whether it would have be legal, uh, some of the legal cases are kind of reviewed and then decided on, but also uh them as board of directors and what decisions that need to be made at those quarterly board meetings.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: And also it's a good opportunity for us to network and and and get together uh as a family and to kind of review some things that are going around the state.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: And so that'll happen later on this uh this month.
2:37
SPEAKER_03: And and so make sure everybody's clear, and I mentioned this at the conference.
2:41
SPEAKER_03: We went 14 years without raising dues at all.
2:44
SPEAKER_03: And then we raised them January 1st of 23.
2:46
SPEAKER_03: So it's now coming up on four years since we did it.
2:49
SPEAKER_03: We're gonna have to raise them again.
2:51
SPEAKER_03: We can't expect to go 14 years.
2:52
SPEAKER_03: You know, our staff does a great job.
2:54
SPEAKER_03: We've got to make sure we take care of them, that we pay them properly, give them good benefits.
2:58
SPEAKER_03: Uh, but there's also the attorneys, you know.
3:00
SPEAKER_03: We use private practice attorneys, yeah, and they ain't cheap.
3:03
SPEAKER_03: No, you know, but we we abuse them as much as we possibly can.
3:08
SPEAKER_03: But at some point we got to give them pay raises too.
3:10
SPEAKER_03: So so don't be surprised in the next couple of years if we don't come back and say, look, yes, it's time to change or you know, raise your dues another two dollars or four dollars.
3:18
SPEAKER_03: It happens, it happens.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: But um well, for those that don't know or do not follow us on social media, uh we were uh received some information about a case of a peace officer there in McGomber County, and uh they kind of asked us to kind of look into it.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: And and I'll be I'll be really honest with you, that's one thing that Kevin Lawrence, I've given him more gray hair about because I probably do don't do my due diligence or reach out to certain elected officials sometimes.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: Uh didn't this time, didn't feel that that it constituted that.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: And uh I'll I'll go ahead and say this when we when we post things about different elected officials, it's not to discredit them, discredit their work, it's to simply broadcast facts that we know at the time and how we can navigate around that and truly live up to the model.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: Let me interrupt you because I was playing golf at Dallas.
4:04
SPEAKER_03: I think I was at a Dallas County Sheriff's Association Golf Tournament, and I get a text in, hey Kevin, this is the district attorney in Montgomery County.
4:14
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, Yep.
4:14
SPEAKER_03: Well shit, this can't be good.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: Yep, yep.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: And typically when those happens, yeah, but uh yeah, so we we we pushed out some information about a case about a peace officer there in Montgomery County.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh but I'll say this there were some things that were have have been have changed since that incident took place.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: And what it did is it opened up a line of communication to District Attorney Mike Holly, who's joining us today, drove in from Montgomery County today to join us and just simply talk about some things that have changed since that, since that push out.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: But I think it also highlights two things.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: One, TNPA's motto is the voice of Texas law enforcement.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's a thing that we wear that very proudly.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: But I will say it it also the line of communication, and to Kevin's credit, being being with TNPA as long as he has been, he's always said this.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: Regardless if if if we don't agree on a topic, we always should and will maintain a good line of communication to anybody that we have disagreements on.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: And so, to your credit, you reached out and said, Hey, I think this is a misunderstanding.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: Let me explain myself.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: And so what that did is transcend it into you coming on the podcast today and let's talk about it.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: And listen, and the world that we live in with TNPA, it's always a good opportunity for us to have a sit down with a district attorney and kind of say, Hey, what's going on in your world?
5:25
SPEAKER_01: How can we help you?
5:26
SPEAKER_01: And how how can you kind of help us in the sense of better preparing our members?
5:30
SPEAKER_01: So, Mike.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: As I told Mike in that phone call, if we have a chance, let's make lemonade out of it.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: So, Mike, appreciate you coming out.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: Mike Holly with the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office has joined us.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: And so, uh, yeah, Kevin's breaking stuff left and right as the podcast.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: This is why you didn't want me sitting off for sure.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: Man, let's let's let's I I guess dive off into how you got where you are today as the district attorney.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: Let's start about your career and kind of where that started and then where you're at today.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I have an unusual career, but I'd like to start by just saying I appreciate you guys so much in your organization.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: I am your biggest fan.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh there won't be anybody in the state that's more supportive of you, and I'm grateful for uh all you do.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh I have an unusual background.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in Odessa, Texas.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh dad was a mechanic, owned a little business, mom, stay-at-home mom.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, also did a little volunteer work with a crisis pregnancy center, but um just kind of a blue-collar guy.
6:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh I didn't have a lot of money for college, but I had an interest in the military.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: I uh go into the military on an Army scholarship.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh, thought I was gonna be a chaplain.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: And two or three years into studying at Abilene Christian University, the Army said, Oh, we have people with those degrees.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: We don't need you to do that, which is good.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: I would have been a terrible chaplain.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: But uh I changed uh majors and I was commissioned as a second lieutenant, regular army in the military police corps.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: Very proud of that.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: First assignment was Fort Hood, Texas, in the first cavalry division, which will always have my heart.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: And be honest, that first uh assignment, you don't usually go as a second lieutenant, but I did.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: It was mostly combat support, running around with Bradleys and tanks uh and uh uh Abrams out there.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: Um I did this strange deployment as an MP to Panama.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a story for another day to help with some uh immigrants, Cuban immigrants that had rioted and hurt MPs, actually.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Went down there to do civil disturbance training and help an engineer battalion.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: And I learned about a program uh called the FLET program where they send you to law school and they pay for it.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: And a couple of my commanders said you'd be a good lawyer.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if they were just trying to get rid of me.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, little heads up uh kind of cards up front.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm not a big fan of lawyers generally.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh have some exceptions, obviously.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: But um I went to law school at Texas Tech and um very proud of that.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh Army paid for it, paid me to be a captain, paid me to do that.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: When they told me though I was gonna be uh going to law school, they sent me to the military police station to be the operations officer.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: And I did more of the law enforcement then.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you, back then, fellas, uh, that was a wild west.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh Fort Hill was open posts and it was insane.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: Um when was that?
7:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh 93, 94, 95 in that time.
8:01
SPEAKER_03: And uh I was a cop in Georgetown back in the 80s.
8:05
SPEAKER_03: We dealt with some soldiers.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a demographic for trouble.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh and that's when I, you know, did most of my law enforcement work, and and that's um that was important to me.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh go to law school, um, married and having kids along the way, uh, married my high school sweetheart, uh, get out of law school and go to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where I'm in the 18th Airborne Corps, jumping out of airplanes and being an operational law attorney and a prosecutor there.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Good experience.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: And then the Army says, We're gonna send you to Korea.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: Our youngest was about six weeks old at the time.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: Flew to Korea, was a defense attorney in Taigu, Korea, and represented soldiers and including military police, which was helpful.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Then I was made the senior defense counsel in Seoul, and uh I represented soldiers in Japan, Thailand, and Korea.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: It was just a fantastic job.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: What kind of cases were you like defending on those?
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Were just simple like policy violations or no well, everything.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: Anytime a soldier is accused of a crime, uh, they come to us.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: And some of it's administrative, but uh rape and larceny were the main ones.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: Some a manslaughter, I represented a soldier accused of manslaughter, unfortunately got acquittal there because that was what the right result was.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: Um but anytime a soldier the same thing with us, right?
9:16
SPEAKER_03: We're representing cops.
9:17
SPEAKER_03: What are the top three things we have to represent them on?
9:19
SPEAKER_03: Women, alcohol, and lying about women.
9:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's true.
9:24
SPEAKER_03: Okay, you got me on that one.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, and in Korea, everybody's there without their spouse for the most part, and uh it's a rough place, but that was a good job.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, being a defense attorney, one of the best things I've ever done.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, get back, uh, go to the Army Jag School, and I get an LLM, which is an advanced law degree, and again, that so they paid for three degrees for me, which is helpful.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh I want to talk later about hiring prosecutors if we can.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: And I all my degrees are paid for the arm by the army.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, get out, go to the Jag School, supposed to stay and teach.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: Instead, I get sent to Baghdad, Iraq to be the chief prosecutor for the Abu Ghraib defense attaining abuse cases, which was an experience of a lifetime.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Took about a year.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, that's the only time as a prosecutor that I could say, I need this and I would get it.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: Including I need an infantry brigade to secure this hearing and get it.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, it just there's no experience quite like that.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: And some of the best people I've ever known, still talked to, worked for.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, I lost when I was in Iraq, uh, the MP that taught me how to be a soldier.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: Um Darren Cunningham lost him there near me, and uh it it became a motivation for me in life because my uh colonel, after Javgett guy named Butch Tate, who is my mentor and friend, uh kind of picked me up off the ground and said, What you do now is you go forward and you honor your friend's memory by doing the right thing.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: And that's my motivation.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I come back to the Jag School, I teach criminal law, and I was kind of the voice of the defense bar in a sense.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: I I just think people in hard jobs need good representation.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh I do that, and then I go back to speak at Texas Tech.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh a guy named Mark Lanier is getting honored there.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: He's the best lawyer in the country.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh he asked me to join him at the time one of our kids was struggling with all the deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and it seemed like a thing to do.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: So for six years I worked for Mark Lanier.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he had just to give you context, one of his um verdicts was for nine billion dollars.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: He he is the best lawyer in the country.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: And and he's an exception amongst those national level trial lawyers, almost the man there, jackasses.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: A lot of them are.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't know why, but he is not.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: He's just a good man.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: Best man I've ever known.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: I worked for him for a while, but I missed prosecution.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: That's what I feel called to do.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: I feel called to protect.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: That's just some of us are wired that way.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: Some of us aren't.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and there was a guy named Carol Vance.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: You may recall Carol Vance.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: He and I were attorney.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir, at Harris County when they were real aggressive.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: And Carol.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: Like when they used to prosecute.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: I didn't say that.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: I didn't say that.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: It's getting better.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, let's give Tierra a little bit of a Sean's done a good job.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: He's doing the best he can.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: It's hard.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: When you have judges that are against you, anyway, that's we're later.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: Carol said if you want to be a prosecutor, the best place in the state of Texas is to go for work for Brett Ligan in Montgomery County.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: And so I left my very good-paying job, much to my wife's chagrin, and uh started as a misdemeanor prosecutor at the Montgomery County DA's office.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And um it was great.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: And I just worked my way up.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: Brett made me his first assistant.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: And for about a decade I was his first assistant, which was helpful because I got to get mentored for the job.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, mo a lot of DAs, they're defense attorneys, that's all they've done, or they don't have experience.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: Some of them know criminal, and to step into that role can create problems.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh Brett decided to leave me and uh resigned to run for Senate.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: That's Senator Brett Liggan.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: Senator Brett Liggan, who is so important to me, and I'm so grateful for him.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: I'll always be grateful for Brett, uh, who built the, I think, the best office in the state of Texas.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: I genuinely believe that.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: He he resigns.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm appointed by Governor Abbott.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful for that.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: And then I filed a run.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: Nobody else filed to run because they know what kind of job it is, I guess.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: And uh I'll be the DA for the next few years.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so that's how I got here.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: And and I am I am a I I I mentioned to you there may be a DA in the office who is more supportive of law enforcement or as supportive of law enforcement as me.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't think there's one more.
13:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
13:20
SPEAKER_03: I genuinely believe that.
13:20
SPEAKER_03: Well, it's the same thing the senator said to me about you yesterday, as a matter of fact.
13:24
SPEAKER_03: Before before Senator Liggan was DA Ligan, he was the he was an attorney for the Houston Police Officers Union for a long time.
13:31
SPEAKER_03: Uh good man.
13:32
SPEAKER_03: Um sometimes he's a little bit um um uh say he can be hard to handle.
13:40
SPEAKER_01: Listen, anybody that works alongside or has worked with Ray Hunt, you've got to be hard to handle.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: Let's just call that out there for what it is.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: You know, we love Ray.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: Ray loves him, and that's all you need.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
13:50
SPEAKER_03: That described me as a bull in bull in a China closet.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: But he uh Brett is the bull that brings his own China shop.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: And he man, he's tearing it up right now.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: We need him.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, shortly after you took office, there was a I was just telling your coworker that that came in today, there was a situation where a Montgomery County Sheriff's Deputy or Conroe, somebody in Montgomery County, a law enforcement representative or officer, got into a shooting.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: And the press was there out of Houston, and he calmly and boldly, next to the sheriff at that at that time, basically got on TV and said, We're gonna prosecute and we're gonna back our law enforcement officers.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: And at the time, me and Kevin were going through this huge campaign here in Travis County dealing with the Garza situation.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: It was ramping up.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: It was about the midterm or the mid-election process or the trial process of an officer that came into Williamson County and that trial was going on.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: And I remember watching that on TV or on social media wherever I saw that, going, man, hell yeah.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: We need more DAs like that, right?
14:49
SPEAKER_01: So you fast forward, and then when this situation kind of popped off, yeah, and I'll just we'll just kind of dive off into it.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: There was a there was a a suspect in Montgomery County, got into a pursuit, a vehicle pursuit, and at the end of the pursuit, he points a weapon at the at the officer and it and it ultimately ends in an officer-involved shooting.
15:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:06
SPEAKER_01: Uh the suspect in that was severely wounded, but did not pass away.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: Right.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: And just it was a communication break that happened.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: And the deputy wasn't contacted.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: Uh but later on, after, and so to y'all's point.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: Right.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: A plea agreement took place and it was 15 years.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: And so the the the deputy involved or multiple people that were associated with McGovern County uh sheriff's association had reached out and and were upset because he wasn't contacted.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's that kind of raised your alarm.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of how you and I got connected.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: And what was cool about this is you you you said it.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: You were like, man, sometimes these things happen.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: We're sorry that it it it it went that way.
15:46
SPEAKER_03: Well, let's be blunt.
15:47
SPEAKER_03: We we posted stuff on social media basically questioning your office and why the hell would you do that?
15:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it opened a lot of communication for us.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we appreciate that.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: And I I think uh when we're on the same side, uh holding each other accountable is helpful because we're trying to get better all the time.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: And honest accountability is only good.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: It's only good.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, I'm happy to talk about that um a little bit.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: Let me just give you a little background.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: So uh we've got a defendant in our county, uh, he's got a a warrant for reckless driving out of Fort Bend.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh he gets pulled over, traffic stop, wide right turn.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Officer stops him, no signs of impairment at that point, although he'll he's twice the legal limit, probably on cocaine too.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: Uh he the officer stops.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: That's okay in Harris County, too.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Dave's with Travis for sure.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, and he's in a jaguar, and I've got a great joke about the difference between a jaguar and a porcupine, but my mom might be listening.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you that after we're off the podcast.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh Deputy says, We're gonna, you know, you got a warrant, and you're gonna come with us.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: He says, No, I ain't, and he heads off.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: And there's two kinds of evading there's uh good ones and bad ones.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: This is a good one.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, the guy that runs 80 miles an hour, a mile up the road and pulls over, that's gonna be hard.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: But this guy, high speeds, 10 more minutes, a little unusual.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: In my county, there's 28 agencies that submit cases to us.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: And normally when we have evading, you've got a lot of officers.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: In this case, uh, we got Deputy Betancourt, who was the rookie of the year this year, tremendous officer.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh is the only guy really behind him and does an excellent job, really good job.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: They spike that Jaguar, he comes to a stop.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh Betancourt exits his vehicle.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: This guy exits the vehicle with a pistol.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: You know, I've I've I've uh listened to some of your podcasts.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: Video, boy, it's a gun that kicks and shoots.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: It really is.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: And so it's hard to tell.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't look like he's pointing the weapon at the deputy yet, but he didn't get a chance to because deputy betancourt fires on him as he should have.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: And I want to make this real important point here, because I don't I don't know who I'll listen to this, but and I'm only speaking for my county.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, I can't speak for but I want to tell an officer of my county that if you're in that situation, you fire until there is no threat, right?
17:53
SPEAKER_00: If you can shoot them once, you can if you can shoot them one time, you can shoot them all the time.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: That's the way we train them.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's right.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: And but it's not the way some DAs look at you.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, I and I'm only speaking for my county.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: And uh anyway, multiple uh rounds, which is appropriate, and then renders aid when it's appropriate to do so.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes people criticize about why are you not rushing over and putting a tourniquet on.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, we don't know the threat's over yet.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, um so he's charged with evading with the motor vehicle.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: We initially think he's habitual, meaning he's 25 to life.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: Turns out he's got a couple convictions, uh 2020 pen trip, and then a 2010, uh basically a state jail trip for fraud, possession of stolen property.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, so he's not 25 to life, but he's two to 20 on the evading, and it's soft public servant five to ninety-not of life.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, we end up pleading that to 15 for a lot of reasons.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: It's an unusual case in that, and this has happened repeatedly, he gets shot, he's in the hospital.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: We, unlike most counties, we take charges that day.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: We accept them at the time.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: A few counties do this, we're one of them.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: Our view is to help the officer get there, not be an obstacle to the charges, which is another talk.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: But he's he's at they have to sit on him in the hospital because he's hurt.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: And we the the sheriffs have a great sheriff, their resources are like everybody else, they're thin.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: And sitting on a guy in the hospital for a long time is tricky.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: So we agree that we dismiss the charges.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: Makes me a little uncomfortable because he could walk out of there or get out of there from a friend.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: But we watch him, and then as he gets better, we charge him again.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: He's in the jail, it's a lot of resources there.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: We end up pleading it to 15, could be more, could be less.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, but the significant mistake we made, and it was, um, was that we try to in a case like that, we want to talk to the deputy.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: We want to talk to the the victim generally, but a deputy.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: Right.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: And the mistake there was a systematic one, and it's on me because I've been in charge of that office on the administrative side for a decade.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: And you know, you had a chief and a felony to prosecutor who had that before, and then a new chief and a new felony prosecutor inherited.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: We rotate not as much as some big counties, but when you do, there's always a chance for a drop ball in the outfield.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: And there were notes in the file that made it sound like they had talked to the deputy and they hadn't.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: And so they make that resolution.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: And and to be clear, you know, uh just um two cards on the table again.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: When we talk to a victim, it it we may or may not do what they ask us.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's a thing.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: We we're gonna tell we we do a rip call.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: What's is there restitution?
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Is there money owed?
20:19
SPEAKER_00: What's your injury if that's the case?
20:21
SPEAKER_00: And punishment.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: What do you think about punishment?
20:23
SPEAKER_00: That matters to us, what you think about punishment.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: In this case, if we had talked to him, we still may have had the same resolution, but we owed the man the conversation.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: And we didn't give it to him, and that's on me.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh we fixed that, and that was helpful.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure, because I'm sure this has happened other times that we just didn't catch it.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, we with a little bit of editing in our system, now we'll know, okay, we've made a there's there's indications here of an offer, but we haven't talked to our victim, and we can fix that.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate that.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful for that.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:52
SPEAKER_03: Well, as we talked about on the phone, cops don't normally think of ourselves as victims.
20:57
SPEAKER_03: I know.
20:58
SPEAKER_03: We're the complaining witness.
20:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
21:00
SPEAKER_03: We're never the victim, even when we are.
21:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
21:03
SPEAKER_03: So uh but yeah, I think I think it's important for people to realize police officers who have been assaulted, who have been in these situations, they've got the same rights as other victims, complaining witnesses, whatever you want to call them.
21:16
SPEAKER_03: Right.
21:17
SPEAKER_03: They just don't always avail themselves of it.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, and you know, it's interesting.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh I have a very law enforcement friendly community, good commissioners, really good commissioners, by the way, very supportive.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: But it's frustrating sometimes when we try cases with an officer, the juries will, especially like an assault on public servant, it's almost like they assume, well, this is just part of the job to get assaulted.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: No, you're right.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: And we've had these weird results there.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but in this case, I mean, the truth is the guy that got out of that vehicle wanted to murder that deputy.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, he didn't get a chance to point it necessarily.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Kind of tough call there.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: But but that deputy does he he was as invested in that case as any person's ever been investigated.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: And we owed in that conversation.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: And he is he is a I mean, rookie of the year tells you.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: A lot.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Like he's ready to go, and I hope he'll have a great career in our county.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, there's actually another part of that that you know, highlighting this was helpful to me because it was another little teaching point, which is that assault on public servant, if we take that to trial, it's going to be a little challenging because we'll fight about whether it was pointing or whatever.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: But I think in good faith we can make that case.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: I wish we'd have had him plead to that offense because I don't know if this guy died in jail.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's in bad shape physically.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm not wishing that he will die in prison, rather.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: But if if he should get out and encounter another deputy, another officer again, I want the record to reflect what kind of guy he is.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, evading with the motor vehicle, deadly weapon finding, that's helpful.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: Keep him in prison for a while.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: But I want notice, you know, for future advocates.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: So that was a teaching point.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: I will say that prosecutor, uh, you know, I wish I could bring her here with you.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, the big story in prosecution, this is the real thing that matters to us.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: I know we're talking about state prosecutor and rogue DAs and progressive DAs, but there's an epidemic in the state of Texas and the country.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: It is hard to hire and keep the prosecutors.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: And this young lady, she has just given her life, her soul, or spirit uh to taking care of victims and is as supportive of law enforcement as anybody you'll find.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: And she's got experience.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, she's a warrior in the courtroom.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: She's kind of like me, a blue-collar person that just a sheer grit will cares about people.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: And so she wants the right result too.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm uh Tamra's just a fantastic young lady, and I'm so proud of her.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: But teaching point, boy, if we're gonna make this plea, you know, let's do it in a way that favors us.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: We'll give you some maybe time back, but it'll be under the conditions we want because we've got you by the short hairs here.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, uh, I do appreciate you bringing it to our attention.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: It made us a little better.
23:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: And we always want to be a little better.
23:47
SPEAKER_03: And I also want to point out, to her credit, that day that you texted me, by the time you and I actually got on the phone and talked, she had already called Tyler and they'd already had this conversation.
23:57
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: Right.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, and and you know what we the first indications that we had a problem were the deputy had talked to his supervisors.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: Hey, they plugged this case in talk to me.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: So Tamara reached out to him directly, apologized, full throat, no excuse, apology.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: I messed up.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: And then my chain of command, my uh senior leaders talked to her, uh this deputy senior leaders.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: We screwed this up.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: And I appreciate that's the way it ought to be.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we ought to own our mistakes.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: It's like that's the only way to get better.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: Excuses don't help anybody.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: And we we're not about fixing the blame, we're about fixing the problem.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:30
SPEAKER_03: And in all honesty, the deputies brought it to us.
24:34
SPEAKER_03: And in a perfect world, we would have reached out to you and said, hey, what the heck?
24:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
24:40
SPEAKER_03: You know.
24:40
SPEAKER_03: Uh so there's a there's learning experience here for us as well.
24:44
SPEAKER_03: For sure.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful for it though, because it gives me an opportunity to be part of this, to talk to you gentlemen, yeah, to help TMPA.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: And I I do and let me let me I'm gonna make a little commercial for TMPA.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's go.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: Um and I think you both will affirm this.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: It the hardest job in the United States of America is to be a police officer.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: Full stop.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: No jobs harder.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: The standards imposed upon a police officer come from a classroom, not from the street.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And the perceptions of what a police officer is supposed to do and what a police officer can do in any circumstance are different.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: And so if your police officer is in trouble, you talk to your attorney and you talk to him early and you do what the attorney says.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: If you wait till the last, I think you've said, Kevin, if you wait till the ninth inning when the scores run up, it's hard to undo that.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: But I'm just telling you, if your police officer in this I use more graphic terms.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, my mom might be watching.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and that is my heart to to to take care of these men and women.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: But just I I know you think, okay, well, the system works.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: It does work, but it works better when you have objective legal advice that you follow.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: And depending on where you are in the state, it can go sideways on you pretty quick because there is there's this a gap between how people think police officers ought to act and how human ability allows you to act in the circumstance.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: And unless you've approached a car at night not knowing who's inside, you you can't you can't explain that.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: You can only feel that.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: And that officer is going to be helpful to you.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: So if you're not a member of TMPA uh or an organization like it, I don't want to get into facts, but no, no.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: But we agree.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: But this is a great one.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: And and it join it, use it.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: Use it.
26:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, don't wait until you need us before you before you sign up.
26:28
SPEAKER_03: That's a that's a difficult conversation to have.
26:30
SPEAKER_03: One of the and we talked about this a little bit as well, and and and I think you're in the same boat we're in.
26:36
SPEAKER_03: One of the bigger problems we have is that our bosses, our our voters, the citizens that we serve, they don't understand why cops do what they do the way they do it.
26:48
SPEAKER_03: And we don't do a very good job.
26:51
SPEAKER_03: We've never historically done a very good job of explaining that.
26:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
26:54
SPEAKER_03: You know, teaching our citizens why we do what we do the way we do it.
26:58
SPEAKER_03: And I think the same thing is true of prosecutors.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: It is.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: There's two ways to, you know, I've felt like this is the best job I've ever had to be a prosecutor.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: But it's almost not the best paid, though.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, no.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: No.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you though, you know, it does pay in other ways.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, working with men and women who are um trying to do good and be good at doing good, it's his own reward.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: It really is.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh and and I mentioned on my, you know, my education was paid for by the United States Army.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: But for the folks that, you know, they come out of law school with$200,000,$300,000 debt to get paid$90,000 a year uh when they could get paid two or$300,000 a year, is this a different thing.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: But but the only way to understand what we do is to either do it or for us to explain it and it takes a while.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: Same for police officers.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: If you're a police officer, you get it.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: If you're not, it just takes a lot of education.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: And we try to do that in trial, but sometimes it's tough.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: When do you think, let me ask you this.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: When when I started law enforcement, when Kevin started law enforcement, hell, when you when you got into practice as a as in the with the DA's office, and it I'm not suggesting that it's not like this now, but when do you think DA's offices in other counties, one to the south of you and what we're sitting in right now, when do you think some of these counties got away from viewing law enforcement like we should be on the same team?
28:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: I I'll tell you, I've been recruiting for now over a decade, and so I've seen it.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: And and the peak moment was that 2020 summer, the George Floyd summer.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we used to get post something and I'd get hundreds of resumes for a position.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: And then it just started dwindling down.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: And now, at least I still get them.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: Some counties don't get them, but that summer something broke in in the country.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: And it's getting better, the pendulum's swinging back.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: But I go talk to law school classes and and I just see it.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, our young prosecutors would get texts from their peers from law school.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: How can you be a prosecutor?
28:47
SPEAKER_00: Prosecutor, you're part of the problem.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: And and police suffered from that.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: And it's these are people teaching them.
28:53
unknown: Yeah.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Old professors.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, well, that's a whole different thing.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: There, if you have a prosecutor in a law school, it it will make all a difference because they're so influenced by their faculty.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of the faculty are defense attorneys or civil rights attorneys, and there's a place for that, but there's no balance to it.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: But I I I think something happened to the United States in that summer, and a lot happened that summer, COVID and George Floyd, all the rest, that there was just this shift in the pendulum.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and we're trying to recover from it still.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: But I I do have I have a number of things I want to say about the progressive prosecution movement, and I'm just itching to say it.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: Please go ahead and do it.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, okay.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, go ahead.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: Let me make this case.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: Um Should we tell your mom to turn the offers?
29:34
SPEAKER_00: No, no, I'm gonna be careful here.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Um is a little, you know, when you say the word priority, people misuse it.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: I have priorities.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: You can't have priority.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: Priority means what's the most important.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: And either priority is either defendants or victims.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean you can't take care of defendants.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: We have drug court, DWI court, veteran treatment court.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: A lot of our folks are just impulsive, you know, not everybody needs to go to jail, not everybody needs to go to prison.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: Get that.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: But is your priority victims or defendants?
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And the progressive movement says, no, the priority is the defendant.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: And the victim becomes a supporting character in the story of the defendant.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: And they say, you know, we'd like to give this person a chance.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd like to give that person a chance.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to give the victim a chance to recover from their assault, uh, from their crime.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to give the victim a chance to not be a victim again.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: Um, they talk about, you know, we'd like to see people change, sure.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: But there are people who won't change, and somebody's got to stop them.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: And the progressive viewpoint is we never stop them.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: Um there's this idea of look, we want to show compassion.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm all for that.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm a compassionate person by nature, but I want to reserve my compassion for the victim first because that's the priority.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: That's the essence of it.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: Is the defendant the priority or the victim the priority?
30:49
SPEAKER_00: I I I have a little thought experience for you.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: I have a good friend.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh he's a former A USA, former DA, and now teaches at South Texas.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: He's such a good man, Tom Hogan.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: And he gave me this the other day.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: He said, Imagine if there was a state um defense attorney, like we were talking about state pro state defense attorney.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: And the state defense attorney looked out to all his people and said, you know what?
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Some of our uh clients, they need to do more time.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh we need to reject some of these deals.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: They need to do more time.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: And some of these trials that we could win, let's just plead those out.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: People would lose their mind.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: Because it's an adversarial system.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: When you've got prosecutors working harder for the defendant to avoid accountability, um, then the world's upside down.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:31
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
31:33
SPEAKER_03: Trust me, we we live in it.
31:34
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
31:35
SPEAKER_03: But to me, there's also the issue of what about the future victims and the future perpetrators?
31:40
SPEAKER_03: There ought to be something that we're doing that influences those that keeps people from becoming victims.
31:45
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
31:45
SPEAKER_03: And keeps people from becoming criminals.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, the I uh the irony of the progressive prosecutors is they show compassion to defendant by not holding them accountable.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: Those defendants go back into the community and hurt people.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: The same kind of folks that you want to take care of, and they just don't.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: Um I uh there's another side of this too, which concerns me.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: There is a group that progressive prosecutors are all about prosecuting, and that's police officers.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: They cannot wait to get to them.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh, my son-in-law is a police officer.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: I love him.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: He's a great uh husband to my daughter, great uh father to my grandkids.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: T MPA member by the time.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think we'll look into that.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: I probably should have looked that up.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: He's in uh Arlington, is that helping me?
32:29
SPEAKER_01: That's 60 60 40.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: That that seems like a good police department by the Arlington Police Department.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh and I'm grateful he's there.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: He was a youth minister and he became a police officer.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: But if if he said, hey, uh I'm thinking about moving to Travis County, I'd say uh don't do it.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: And and I and I don't want to disparage any of the police officers in Travis County.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: I remember Brett and I were talking about once about people in Seattle and Travis County, and you know, maybe they should just leave, but they've got reasons to be where they are.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: They're doing the best to hold the line for people they love.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: A lot of them have grown up here, they hate to see this happening, and they're just trying to hold the line.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: And so um I I was at a meeting, as it sounds like name dropping, I guess it is, but I was at a meeting with the head of the FBI a few months ago, strange meeting, and uh I was talking to somebody very senior in DPS, I won't mention who they were, but they talked about um there had been about 300 arrests by troopers connected to protests in Austin, Travis County.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: And the arrests were for possession of control substance, possession of a firearm by a felon.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: They were arrests that were legitimate, they were arrests that needed to be uh, you know, prosecuted, and they were all dismissed.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: All of them.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, if I'm a police officer, I say, Well, what's the point?
33:37
SPEAKER_00: What you want me to maintain the law, hold the line, protect this community, but if I arrest them and it's going to be dismissed over and over and over again, I mean it's got to be discouraging.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the first time I make a mistake, and it's not a mistake necessarily that's legitimate, it's just one in your eyes, and then I get indicted.
33:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I don't know how you would demoralize police officers more than letting the guilty go free and coming after them.
34:02
SPEAKER_03: Well, we said this.
34:02
SPEAKER_03: Well, I don't know specifically which cases we're talking about in Austin, but the vast majority of the prosecutions of the police officers didn't come out of protest.
34:10
SPEAKER_03: They came out of riots.
34:12
SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
34:12
SPEAKER_03: And I'm I mean when I say a riot, I mean I w I was talking to a DPS, he's a lieutenant now, he was a sergeant at the time, that was there trying to protect the Austin Police Department during all of that.
34:24
SPEAKER_03: And he said when he finally got a chance to go home, he had to call his wife and say, Hey, would you open the garage door for me?
34:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:31
SPEAKER_03: Because he never parked his squad car inside the garage, but this time his car didn't have any fenders or any glass left on it, you know, and he wanted to put it in the garage until they could get it to the shop.
34:40
SPEAKER_03: He said when he got home and his wife, she says his wife didn't know why he was asking, yeah, she would not open the garage and was standing there when he pulled in and she broke down crying.
34:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:49
SPEAKER_03: Because her husband had gone through that.
34:51
SPEAKER_03: And then the DA goes on there and says, Well, they were mostly peaceful protests.
34:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:56
SPEAKER_03: Bullshit.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, and think about that, sir.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the protesters who many of them are committing illegitimate crimes.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: If you're a felon, you can't possess a firearm.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: That case is dismissed.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: The officers who are sometimes fighting for their lives, uh trying to master a complex situation to protect everybody, including themselves, get charged with offenses.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: And I and I, you know, I obviously got to look at each case individually, but there's two things there.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: One, uh, you're not really valuing my um willingness to put my life down for the rest of this community.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: And then secondly, the people who go after the family members of police officers, uh I mean, uh, social media in particular.
35:33
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh I I think about this all the time.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: It's it's you know, when you're in the military, you you go into a danger situation, you know when you're in danger and you come back, and that's part of it.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: When you're a police officer, you're in danger when you leave the front door and you're not safe until you get back.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: And every family member knows that.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: And so they're bearing that weight is my husband, is my wife, whoever, going to come back, and then to get attacked on social media for these people who are trying to do what they can.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: It never ends.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: It never ends.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's 24-7.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
36:01
SPEAKER_01: Right.
36:01
SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, one of the things that we've we've said for many years is that I personally think this, and I think Kevin would probably agree, I wish there could be some kind of redactment of party affiliation with district attorneys and and judges.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: Basically, anybody that's in law enforcement or or or criminal justice should not have a party affiliated with them, whether it be Republican, Democrat, whatever.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: And I think maybe that may curve some of the issue, specifically like in Travis County, but but to your point, you don't know.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's say if it was um like the school board races are, you know, they don't say Republican or Democrat.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: But I think a progressive democ a progressive candidate will get up and say, look, this is what I'm gonna do.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do XYZ and and um I would I man, I there's an old Republican rule, you don't talk bad about other Republicans.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: And there's a little bit of that.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: I don't I I I am reluctant to talk about bad about other uh DAs because it's a hard job, but uh I mean at some point uh Governor Abbott and I were talking about the state prosecute thing.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: And uh I remember a friend said, well, if the voters want to elect this person or that person, that's their call.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: The problem is that the victims are never gonna be in the majority.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: Nobody's ever gonna speak up for them in a in a political sense.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: And so Governor Abbott is seeing people any county he's responsible for.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: He's taking an oath to take care of every Texan in every county, every county.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: And he these victims come to him and they're pleading with him.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh we're getting killed, we're getting robbed, nobody's doing anything about it.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: And so he's trying to figure out what I can do about that.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: And it's so frustrating.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: And this danger here, I I I uh if you're not careful, you you try to address the problem in one county and you may impact other counties in a negative way.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: It's it's really tricky, the that kind of thing.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: As I said, you know, what if you make a state prosecutor and the state prosecutor is a state prosecutor that wants to go into counties and prosecute police officers?
37:49
SPEAKER_00: There's an issue with that.
37:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
37:50
SPEAKER_03: So let's let's also at some point at some point the voters have to be uh they have to understand they're gonna live with the consequences of their vote.
37:57
SPEAKER_03: Yes, and they do slowly.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: It's just in the process of that people get hurt.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:02
SPEAKER_01: Last week there was a committee hearing here in Austin, and it had about uh the oversight committee, and it specifically dealt with district attorneys and and the and the power five.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: Uh one being Travis County.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: And one of the topics that came up in multi very what, probably two or three hours of testimony, the Ren Collective come up, and different issues within Travis County specifically, but also Harris and Dallas.
38:23
SPEAKER_01: Give us some insight from a prosecutor standpoint, a district attorney standpoint on what exactly the Ren Collective is, what you know about it, and how how you feel like it can impact district attorney offices across the state.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh, you know, there are people that are just wired one way or another.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm wired to protect people.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: There are some lawyers that are wired to, you know, represent uh accused and and change society.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that's right or wrong, it's just different.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: It's my understanding a Ren uh group is started by a lawyer who was kind of wired that way.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: And then to build up, and what they intend to do is I I think you've got to have a DA that's open to it and believes in himself or herself to begin with, but then to give you the language and the policy and the talking points to uh make your progressive prosecution palatable to the public.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: That's what they do.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't I I mean, you know, I'm in I'm a politician now, which and uh you you do need you need folks to donate to your campaign, you need folks to support your campaign, but the hope is that nobody who gives you money gets better treatment or gets more of a say just because they gave you money.
39:27
unknown: Yeah.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know every politician follows that.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, there are politicians in and jurisdictions that they have to they serve the electorate they think is out there.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, but as a prosecutor, you're supposed to do what's right, not necessarily what helps you win votes for the sake of winning votes.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know how influential I I feel like Wren, um I wouldn't agree with it almost anything they'd say.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they I think their end state is uh we don't want anybody in prison.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: And that'd be great if we lived with angels, but we don't live with angels.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: The reality is we live with some bad folks who won't stop being bad, and the only way we can stop them is to put them in confinement.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't accept that premise, then don't be in law enforcement.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, and how about it?
40:10
SPEAKER_03: How about if we we challenge them with this?
40:12
SPEAKER_03: Okay, come up with a better model.
40:13
SPEAKER_03: Right.
40:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we we we will grant you prisons don't, they're not the best places in the world.
40:19
SPEAKER_03: They may not be the best way of freedom criminals.
40:21
SPEAKER_03: Right.
40:22
SPEAKER_03: What is?
40:23
unknown: Yeah.
40:23
SPEAKER_03: Because just turn them back out on the society is not working any better than the prisons at least guard the citizens for a given amount of time.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, we've you know, I I I'm kind of a I'm a little bit of a nerd and student of other uh systems, and you know, there's some countries where they will lash people, and we've said we don't want to do that.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: And that's right, that's fine.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: Amputations in some countries.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: In some cultures, they would uh essentially um uh put them outside the society, right?
40:51
SPEAKER_00: That's not an option.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: And parts of our history and in England uh definitely was on the table for almost everything.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: We don't do that.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: So this is the way we do it.
41:01
SPEAKER_00: We detain people for a period of time, and and whether it deters others, I don't know, but it will deter that person.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, a most common uh case that we try in Montgomery County is sexual assault of a child.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: We will try as many as anybody in the state based on our numbers, uh, try about 70 felonies, still less than 1% of the total cases will.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: But sexual assault trial, and I'll tell you, um the the thinking is this if we believe the child, and sometimes you're not sure, but if we believe the child, number one, number two, we believe we can prove it beyond reasonable doubt, that all sometimes you can't say that.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the defendant will pick a time and place where nobody's watching.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the reports are delayed a long time, and sometimes you just can't make it.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: But if we believe the child and we believe that we can prove that case beyond reasonable doubt, then prison is the only reasonable response to sexually assaulting a child.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: Some jurisdictions will put them on probation, and and there may be some extreme circumstances where that's warranted, but but it's just a it's a philosophy.
41:56
SPEAKER_00: If you abuse a child that way, then you going home and occasionally taking a urinalysis is not sufficient enough consequence for this behavior.
42:04
SPEAKER_03: And people have to understand, I spent part of my career specializing in child sexual molestations.
42:11
SPEAKER_03: Child abusers, child molesters never molest twice.
42:16
SPEAKER_03: There's the rare occasions when they do it once and they feel so much remorse that they don't ever do it again.
42:22
SPEAKER_03: But if they do it twice, they're not going to stop.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: And and there's no rehabilitative, there's no there's no tool that we have that will make them stop.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: Except a sell.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: And that's just a reality.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: I, you know, that's the the progressive prosecutor.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: It feels like they, to me, that they live in a world that they wish existed, not the world that we do live in.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, and I I get a little worked up about it because they're real people being hurt.
42:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we we don't we're we're not perfect.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: We've dropped the ball in all kinds of cases, and often I can't get enough justice that I that we want.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: But good night, if if you live in a place where you don't believe that the police are gonna be supported, where bad guys are gonna go to jail when they go to jail, then it's chaos.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: Nobody can feel free until they first feel safe.
43:07
SPEAKER_03: Well, plus you've got to walk into a courtroom with a panel of jurors who, by and large, don't want to believe that kind of stuff happens in their town, in their city, in their community.
43:17
SPEAKER_03: And now you've got to convince them, not only does it happen, yes, it it did happen right here.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: A good friend of mine who's a tremendous prosecutor, very experienced, 20-year-plus prosecutor, which are rarer and rarer.
43:28
SPEAKER_00: She tried a case sexual assault to child where the defendant admitted to the indecency and and the jury acquitted, and they just couldn't believe they would rather believe that this was an accident than that was on purpose, because to live in that world is hard.
43:40
SPEAKER_00: Which goes to the point anything can and does happen at trial.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I we've seen strange results, and so getting 12 people to agree on something with certainty.
43:50
SPEAKER_00: Think about that, how hard it is for us to get people to agree on a minor things, get them all to agree on a serious thing is tough.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the reasons we resolve cases with pleas.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: That, and I told you we're try about one percent of our cases.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: If we tried ten percent of our cases, most of my law enforcement at some point would be up at the courthouse waiting.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: Um you'd get a jury summons in my county every Monday and they'd have to build three jails and I'd have to expand my office from sixty two prosecutors to three hundred.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: It's just what that's the reality of it.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean it I I like to think that the conservative is willing to make changes but recognizes the reality of the situation.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: No you're right the criminals are better funded better armed.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah no doubt.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: Well man was is there anything else we we we should hit on?
44:32
SPEAKER_00: No I just you know I I will say this the law enforcement of Montgomery County I I don't I've been around the state quite a bit I I go to other DA offices.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: I I spoke to a thousand prosecutors last week about how we can be better.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: And I've been to a lot of DA offices and I'm just really proud of my office and proud of my people but I'm also proud of law enforcement Montgomery County.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: My sheriff Wesley Doolittle uh my constables, my police chiefs uh they're good men uh they they have good men and good women working for them uh and I'm gonna be there for them.
45:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be there for them.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't and it you know to support police doesn't mean you look the other way uh every time you know if if a police officer does the wrong thing then it's honest accountability.
45:13
SPEAKER_00: But but they need the benefit of the doubt before we start throwing rocks is the gist of it.
45:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:19
SPEAKER_03: By the way when you talk to John Buckle Chief of uh Commodore former DA investigator by the way and uh he he was president of the Commodore Police Association years ago when I first met him way back good man uh last time I talked to him he was under consideration for the chief job said congratulations I owe him a lunch or something he he is fighting the good fight and he's done a lot of great things in that he got him a nice pay raise he did I don't know if he's gonna get the credit for it.
45:45
SPEAKER_00: You know we we got county pay raises to kind of match Harris County for our county employees and then John you know how it works.
45:51
SPEAKER_00: If John doesn't get pay raises then it just people good man.
45:56
SPEAKER_03: He has to yeah for sure yeah I I just I also say just I appreciate the two of you um police officers need a voice forum and you're doing that and I'm grateful for that I I yeah it is the hardest job in the United States it gets far less appreciation than never will and they need people in their corner that really care and you too do and I appreciate that too well we appreciate you and we appreciate the fact that you're doing what you're doing for the citizens in Montgomery County not just for the cops but for the entire county we're sorry it started the way it did as it turns out we're glad it happened you haven't got a chance for and you and you've got a friend in me.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah yep we greatly appreciate you coming down we end the podcast with three rapid fire questions I hope you hope you've already studied I thought about it you did I mean you'll be disappointed but go ahead what's your favorite comp car uh I grew up in a Caron Vic okay I like them uh they're nice when you have a fleet you're gonna be fine yeah I agree I agree sounds like the voice of experience yeah maybe what's your favorite uh cop movie or live from a cop movie yeah you know um I like Jeff Bridge's character in Hell in High Water and I like the the relationship he has with his partner that civilians wouldn't understand giving each other a hard time really love each other.
47:08
SPEAKER_00: But my favorite cop movie and the movie that I would ask every American to watch is in to watch it's a great one.
47:13
SPEAKER_00: And it it I you know I talked I told you I talked to a thousand prosecutors last week and I talked about police and I said you know I know you can be frustrated your interaction as a police officer but just remember this and this is what that movie teaches the first line of the job description of a police officer in this country is to be brave.
47:30
SPEAKER_00: To be brave and that movie talks about that the braver you're required to be a police officer.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: So whatever else you're gonna talk about whatever else you're gonna complain about you got to start there.
47:38
SPEAKER_00: That's a tremendous movie.
47:39
SPEAKER_00: Every American otherwise not perfect movie but real good yeah no for sure what's your favorite drink of toys for everybody by yourself be disappointed so uh my great advice is I don't drink uh there's a reason for that uh it's a good reason but uh I like to be around people I'm kind of like a Mormon just not good at that either if I was one but I don't drink uh but I do enjoy being around people uh when they can relax and be themselves you know it's a it's another thing that people don't appreciate this kind of gap is that every police officer is a human being uh with hurts and lives and uh family and all that and I like being police around police officers when they can just put the guard down a little bit.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah there you go Sir Mike rightly appreciate you coming down oh man so good to be yep yep Kevin thank you very much last couple weeks we got some uh we're kind of I guess we'll be busy with the phone board meeting coming up a couple weeks we'll give you an update on that if there's any changes we'll be sure to update you guys appreciate you stopping by man it's good seeing you oh it's always always a pleasure man yeah wish I could come by here more often well you can it's always an open door policy it's your house I mean he's just around the corner on no kidding no kidding you know like I was telling you though we don't get paid to be in this building we don't pay to be out there too that's fair that's good it's not often that we're in the building not at headquarters that's right right that's right yeah you guys take care stay safe God bless you and as always but God bless Texas we're out