Texas
Deputies accused a Texas sheriff of corruption and dysfunction. Then came the mass shooting
COLDSPRING, Texas (AP) — Sheriff Greg Capers was the classic picture of a Texas lawman as he announced the capture of a suspected mass killer: white cowboy hat on his head, gold star pinned to his chest, white cross on his belt and a large pistol emblazoned with his name on his hip.
For four days, Francisco Oropeza had evaded hundreds of officers after allegedly killing five neighbors when they complained that his late-night shooting was keeping their baby awake. The sheriff said his deputies arrived in 11 minutes, but Oropeza was gone. With the search over, Capers had a message for the victims’ families.
“They can rest easy now,” Capers told a row of television cameras in May. The burly sheriff later personally hauled the “coward” across a town square into court.
A dash of pomp and a dose of politics are on the agenda during President Joe Biden’s stopover visit to the U.K.
NATO leaders have celebrated their unity in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, that will be tested at the alliance’s annual summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next week.
South Korean opposition lawmakers have sharply criticized the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog for its approval of Japanese plans to release treated wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says Washington will listen to Chinese complaints about security-related curbs on U.S. technology exports and might “respond to unintended consequences” as she ended a visit to Beijing aimed at reviving strained relations.
But an Associated Press investigation led the sheriff’s office to disclose that deputies took nearly four times as long as Capers initially said to arrive at the mass shooting.
The AP also found Capers’ turn in the national spotlight belied years of complaints about corruption and dysfunction that were previously unknown outside the piney woods of San Jacinto County.
Capers did not directly respond to requests for comment.
What has played out under his watch is indicative of challenges police face across rural America, where small staffs must patrol vast jurisdictions. It also reveals the difficulty in holding powerful law enforcement officials accountable in isolated areas with little outside oversight.
Former deputies said Capers’ office has long neglected basic police work while pursuing asset seizures that boost its $3.5 million budget but don’t always hold up in court.
Deputies did not arrest Oropeza last year after he was reported for domestic violence and never contacted federal authorities to check his immigration status, although immigration officials say he was in the country illegally. Capers’ department also appears to have done little to investigate after another family’s call to 911 reporting a different man’s backyard gunfire nearly struck their young daughter.
The county paid $240,000 in 2020 to settle a whistleblower’s lawsuit accusing Capers of wide-ranging misconduct. Last year, county leaders hired a police consulting firm to examine the sheriff’s office but disregarded its recommendation to have the Texas Rangers’ public corruption squad investigate.
The LION Institute found evidence that Capers fostered a “fear-based” culture and oversaw the improper seizure of tens of thousands of dollars of property. The group’s report, obtained by the AP, also alleges deputies failed to follow up on reports of 4,000 crimes, including sexual and child abuse.
“The sheriff and his inner circle do whatever they want, regardless of law, with no consequence,” said Michael Voytko, who spent nearly five years as a San Jacinto County deputy before leaving in 2020 for another law enforcement job. “There was no accountability there for any of the deputies.”
After the April 28 mass shooting outside Cleveland, 46 miles (74 kilometers) northwest of Houston, Capers’ second-in-command said the sheriff initially gave his “best guestimation” about the response time. Chief Deputy Tim Kean added that low pay has left the office short of deputies to patrol the county, where 27,000 people live scattered along dirt roads through thick forest.
Kean also dismissed the consultant’s accusations as “straight-up lies” drummed up by the sheriff’s political opponents and said the county settled the whistleblower lawsuit to avoid a costly trial.
“This place is open any time to the Texas Rangers,” Kean said in an interview. “Any day they can come in here and go through this whole building top to bottom.”
___
In April, as Wilson Garcia and his wife tried to calm their crying baby boy, gunfire from the lot next door echoed off the pines around their house.
Garcia said he walked over and asked Oropeza to take his target practice farther from their home. When Oropeza refused, Garcia and his wife made their first of many 911 calls at 11:34 p.m.
By that point, Oropeza was already on the sheriff’s radar.
Deputies were called to Oropeza’s home at least three times in the prior two years, according to call logs. One came last June, when his wife reported he punched and kicked her, “pounded” her head on the “driveway gravel” and threatened to kill her, court records said. The logs show a deputy arrived 46 minutes later; Oropeza was gone.
An arrest warrant for Oropeza was dropped late the next month after his wife said she didn’t want to press charges, according to Kean. She is accused of hindering his apprehension in the mass shooting.
Experts say Oropeza’s immigration record barred him from having a firearm. The 38-year-old Mexican national was deported four times before 2016 and illegally reentered the county, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. His lawyer, Anthony Osso, declined to comment on his client’s immigration status and said Oropeza will plead not guilty to capital murder.
Kean said deputies can’t check immigration records themselves and did not contact ICE because they don’t find the agency responsive.
The logs do not clarify the nature of all the calls to Oropeza’s home, but Capers has said his office previously received complaints about the man’s gunfire.
Garcia recalled telling his wife to “get inside” that April night as he watched their neighbor run toward their home, reloading his rifle. At 12:11 a.m., a dispatcher heard gunfire over the open phone line, according to a detailed timeline that the sheriff’s office provided to the AP in response to questions.
Deputies arrived on the street five minutes later, which was 42 minutes after the first 911 call, according to the timeline. Garcia’s wife, his 9-year-old son and three others were dead.
Kean and another sheriff’s official said the initial calls came in as harassment complaints about Oropeza shooting on his own property and that some calls required a Spanish translator. They said the three deputies on duty were working on an aggravated robbery and the time it took them to respond was “average” given the county’s size and the area’s rough roads.
___
The next day, when Keith and Tiffany Pinkston heard about the shooting, their first thought was, “That could have been us.”
In January, the family was enjoying a backyard campfire with friends when they said their neighbor began shooting. Bullets blew holes through their fence and one sprayed sandy soil up at their 8-year-old daughter as she ran, screaming, they recalled.
The group scrambled for cover and called 911. When deputies arrived nearly 40 minutes later, the Pinkstons said, they did not ask for the neighbor’s identification.
Two months later, state police arrested the neighbor on a manslaughter charge in a deadly car crash. Court documents show he was a convicted sex offender who had failed to register with Houston police the year before. His felony record prohibited him from possessing a firearm.
Kean said deputies “routinely” identify callers and anyone they are calling about, make sure no one is wanted, and look for evidence of gunfire, although he could not say whether they did so at the Pinkstons’ home. In logs, deputies wrote that the callers were “heavily intoxicated” and their neighbor denied having a weapon. The deputies suggested the gunfire was fireworks.
Keith Pinkston, a self-described “country boy” who often carries a handgun and generally supports police, showed the AP round holes in his fence that he said were from shooting by the neighbor. He called Capers and his deputies “worthless.”
___
Capers spent decades as a deputy in the Houston-area before being elected sheriff in 2014. He took over a 32-officer force with a history of corruption chronicled in a 1984 book, “Terror on Highway 59,” and inspired a made-for-TV movie. The book documented how Sheriff James ‘Humpy’ Parker ran roughshod over the rights of motorists, particularly those of color, in the 1970s. Parker eventually pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges and resigned.
“We thought we’d gotten over that,” County Commissioner David Brandon said. “But obviously we haven’t.”
By last year, county commissioners were concerned enough about staff turnover that they paid the LION Institute, the police consulting firm, nearly $50,000 to review the sheriff’s office and suggest improvements.
The group’s report lays out evidence that the sheriff’s staff falsified training records and failed to pursue 4,000 reported crimes over the years, including 106 alleged sexual assaults. The report said Capers dismissed concerns about an affair between a deputy and an informant and brushed aside reports that the same deputy leaked investigative information to suspects.
When LION CEO Mike Alexander tried to present the findings to commissioners in a closed-door meeting in August, he was surprised to find the sheriff there. Alexander, a former police chief, wrote in his subsequent report that Capers’ presence was “analogous to allowing a possible organized crime suspect to be present during a briefing between the investigating detective and prosecuting attorney.”
Kean denied deputies neglected investigations, largely blaming an “admin screw-up” in the department’s computer system and saying some victims couldn’t identify their attackers. He also said Alexander never interviewed Capers, him or other deputies.
Two commissioners told the AP they deferred to the district attorney, rather than referring the matter to the Texas Rangers. The other two dismissed the inquiry as “a witch hunt” that rehashed a disgruntled former deputy’s lawsuit.
That lawsuit, brought by Michael Flynt, accused the sheriff’s office of retaliating after he raised concerns about Capers’ conduct. Flynt was a retired Houston-area officer whom Capers recruited to run an undercover drug unit in early 2017. The sheriff’s office had fired him by June 2018, charging Flynt with forging government documents by allegedly lying on his job application.
Judges eventually dismissed and expunged the charges. Flynt, 57, unsuccessfully ran for sheriff against Capers in 2020.
That year, Capers acknowledged in a deposition that he told a former deputy to scrub Facebook of information about the deputy’s romantic relationship with a confidential informant in a series of gambling cases. The county settled Flynt’s lawsuit two months later.
After less than two years working amid Capers’ “corruption,” Flynt said he understands “why people hate cops.”
___
One local whose life was upended by the gambling busts is Rickie Wood. Even after all charges against him were dropped, Wood said he was unable to recover much of the property deputies seized when they raided his used car dealership in 2015. The items included titles to more than 25 vehicles and his pickup truck, he said.
“They took everything that I owned to where I couldn’t even operate my business,” the 68-year-old said. “It was devastating.”
Wood presented a list of more than two dozen items to the sheriff’s office in 2017 describing some, including his truck, as badly damaged. Others, including two laptops and a Smith & Wesson revolver, were missing.
Kean said the sheriff’s office had warrants for the seizures and he wasn’t aware of anything being broken or lost, noting that the office keeps a careful inventory of property.
Former deputies said questionable seizures were common, and Capers conceded in his deposition to paying one person $2,815 for missing property, including diamond earrings.
He also said under oath that he may have used seized funds to attend a sheriffs conference in Reno, Nevada, after the commissioners refused to foot the bill.
The sheriff said the trip was for training but acknowledged he also spent some of it gambling. ___
Associated Press videojournalist Lekan Oyekanmi contributed to this report.
My Aggie loyalty started in high school, when my future alma mater mailed a poster of Bonfire to a ZIP code at the very top of Texas. That was about all the recruiting I received from Aggieland, but it was enough. That poster hung on my wall (between Michael Jordan and a Porsche) and I memorized the only words on it:
Some may boast of prowess bold,
of the school they think so grand.
But there’s a spirit can ne’er be told.
It’s the Spirit of Aggieland.
My enrollment at what was then the third-largest university in the nation was a sea change for me, and a culture shock. It’s when I stitched the High Plains together with the rest of Texas and started to get perspective about the history, personalities and traditions that shape our state. One of those traditions will be renewed Saturday when maroon and burnt orange take the field together, for the first time in 13 years, below the roar of the 12th Man.
This rivalry started in 1894, and was renewed 97 consecutive times from 1915 to 2011. Altogether, the game has been played 118 times. It used to unite the state, and it used to divide families. In recent years, jokes about tension over Thanksgiving dinner because of the A&M-UT game have been replaced by dread of Thanksgiving dinner over political talk. With the election behind us, it’ll be good for Texans to get back to the old ways.
This rivalry has created our state’s own version of mixed marriages. Kevin Scheible, one of my closest friends from college, married a member of the Longhorn Band. Kevin and Sharon live in San Antonio now. They’ve somehow made it work, though it’s an arrangement I would counsel most young lovers to avoid.
A dozen years ago, right around the time the rivalry was being suspended, my Aggie wife and I found ourselves in a Bible study group that was evenly split between Aggies and Longhorns. It included two mixed marriages. Those people are still some of our closest friends. Only the supernatural bonds of the Holy Spirit could have kept us from cracking in half. That, plus we don’t watch the game together.
College football has changed enormously since this game was played last, let alone since it was played first. The crowds are larger. The record size of the 12th Man is 110,663; this game will almost certainly surpass that.
The payouts are bigger too. The era of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) sponsorships has created a breed that would have been unthinkable in 1894: millionaire college athletes.
Two of the 10 highest paid college athletes in the nation are Longhorn quarterbacks Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning, according to Yahoo! Sports.
In the new Aggie tradition of paying football personalities not to contribute, benched quarterback Conner Weigman will earn his $628,000 NIL valuation from the sideline.
But at least the venue will be simple. The Aggies play at Kyle Field, the state’s largest stadium, named after Texas A&M horticulture professor E.J. Kyle, who created the school’s football field in 1904.
In contrast, the name of the Longhorns’ haunt is something like Campbell-Williams Field at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium presented by Bud Light in association with Hemp-It-Up-America Political Action Committee.
Both schools have storied programs. The Longhorns have Darrell Royal, Earl Campbell, Ricky Williams and four national championships if you include the one in 1970 when they lost to Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl but United Press International writers awarded them the title anyway because the media loves them. Some things never change.
The Aggies have Bear Bryant, Gene Stallings and Jackie Sherrill (for the purposes of this column, please forget the state of Alabama exists), as well as Heisman Trophy winners John David Crow and Johnny Football Manziel. When I was a student, Aggies claimed just one national championship, back in 1939. But then other schools started putting such achievements in big letters on their stadiums and we demanded a recount. Now, Aggies include the undefeated seasons in 1919 and 1927 under Coach D.X. Bible who later coached at, you guessed it, UT.
The rivalry has included its share of pranks. The official story (and by “official” I mean made up by Aggies) of how UT mascot Bevo got its name is that a group of Aggie students snuck over to Austin one night, long ago, after the horns had lost to A&M 13-0, and branded the cow with the score. In a mascot cover-up, UT students converted the 13 to a B, the – to an E and added a V before the 0 to create the name.
It is true that A&M beat UT 13-0 in 1915, and it’s true that some Aggies branded the mascot. But the brand-conversion part remains unconfirmed and Longhorns refuse to admit the obvious: that this is a terrific story that should live long in Texas lore.
For all the differences between these schools, there is still more that unites us than divides us, as it’s popular to say these days. Both institutions are doing important work in research and molding the next generation of Texas leaders. Aggies and Longhorns love their state. We love our schools. And we would love to see our rivals lose. Both school’s songs mention the other.
That poster on my bedroom wall would be as close as I would come to the real Bonfire until I stood on Duncan Drill Field watching it burn in the fall of 1991. My unit in the Corps of Cadets was known for building Bonfire. We had spent thousands of man hours in exhausting manual labor kindling Bonfire’s purpose: the burning desire to beat the hell outta UT.
I remember watching the news just a few years later, heartbroken by the loss of 12 Aggies who were making their own Bonfire memories when tragedy struck. Aggies everywhere remembered them this week.
Longhorns did too. I’ll never forget how Austin dropped the rivalry taunts and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with grieving Aggies in the wake of that tragedy. UT showed its class that year. The school canceled its Hex Rally, the ritual that traditionally preceded the game. The UT Tower went dark and the Aggie War Hymn was played there — the one that derides the “orange and the white.” It’s the only time in UT history that has happened, I’m told. At the game, the Longhorn Band played Taps, a fitting salute at a school with military roots.
Longhorn coach Mack Brown offered to postpone the game and he said he has shed tears over the loss of those 12 Aggies. His staff organized a blood drive. Brown was a great coach whose players would have run through a wall for him. In November 1999, I think a lot of Aggies would have too.
Two weeks ago, Mrs. Aggie and I attended a gathering sponsored by the Coppell Aggie Moms Club where we got to meet the Texana artist Benjamin Knox. Knox was in the Aggie Cadet Corps just a few years before I was. He went on to paint the school spirit at several Texas institutions, including commissions by the State of Texas, and the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
Knox showed us a new painting he created to mark the revival of this Texas Thanksgiving tradition. And because I accosted him after the meeting, he agreed to let The Dallas Morning News reproduce it here.
From a folded poster hung with thumbtacks to a work of art by one of Texas’ great painters, this rivalry has produced a lot of memorable images. If the Aggies don’t run out of time, I look forward to treasuring the image of the Kyle Field scoreboard Saturday, and sharing it with a few of my Longhorn friends.
Editor’s note: Over Sanders’ loud objections, this column was edited for a variety of blatant biases and subtle but consistent grammatical slights (such as the use of “tu”) that did not meet our editorial standards.
We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here. If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com
A common theme for No. 22 TCU has been their complete dominance on their home floor this season. The Horned Frogs finished the year 14-1 at Schollmaier Arena. On Friday night, in front of over 3,000 fans, TCU swept Texas Tech (25-14, 26-24, 25-11).
The four seniors honored by TCU were Melanie Parra, Cecily Bramschreiber, Stephanie Young and Ashlyn Bourland. All four players found ways to contribute as Parra finished with 14 kills and seven digs. Bramschreiber filled up the stat sheet with four kills, four aces and seven digs. Both Young and Bourland got an ace.
Both teams traded points in the early going, but Bramschreiber sparked a 7-2 run to give the Frogs a 16-9 lead. TCU hit .417 in the first set and dominated the first set capped off by a Becca Kelley ace.
In set two, Texas Tech made things much closer jumping out to a 8-5 lead. A 4-0 run from TCU put them back in front. This set included multiple runs and it was Tech that got it to set point leading 24-22. TCU was able to end the set on a 4-0 run courtesy of kills from Jalyn Gibson and Parra paired with aces from Bramschreiber.
Trying to keeps things alive, TCU wasn’t met with much resistance from the Red Raiders in the third set. The Frogs kept up the pressure with multiple runs to build a massive 17-8 lead. Bourland picked up her first career ace and an attack error ended things.
It was a fun night for the seniors that played in front of the TCU crowd for the last time. The 14 wins at home tied the school record for most wins at home in a single season. They also picked up the most wins in a season since 2015. What Jason Williams has done for this program in such a short time has been remarkable to watch.
The Frogs move to 19-7 overall 11-5 in conference. They still are fifth in the Big 12 standings with two games to go. They will travel to Morgantown on Wednesday to take on West Virginia at 6 p.m. and then to Cincinnati on Friday at 1 p.m.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a lawsuit Thursday targeting the blue city of Dallas over a ballot measure that decriminalizes marijuana.
Paxton alleges that Proposition R, which “prohibits the Dallas Police Department from making arrests or issuing citations for marijuana possession or considering the odor of marijuana as probable cause for search or seizure,” violates state law.
The attorney general argues in the lawsuit that the ballot measure is preempted by Texas law, which criminalizes the possession and distribution of marijuana. Paxton also claims the Texas Constitution prohibits municipalities from adopting an ordinance that conflicts with laws enacted by the state legislature.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks outside the U.S. Supreme Court on November 01, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“Cities cannot pick and choose which State laws they follow,” Paxton said in a statement. “The City of Dallas has no authority to override Texas drug laws or prohibit the police from enforcing them.”
Paxton called the ballot measure “a backdoor attempt to violate the Texas Constitution” and threatened to sue any other city that “tries to constrain police in this fashion.”
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A flower bud of marijuana. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File)
The lawsuit comes after interim Dallas Police Department Chief Michael Igo directed Dallas police officers not to enforce marijuana laws against those found to be in possession of less than 4 ounces.
Ground Game Texas, a progressive nonprofit group that campaigned in favor of the ballot measure, argued it would help “keep people out of jail for marijuana possession,” “reduce racially biased policing” and “save millions in public funding.”
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A mature marijuana plant begins to bloom under artificial lights at Loving Kindness Farms in Gardena, Calif., May 20, 2019. Paxton has sued the city of Dallas over a ballot measure that decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
“It’s unfortunate but not surprising that Attorney General Ken Paxton has apparently chosen to waste everyone’s time and money by filing yet another baseless lawsuit against marijuana decriminalization,” said Catina Voellinger, executive director for Ground Game Texas.
“Judges in Travis and Hays counties have already dismissed identical lawsuits filed there. The Dallas Freedom Act was overwhelmingly approved by 67% of voters — this is democracy in action.”
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Since January 2024, Paxton has filed lawsuits against five Texas cities that decriminalized marijuana possession, arguing these policies promote crime, drug abuse and violence.
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