Sidebar

PADDING THE BOOKS

The Observer has tabulated almost 200 suspect cases-cases the task force
claimed credit for but apparently had nothing to do with-found in the CCNTF
log books from 1996 to 1998. Each case took place in Polk County and was
brought to the task force by former Polk County sheriff's deputy Mike
Nettles, according to former CCNTF officer Barbara Markham.

Was the task force somehow involved in these cases?

The Observer picked one at random, a 177-pound possession of marijuana case
filed against Dwayne Lewis on August 25, 1996. The Polk County Enterprise
ran a brief story on the arrest, which involved a 2 A.M. traffic stop on
Interstate 59 near Corrigan. The arresting officer, according to the
Enterprise, was Polk County Sheriff's deputy Jason Bridges, assisted at the
scene by Bobby Cheshire of the Corrigan Police Department. No mention was
made of the task force.

In a phone interview, Bobby Cheshire, who now works as a truck driver, said
he recalled the stop. Was the task force involved? "No, no, no. That was
all Jason," he said. "He observed the car, and he stopped it. I don't
recall what the traffic violation was," Cheshire said.

In a phone interview, Bridges said he also recalled the case. He confirmed
that he was not assigned to the task force.

Asked how the stop could have gotten in the task force logs, Bridges said,
"I was working for the county, but there was a member of us [on the task
force] so they got all of our stats." Bridges, who now works on a task
force in east Texas, defended the practice, although he noted that this was
not the way things were done at his current task force. "From my
understanding, when I was working at Polk County, they did claim our stats
but that's because they assist us with our investigations," Bridges said.
"As long as you assist the investigation you ought to get credit for it,
whether it's making phone calls or whatever." But was this highway stop a
task force investigation? "As far as them being out there with me on that
stop or something like that, I don't remember and I can't quote on that and
I won't," he said. But according to Cheshire, the Dwayne Lewis case was
just a routine stop on the highway, not the result of an investigation by
anybody. "It was not a tip, it was not anything, you know it was just a
traffic violation."

According to Don Jones, the Denton area DPS narcotics agent, task forces
will sometimes follow up on stops made by other agencies by interviewing
the suspect, in which case the task force might conceivably write up the
original stop as an assist, since some intelligence was collected in the
case. But the Lewis arrest and seizure was not reported as an assist.

The quarterly report has separate accounting forms for task
force-originated cases and task force assists.

The report clearly shows that the marijuana seizure was counted as a task
force-originated case. Other Nettles entries in the logs are equally suspect.

In two cases dated July 14, 1996, Angela F. Ramirez and Sterling A. Robins
were arrested for possession of marijuana in a correctional facility. "No
way could that have been a task force case," Markham said. "We never did
any work in jails."

In addition to Nettles, the CCNTF also had Robert Croft, a Liberty County
Sheriff's deputy, assigned to them during this period.

Markham questioned the legitimacy of the arrangement with each officer.
According to Markham, neither Nettles nor Croft worked regularly with task
force officers or took orders from task force supervisors. In fact, they
were rarely seen at all, though they were theoretically assigned to work
exclusively with the task force.

According to a source close to the Liberty County Sheriff's Office, Croft's
reluctance to work closely with the task force was a constant source of
conflict between the district attorney and the sheriff, and Croft was
caught in the middle. (Croft declined to be interviewed for this story.)
Yet the task force claimed each officer's salary, paid by their respective
sheriff's offices, toward their required cash match for the TNCP grant.

And, of course, they claimed stats made by them as well, when they could
get them. In Markham's view, Croft's stats represent further case padding.

Jay Kimbrough, director of the governor's criminal justice division,
declined to say whether the CCNTF's case logging practices were in keeping
with TNCP guidelines. He did acknowledge that the definition of a task
force case had become "subjective." "We have some work to do here, to make
sure we're all playing by the same standards," he said.