ON THE ERIC GARZA FRONT: TWO OUT OF THREE IS BAD

 Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Now that the Cameron County Commissioners Court and Sheriff Eric Garza seem to have kissed and made up and agreed to have Constable Abel Gomez provide security to county facilities and let the sheriff police the courts, things might get back to normal. 

If you remember, Garza came in guns blazing and sought to unilaterally rescind a Memorandum Of Understanding between former Sheriff Omar Lucio and the commissioners to provide security for the courts, allowing him to place more units patrolling the county. But instead of waiting for the budget process to implement new agreements, he and Chief Deputy Gracia unilaterally pulled the officers under Gomez and the commissioners court budget and sought to place them under his command.

That didn't go over well with the court and its civil  legal division and lawsuits ensued that apparently both have now agreed to settle. 

But some of our readers still have bones to pick with the new sheriff in town. We'll look at three main ones.

1. That Garza is sporting four gold stars on his uniform when he is in his first year of service. Apparently,  these readers were under the mistaken impression that each star represents five years of service. 

That is not correct, according to uniform protocols for Texas sheriffs. Garza is entitled to the four stars, as is every sheriff in the state. They are not synonymous with hash marks on military uniforms that indicate the number of years of service. Officers under the sheriff do wear one silver star on their chest for every five years service.

Other complaints, however, are not as trivial or complimentary.

2. The discovery November 6 of a truck crashed in Cameron Park that contained a dead body in the cab. The sheriff department offices received the call from a  man who said he had been shot. However, they found the truck but not the victim, who was dead – a homicide – inside the cab. Brownsville firefighters located him inside about 20 minutes later.

Investigation and prosecutional protocols require that the evidence and crime scene be safeguarded to work the case, but instead the crashed vehicle – the crime scene, actually – was turned over to a family member a day or two later. Protocol requires that investigating agencies retain evidence until the trial of any suspects of the crime is over.

It will be up to the Cameron County District Attorney's Office to determine how to proceed in the case given that evidence to build the case is is not in his chain of custody.

3. Less than two weeks later – on November 19 – Garza rushed to post on his Facebook page that a 13-year-old San Antonio girl had been found by Sheriff Department officers on Boca Chica Beach and thanked the Brownsville Police Department for "assisting" his department with the location of a suspect.

Although department officers pleaded with him to wait to confirm the girl's identity, he insisted on posting – a post that he quickly deleted – that he had found "Bella Martinez" from San Antonio, called the mother, and had the child removed from the missing victim system.

Why did he remove the post? Well, it turned out it wasn't her, not even close. The missing girl is Hispanic, the one detained at Boca Chica was an African American.

But you won't find the Facebook post anymore. It was quickly removed and the only remnant of that premature post giving the department credit for locating the child was the Herald story because Garza's Facebook post was deleted.

November Score: 1 check mark for the stars, two Xs for Garza's investigative and law enforcement performance.