Republican incumbent Tommy Thomas has had a 14-year residency in the position and, as such, has compiled an impressive catalog of inferential corruption or ineptitude. Adrian Garcia, a former police officer and current councilman, sits as this campaign’s Democratic young gun, but his list of ideas to “fix” the ails of the Sheriff’s department may only be matched by his inexperience in a comparable role.
As it stands now, Thomas may have a tougher fight on his hands than he's used to thanks to the recent rash of incidents his name has been attached to. Those being:
The Ibarra Lawsuit
A major blemish on Sheriff Thomas’s resume came in the form of a wrongful arrest filed against him and four of his officers by Ibarra brothers, Sean and Erik. The brothers were arrested after photographing sheriffs “executing a drug raid at a neighbor’s home.” Ultimately, Harris County commissioners elected to settle the suit for $1.7 million. This leads us to…
The Email Deletion Policy
As collateral damage of the Ibarra lawsuit, it came to light that then-Houston DA Chuck Rosenthal had numerous sexually explicit/inappropriate/suggestive emails sent from his county-issued email address. Shortly thereafter, a new email policy emerged from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office stating that emails over 14 days would automatically be deleted. State District judge David J. Bernal ruled this to be a blatant conflict with the Texas Public Information Act and enacted a permanent injunction, preventing this from ever happening again.
Cheaper Housing for Himself?
Quite simply, Sheriff Thomas has a weekend retreat valued at (at least) $1.1 million. In and of itself, that isn’t something that should cause concern. The concern stems from the fact that Leroy Hermes helped design some of the Thomas’s retreat; the same Leroy Hermes whose architect firm would go on to be confirmed as the holder of the contract to design a new 1,100-bed county jail, a decision that the sheriff “plays a role in approving.”
Death Row Inmate Escapes
In 2005, Charles Victor Thompson, a death row inmate sentenced in 1998 for the murder of his girlfriend and her lover, escaped from a Harris County jail after he was left in an unlocked visitor’s booth without supervision. Thomas, who was in surgery when the escape happened, later admitted “there was negligence on our part.” Unsafe and overcrowded jails seem to have been a perennial problem under Thomas’ watch, and those such plights have been chronicled thoroughly at Scott Henson's blog, Grits for Breakfast.
Hair-Triggers
In response to what Rev. William Lawson felt was the unequal weighting of law enforcement officials’ missteps by the Houston Chronicle, he recalled their coverage in June 2004 that noted “Sheriff's deputies had shot 19 unarmed citizens over a period of time, six of whom were teenagers. They further reported that sheriff's deputies numbered fewer than half the officers of HPD and produced almost twice as many such shootings over the same period.”
Hat tips to the Houston Chronicle, ABC 13 News and Charles Kuffner's stellar politics blog Off The Kuff.
