Former Tarrant County sheriff’s deputies denounced what they called patterns of misconduct and a culture of failing to act on such complaints in the office during a press conference on Wednesday.
Brandon Walker, Phillip Hill and Nyla Coleman said they were terminated from the Sheriff’s Office for filing complaints against fellow employees for conduct including drug use, misuse of official resources, racial discrimination and more.
All three have filed lawsuits in federal and state courts in response to the retaliation they say they experienced.
The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that it would be “inappropriate to speak about those cases until they have worked their way through the courts,” and accused the organizers of the press conference as having a political agenda.
While assigned to a narcotics team from 2015 to 2017, Walker said he witnessed his partner Jay Rotter use narcotics on duty. Rotter was convicted of fatally shooting his girlfriend in Denton in August 2020.
“I believe that if Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office had taken my concerns seriously Leslie Hartman might still be alive today,” Walker told a group of reporters and county residents outside the federal courthouse on 10th Street in Fort Worth. He got visibly emotional as he spoke about Hartman’s murder.
After filing his complaint, Walker said he was retaliated against, including being called racial slurs, being transferred and no longer allowed overtime.
“The constant cover-ups, retaliation against those who have integrity to stand up for what’s right is unacceptable,” he said.
Former Sheriff’s Deputy Phillip Hill also described retaliatory actions taken against him for reporting what he called “a pattern of lawlessly misusing law enforcement resources.”
While assigned to the fugitive warrants division, Hill said he witnessed a supervisor favoring bond forfeiture warrants “which is a little bit questionable, because this is the only type of warrant we served that had to do with an issue of money. Somebody is getting paid when these warrants are being served.”
The supervisor “built a personal relationship” and gave his personal phone number out to bail bondsmen, who are the ones who profit when a bond forfeiture warrant is executed. The bondsmen would contact the supervisor on this phone, and sheriff’s deputies would be dispatched to execute the warrant.
“Thus county resources in the form of personnel and equipment were being diverted to a personal use and to a for-profit venture,” Hill said.
While there is nothing illegal about executing a bond forfeiture warrant, Hill said he questioned the frequency with which those types of warrants were chosen, as well as the locations of the subjects.
“I never once saw this practice employed in cities like Southlake or Colleyville or Keller,” he said. “Every time I observed this practice being done, it was in Stop Six. It was in south side Fort Worth. I think what I’m going at here is pretty obvious for anybody.”
The practice disproportionately affected minority populations, he said.
Bondsmen were at times allowed into peoples’ homes, which he said violates Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable searches. It also violated a statute in the Texas penal code prohibiting public servants from abusing the power of their office .
Former Sheriff’s Deputy Nyla Coleman said she also experienced retaliation from her superiors after she filed a complaint, but could not give details due to ongoing litigation.
Dallas-based attorney Daryl Washington, who is representing the families of people who have died in the Tarrant County jail — but not any of the former deputies — tied cases to a culture of negligence and misconduct that ultimately resulted in the deaths of Anthony Johnson Jr ., Chastity Bonner and others.
“There have been major cover-ups taking place within Tarrant County,” he said. “It all ties together, and the common denominator in all of the complaints is Sheriff [Bill] Waybourn … and I think this is the reason why Anthony is no longer here.”
Washington referred to an internal Sheriff’s Office report detailing an investigation into several jailers for allegedly smuggling drugs into the county jail.
“After Sheriff Waybourn received information that jailers were bringing contraband into his facility, what did he do? He ended the investigation,” Washington said. “He ended it, because he did not want something like this to get out into the community.”
The Star-Telegram spoke to the lead investigator on the case, former Lt. Robert Kelley, who was a supervisor in the Criminal Investigations Division at the time of the investigation. That division was not properly staffed, equipped or authorized to conduct a contraband smuggling operation in the jail, he said.
While that investigation led to the firing of one jailer who allowed inmates unauthorized use of an attorney visitation booth, the investigators did not find conclusive evidence that jailers were smuggling drugs into the jail, he said.
Kelley and the other investigators recommended the case be taken up by the Sheriff’s Office’s narcotics division, but no such investigation materialized.
The Sheriff’s Office’s statement said the press conference was “nothing more than political grandstanding by those with an axe to grind,” noting that Waybourn’s opponent, Democrat Patrick Moses, was present at the presser.
“It’s not about politics. It’s about leadership,” Moses said. “Leaders ensure that employees’ concerns are heard, and leaders make sure that those who are committed to the organization have the requisite training and development so that those people can do their jobs.”
Asked if the timing of press conference was meant to “influence voters’ opinion of the sheriff before the election,” Hill said he waited for the appeal of his termination to be processed by the Sheriff’s Civil Service Commission. That happened last week, he said.
Washington said he thought “influence” was not the correct word to use.
“I think ‘educate’ is a better word,” he said. “We need to have educated voters, and I think what these gentlemen are doing right now with this press conference is they are educating voters as to what’s been taking place in Tarrant County for years, and I think that is important.”
Arlington resident Carol Raburn thanked the former sheriff’s deputies for “stepping up and doing the right thing.”
Her husband was a police officer for 38 years in Denton, Trophy Club and other North Texas law enforcement agencies.
“I have learned to step up and say thank you, because it matters when you do the right thing,” she said. “It matters when you step out and you have the courage to fix things.”
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