MAN IN THE MIDDLE: ASST. DA GARZA CONTORTS FOR SAENZ

By Juan Montoya
As the water carrier for Cameron County District Attorney Luis V. Saenz before the commissioners court, Asst. DA Rene Garza has exhibited more verbal and mental contortions than U.S. gymnast Olympian Olga Korbut.

Hehas, for example, explained away Saenz's mishandling of the DA's Imprest fund and his use of his credits card in the county while at the same time getting a vehicle allowance.

And he was the point man with local attorneys after the DA instituted a new contract with Avertest, a drug-test company that was requiring defendants to test as many times as five times a week, leading their lawyers to complain that their jobs were being endangered and that their clients' finances could not support the new regimen.

Some defendants – with convictions not related to alcohol or drugs – were also required to test frequently, and to pay a fee for the testing.

Garza, who was the Asst. DA who Saenz sent to Kansas City to contract with Avertest, took the brunt of abuse form outraged local attorneys who though the draconian requirements that company placed on their clients was unjust.

"He is surrounded by people like Rene Garza who are totally out of touch with reality," said one. "Rene has the political pulse of a cadaver. Luis Saenz does not see that this issue is hurting him tremendously! When the lawyer community is mobilizing against you because of unfair or illegal policies you implement on their clients, and the voters of this county...the end is near.

"Rene Garza does not care if Luis Saenz wins or loses, he will accept a new D.A. And proceed to kiss that ass when it gets in. He is a poor attorney that would struggle to make a living out in the real world, along with others on his staff, we all know who they are."

Through it all, Garza has remain rigid, inflexible, and maintained a hard line on behalf of his boss.

As such, he has been the lightning rod for the commissioners' difference of opinion with Saenz, who rarely addresses the court.

Just recently, during the July 31 special meeting of the court, he once again ventured into the den of skeptics when he brought forth Saenz's proposal for an Inter Local Agreement with the City of Combes to establish a new drug interdiction task force in northwest Cameron County.

The ILA involved only Combes, in north Cameron County, and the last place drug traffickers go before they reach Willacy County.

It is also the first place that carriers of illegally-obtained cash proceeds enter the county. Under questioning, Garza said that he didn't know how many officers Combes had on the force, but that he thought they had "two or three."

The agenda item read: "Consideration and authorization of FY 2018 and FY 2019 interlocal cooperation contract establishing the Northwest Cameron County Drug Interdiction Task Force."

This brought forth immediate questions from county judge Eddie Treviño, Pct. 3 commissioner David Garza and Pct. 2 commissioner Alex Dominguez.

The gist of their skepticism at the necessity of yet another drug interdiction task force was that the county was already saturated with such forces made up of local, county, state and federal law enforcement agencies. Cameron County is already part of several task forces with other city, state and federal agencies, including the umbrella Border Prosecution Unit.

The BPU is made up of 17 district and county attorney offices within the Texas border region that focus on investigating and prosecuting cases related to narcotics, weapons, human trafficking, organized crime, gangs, and other border-related offenses.

"Why do we need another one?" asked Garza. "I travel all along that road and I see the DPS, the sheriff, and the constables there all the time."

"It's because we want to stop the flow of drugs north, commissioner. "You do support the interdiction of drugs, don't you?," Garza asked pointedly.

"Well, why isn't Highway 281 here listed as one of your routes?," asked Treviño.

"I really don't know," Garza replied lamely. "We're concentrating on the routes that are traveled most heavily by the people who move drugs."

"Well, I think 281 goes all the way from Brownsville to San Antonio," Treviño replied. "That's the road that runs along the river. The last time I heard Falfurrias is kept pretty busy."

"I don't know why it's not there," Garza replied. "We can look at it."

Then, when pressed if the DA's office had contemplated asking the Cameron County Sheriff's Department on whether it could join the task force, Garza admitted that they had not been contacted. He also admitted that the DPS had also not been asked to join the force.

But pressed on the potential for the DA's office to reap cash proceeds from information gained from their investigation of confidential informants and other investigations on drug money coming into Cameron County headed for Mexico, Garza admitted it played a role in only Combes being in the proposal.

"The agency that seizes (the cash) gets to share in any kind of rewards, yes," he admitted, adding that since the maquinita crusade was not yielding as much hard currency for the department as before, they had seized upon the idea of cash coming in from drug couriers. "Yeah, there's always those incentives."

Garza did not mince words. "It seems to me that you want to be in the pie when something is confiscated... The only reason this is on the agenda is so that more people will share in confiscated dollars."

"It's a way to get some funds into our office, a way to supplement salaries in our office," Garza conceded.

When Sheriff Omar Lucio was called to the podium by Garza, he said that his department continually patrolled that road with 10 or more officers and that he had three canine units to assist the deputies. He also said that the constables, DPS, municipal police departments and federal agencies backed each other up without the need for a formal agreement.

In the end, Treviño said he would reluctantly give deference to Saenz as an elected official to another, and relented and gave Garza the nod. And when it appeared that the motion would die for the lack of a third vote, Dominguez said he would go along with it but that the court would be monitoring the progress of the ILA between Combes and the DA's office to see whether it was producing results.