What happens to North Texas cops who break the rules during a car chase? Depends where they work

From KERA News:

Dallas police officer Barron Cooper held the barrel of his gun to Ramon Aguinaga’s head as the 17-year-old lay face down on the ground.

It was just after 1:30 a.m. Jan. 2, 2022. Ten minutes prior, the teen allegedly blew through a red light past Cooper — who was on patrol — drove through a construction site, dove over the overpass and crashed onto the highway, then continued to flee until the officer hit the back of Aguinaga’s truck.

“Do you want to die?” Cooper said.

“No, I don’t want to die, sir,” Aguinaga said.

Aguinaga was charged with unlawfully carrying a weapon after Cooper found a gun in the truck with the serial number rubbed off. That charge was dismissed after Aguinaga completed a pre-trial intervention program.

But Aguinaga wasn’t the only one at fault, the Dallas Police Department concluded. An internal investigation found Cooper chased the teen at roughly 100 mph without his lights or siren activated for a traffic offense, in violation of the department’s vehicle pursuit policy.

Cooper also used unnecessary force and profane language against a detainee, both violations of department policy. And he didn’t report his use of force or the crash to the department.

Then-DPD Chief Eddie Garcia fired Cooper in February 2023. An administrative law judge upheld Cooper’s firing after he appealed it this year.

Cooper did not respond to calls and voicemails, and his attorney declined to comment.

“At the time of the arrest I felt that (Aguinaga) was going to kill someone with how he was driving,” Cooper wrote in his internal statement about the incident. “(A)fter reviewing the department policy on chases I see this did not warrant a chase even if I thought I was protecting the public at the time and helping the city of Dallas be safer.”

Other officers have received less severe discipline despite deadlier outcomes.

A year after Aguinaga’s chase, 19-year veteran officer Linuel Joel with the Fort Worth Police Department pursued a suspected stolen Dodge Challenger and ran a red light, hitting uninvolved driver Andre Craig’s car and killing the 57-year-old.

Joel was suspended for 15 days for failing to follow rules and two pursuit policy violations — but the specifics of the latter are redacted in documents KERA News obtained through a public records request.

Joel remains with FWPD after a Tarrant County grand jury declined to criminally charge him for Craig’s death. After meeting with Joel last November, Assistant Chief Dave Carabajal wrote that Joel was remorseful and understood the gravity of the situation.

“I believe there was no malicious intent in his actions on the day of this incident,” Carabajal wrote. “I believe he made a human error that we all now regret happened. I believe he was involved in an accident.”

Joel referred all questions from KERA News to the Fort Worth Police Department’s public information office, which referred that request to its open records department. KERA News filed an open records request and is awaiting a response.

All Texas peace officers must meet the same training requirements for pursuits and other emergency vehicle situations to get their licenses. In North Texas, officers often get that training at some of the same main facilities.

But their departments’ vehicle pursuit policies vary. And a KERA News analysis of nearly 200 North Texas police pursuits over the past 10 years found that when officers violate those policies, they may be subject to an entirely different set of consequences depending on where they work.

More than a dozen officers in records reviewed by KERA have violated their department’s pursuit policy at least twice. Records also show an officer’s pursuit policy violations usually don’t make it harder to get a job at another agency.

Even officers who repeatedly violate their department’s pursuit policy often continue working there.

The psychology of a police chase

As long as there have been police officers, there have been police chases. Officers may take it as a direct challenge to their authority and a sign of other criminal activity, said Dennis Kenney with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

“It may be that the person committed a traffic violation,” Kenney said. “It may be that they committed a murder that you don’t know about and that they’re fleeing from. And so, the officer has a hard time separating the potential suspect motivations that are for the most part unknown, and required to base the decision on the known facts.”

When that happens, an officer’s adrenaline spikes. They can get tunnel vision. In records obtained by KERA, at least three officers attributed violating pursuit rules to their own overzealousness, aggression or desire to catch the suspect, even when their supervisors called off the chase.

The adrenaline of the chase can also lead to dangerous behavior on the road, said Howard Williams, a criminal justice professor at Texas State University and former San Marcos police chief.

“Not only do you have one person who’s driving irresponsibly, speeding, weaving in and out of traffic, running red lights and stop signs, but now you’ve got a police officer or two chasing them, which triples the problem,” Williams said.

Kenney said that’s why most departments require the pursuing officer to radio in the chase, and back off if not given authorization to continue the pursuit.

“You’re driving very fast, and you’ve got the lights and the sirens, and all of that impacts the officer as much as anyone else,” Kenney said. “The excitement and so forth can actually be fairly overwhelming.”

Even low-speed chases can have extreme endings. Arlington Police Officer Robert Phillips was indicted in the shooting death of Jesse Fischer in 2021, after Fischer was found slumped over in his vehicle at a stop light. When paramedics and police arrived, Fischer drove away while “stopping at all the stop signs” and “going around 20 mph,” another officer behind Phillips observed in body camera footage of the incident.

APD Chief Al Jones fired Phillips two days after the incident for violating the department’s deadly force policy. A grand jury indicted Phillips for murder in 2022, but the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office dismissed his case in May.

According to court records, Heath Cook, a sergeant with the University of Texas at Arlington Police Department, found that although Phillips violated several department policies and “showed poor judgment” during the traffic stop and shooting, Cook could “see how a reasonable person in that position would feel it is immediately necessary to use deadly force to protect themselves.” Cook had been with the Arlington Police Department for 24 years in various roles, including as a use-of-force expert, before leaving in 2022.

Records show Phillips already had a pursuit policy violation from 2016 for which he received verbal counseling from a supervisor — one of the more severe disciplinary options for officers — as well as an emergency driving violation that same year for which he got counseling, and a minor collision with another officer in 2017. APD considers police pursuit violations Class II complaints, which lead to informal discipline such as counseling or written reprimands.

No Arlington police officer has been suspended or fired for a pursuit policy violation over the past 10 years — even Phillips, who was fired for his use of deadly force — according to APD disciplinary records obtained by KERA. KERA has reached out to the department with questions about its approach to disciplining officers for pursuit policy violations.

Cyndi Fischer, Jesse Fischer’s mother, sued Phillips and the city for wrongful death in connection with the shooting. An attorney for Cyndi Fischer declined to comment.

Phillips did not respond to requests for comment. His criminal defense attorney Miles Brissette said whether it was a low-speed or high-speed chase, Phillips had to think about the safety of the public, where Jesse Fischer was going and whether he was mentally sound.

“It never had to start if the occupant of the Jeep would have just placed it in park when the officers were standing at his window asking him to put it in park and turn the engine off,” Brissette told KERA.

The range of discipline

KERA’s analysis also found officers who are formally disciplined received suspensions ranging from one to 30 days. Those suspensions lasted, on average, about five days — even when the pursuit ended in a crash or death.

In June 2016, Fort Worth officer Jerald Hernandez stopped motorcyclist David Spann for failing to yield, and Spann drove away. Hernandez pursued Spann for about four minutes over six miles.

The pursuit went through Haltom City and ended in Richland Hills when documents show Spann crashed into a car and hit a street sign, killing him. The Fort Worth Police Department found Hernandez violated the pursuit policy but redacted the portion that explained how he violated the policy in the records released to KERA. Hernandez was suspended for only one day. He could not be reached for comment.

Officers don’t have to serve the entirety of their suspensions, either.

Denton Police Officer Shawna Glick was the backup officer on a traffic stop in 2023. The suspect, possibly intoxicated, started driving away, according to records obtained by KERA.

The primary officer lost sight of the vehicle, but Glick spotted the car and pursued it up to 90 mph on a wet road in a residential neighborhood, records show. The suspect crashed at the intersection of Lillian Miller Parkway and Interstate 35.

Glick, driving 60 mph and unable to stop, reportedly crashed into an uninvolved vehicle. She was suspended for three days without pay, but the department let her forfeit a day of sick time to go toward the suspension, which a City of Denton policy allows.

According to the Denton Police Department’s general orders in effect at the time, officers get a written reprimand on the first violation of the department’s pursuit policy, between a four- and 15-day suspension for the second offense, and indefinite suspension on the third offense if they occur within the same 36-month period.

In her three years with the department, Glick was flagged for four other collisions and had another pursuit policy violation. She received counseling from a supervisor for the first two incidents, then two written reprimands and “educational based discipline” — a training-focused alternative to suspension — followed by a one-day suspension.

Glick referred KERA to the Denton Police Department for comment when reached by phone. In an email to KERA, the department said officers who violate pursuit rules receive the appropriate administrative action according to the discipline matrix outlined in their general orders.

“Our vehicle pursuit policy is in place to balance the need to apprehend suspects with the safety of our residents, officers, and all road users,” the department’s statement reads. “As part of that mission, the department conducts thorough internal reviews after all vehicle pursuits to assess the circumstances and whether officers followed department policy.”

Williams said officers who repeatedly violate pursuit policies need to be held accountable to prevent future violations.

“If by disciplining them, you can’t change their behavior, their pattern of decision-making, then you need find something else for them to do,” he said. “Because they’re dangerous, not only to their fellow employees, but they’re dangerous to the public.”

Many officers who violate their department’s pursuit policy are still hired by other agencies. Hunter Hightower, who was a patrol officer with the Richardson Police Department from 2011 to 2013, was disciplined three times times for violating the department’s pursuit policy.

Hightower received an eight-hour suspension for initiating a pursuit in August 2013 for a minor offense even though he knew the suspect’s identity and could follow up later. It came after an April 2013 written reprimand for another pursuit policy violation. He also ran four red lights at major intersections at speeds up to 72 mph during a chase in September 2013 and received a 40-hour suspension for violating the department’s policy on search and seizure and evidence processing, before leaving in October of that year.

Just days later, public records show Hightower started working for the Rowlett Police Department.

Hightower declined an interview request for this story.

A Richardson Police Department internal investigator who spoke with Hightower after the pursuit in September said he attempted to downplay the danger of his driving behavior, according to records obtained by KERA.

“Not only was Officer Hightower’s driving reckless, it appeared to be aggressive in several situations,” the investigator wrote.

Hightower worked as a police officer at the Rowlett Police Department from 2013 to 2016 after leaving Richardson. He had four pursuit policy violations recorded in his personnel file that KERA obtained via an open records request.

His final pursuit violation at the Rowlett Police Department ended in the suspect’s vehicle crashing. Hightower was supposed to receive a three-day suspension but requested a transfer to the Rowlett city jail as a detention officer during the internal investigation for the pursuit.

Texas Commission on Law Enforcement records show Hightower is no longer a licensed peace officer.

An internal investigator with the Rowlett Police Department who reviewed an incident in which Hightower lost a suspect’s personal property noted his history of pursuit policy violations.

“It is apparent that Officer Hightower either refuses to comply with department policy or knowingly disregards department policy in the performance of his duties,” the internal investigator wrote. “Previous attempts to gain his compliance through verbal counseling and/or written documentation have been unsuccessful.”

Hightower disclosed the written reprimand he received in April 2013 in his job application with the Rowlett Police Department, according to his personnel file.

Williams, the former police chief, said another department in Texas hired an officer he had fired while he was the San Marcos police chief. He said the department who hired the officer was aware of his history of misconduct because Williams filed a letter explaining the reason for termination with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

He said agencies who hire officers with a history of misconduct put their department at risk.

“That to me means you’re awfully desperate for manpower or you just don’t care,” he said. “Either way, major problem.”

What training looks like

Even though there are no standard policies for pursuits or discipline, all officers learn driving techniques in the law enforcement academy course required for their license.

Del Atkinson teaches the course on professional driving at the Tarrant County College law enforcement academy. Atkinson said the policy academy should have a greater emphasis on driving.

“We shoot guns all the time, but how often do officers get in a shootout?” he said. “Not very often. But they drive a car every single day.”

After a lecture from Atkinson on a recent summer day, the cadets from Tarrant County College lined up their department vehicles at the school’s driving track on a scorching afternoon to practice the driving techniques they learned in the classroom.

Atkinson arranged plastic lime green plastic cones in a driving course. He called out to the students through his car window as he demonstrated how to navigate the course’s narrow curves without hitting a cone.

Atkinson said he doesn’t train his cadets on car chases because their departments’ pursuit policies vary. Instead, he teaches them safe driving techniques.

“I think that 99.9% of officers go to work every day trying to make a difference in their community, trying to keep their community safe,” said Owen. “And when they’re handcuffed – no pun intended – or restricted from being able to carry out their duties, it can hurt morale, but more importantly, it could hurt the public in the sense that they’re not going to be as proactive because then you put yourself at risk from receiving discipline.”

Jay O. Coons, a criminal justice professor at Sam Houston State University, said there’s a difference between discipline and punishment in law enforcement. Punishment, Coons said, is punitive, whereas discipline aims to educate and prevent future mistakes.

But he said not properly disciplining officers for misconduct could leave law enforcement agencies vulnerable to litigation, so a light touch isn’t enough.

“That’s gonna reflect directly back on the chief, the sheriff, the city council, the voters in that county, what have you,” Coons said. “The wink and a smile, I’m afraid those days are over.”

This story has been updated with a statement from the Denton Police Department.

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