WILL CARLOS GARCIA BRING PEYTON PLACE TO PORT OF BROWNSVILLE?

By Juan Montoya

Now that the proverbial other shoe has fallen and Brownsville Chief of Police Carlos Garcia has been handed the plum of the chiefhood at the Port of Brownsville to ride herd over the seven police officers valiantly guarding our Homelanbd Security from nefarious aliens that would destroy our democracy, will the passions be transferred to the Golden Ditch?

This blog predicted way back in October that Garcia was a shoo-in given his political and personal connections to Brownsville Navigation District Chairman John Reed via Rosendo "El Piñatero" Escareño, his campaign manager in his port election last time around.

Garcia was among some 25 applicants for the position, but the outcome was a given way before the press release extolling the virtues of the BPD chief was thrown to the four winds.

"It's was a done deal from the get-go that Garcia would get the position," a former port official on condition of anonymity."Barring any strange shenanigans like an actual fair seelcti9on process, it was just a matter of time before the announcement was made. There may be some loose ends (Garcia) needs to take care of, but this is something he really wants to do."

Garcia would replace legendary lawman George Gavito, who left the port amid a cloud of confusion and controversy. "Garcia is the flip side of Gavito. He'll be a good fit. He knows how to keep the lid on things. Take the recent case of the police dispatcher making harassing phone calls and threats to her husband's movida online. That didn't come to light until after Garcia announced he was leaving. The board doesn't need anyone making waves. He'll be a good fit."
The connection between Gracia and the port apparently hinges on the role of Rosendo Escareno, familiarly known as "El Pinatero" because of his ownership of a party store. Escareno ran Reed's campaign and is well known to have a close personal relationship with both Reed and Garcia.
Sources at the port said that when Reed came on board, that was the death knell for the Gavito who was a thorn on the side of the BND chairman's brother-in-law Mark Hoskins, vice president for operations of Gulf Stream Marine, the largest stevedore company at the port.
That company has been the object of scrutiny because of several workplace deaths (some say five in the past decade alone) by the federal Occupational and Safety Hazard Administration (OSHA), and by extension the port's police department.
Now, with Reed's man behind the badge, Hoskins may well get a breather from the pesky cops at the port nosing around looking for safety violations and the like.
Still, the critics say that the selection of Garcia for the top police spot at the port doesn't pass the stench test.
Garcia is currently the third-highest paid city employee only behind City manager Charlie Cabler at $159,120 (an ex-cop himself) and Assistant City Manager for Finance Pete Gonzales, at $115,696.

The position of chief over at the Gilded Ditch is a Professional Employee 3 (PE3). The minimum salary is $52,743.60 and the maximum is $92,301.30, to be negotiated withe the eventual candidate selected.

Now, unless BND chairman John Reed single-handedly (and arbitrarily) ups the ante and raises the salary to match his buddy's current take, it will definitely mean a step down in salary for Garcia of almost $15,000.

There are some perks, however.

While Garcia was responsible for about 250 police officers in a city of almost 200,000, he will now be the head of a formidable seven-officer force and ride herd on a dwindling port force that has steadily decreased from a high of almost 6,000 workers in the different port leasees to a number estimated to hover between 2,000 to 3,000.

But there's passion seething in the sultry Gulf of Mexico breezes. A recent incident involving the stabbing of a port employee by a disgruntled estranged spouse fits right in to the force Garcia is leaving behind. The scuttlebutt is that the woman was involved in hanky-panky with a port security employee. And the loose tongues also say that Garcia himself has been tempted by the whims of passion.

The hiring practices of the port's administration are also called into question by the recent hire of new harbormaster Michael Davis, who was fired by the Port of Palm Beach in March 2007 for reporting what he determined to be illegal searches by that police force of cars belonging to cruise ship passengers.

He sued, alleging that the port's Executive Director at the time, Lori Baer, had him fired in retaliation for raising concerns about the potentially illegal searches.

Port of Palm Beach commissioners approved a $487,500 settlement in the case.

Davis, now 47, was fired just five years shy of 30 years in the public seaport business, at which point would have earned a pension based on his previous five-years' salary — typically, a worker's highest-earning years. As of two years ago, he was still looking for work at state seaports but had struggled to find any, opting to work for minimum wage in between.

"Those jobs are few and far between right now," Davis told a Palm Berach newspaper. "I've been looking for almost three years and haven't found anything."

Well, now we have him at the Port of Brownsville drawing a nice salary (between $70,000 to $80,000) along with assistant harbormaster Keri Dann, herself an applicant, whose claim to harbormaster experience was her stint as a Coast Guard officer and a golf course hostess in Laguna Vista. At 24, she was earning $59,000 as an assistant and was upped to $69,000 as interim while the search was conducted for a permanent harbormaster.

"Who is watching what's going on at the port?" asked a longshoreman at their hall across from Blanco's bar off FM 511. "They're handing out these outrageous salaries to certain people while maintaining the workers' wages at the port at the lowest union-breaking on the Gulf Coast. "Where's Reed, Martin Arambula, Ralph Cowen, and carlos Masso on this? Is anyone on the board even interested in what direction this port is taking?"