Long-simmering dissatisfaction by the rank-and-file officers with Brownsville Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez over questionable management practices some say are driven by political convenience and pandering finally exploded into a peaceful protest in front of City Hall this morning.
More than 50 police officers and their relatives and supporters held a protest over the chief's sudden return to a work schedule recommended by a personnel study dating back to 1994.
The sudden overturning of the schedule that was adopted in 2009 was instituted by Rodriguez as a result of the officers' protest against the chief's pandering to the wishes of some city commissioners and his siding with Cameron County District Attorney Luis V. Saenz over the bungling of the homicide and aggravated assault trials of Marco Antonio Gonzalez.
In that case, Rodriguez defended the DA's Office after Gonzalez was given a five years total sentence on nine aggravated assault charges that resulted from the six-hours standoff and shootout with police officers while he held his former girlfriend hostage, killed her current boyfriend and tried to kill
her brother.
The jury charge – to which the DA and lead prosecutor Peter Gilman did not object – did not mention that the charges would run concurrent, instead of consecutively as the jurors believed.
But it was the case of six bicycles stolen from the house of commissioner at-large "B" Rose Gowen that lit the match of the officers' ire.
"He had a 10-man team scouring the city for the city commissioner's (Gowen) bicycles and we had to leave our beats to try to find them so he could please her," said one officer. "We live in neighborhoods where people steal our kids' bicycles and he doesn't take 10 officers off their beats to try to find them."When officers voiced their dissatisfaction over the chief's actions on the bike heist, he unilaterally ordered a return to a five-day, eight-hour work schedule dating back to 1994, even though the department and the Brownsville Police Officer's Association and the city had agreed to a four-day , 10-hour schedule that facilitated the writing of police reports and the completion of their duties.
"He did nit out of spite because people complained over his actions when it came to the city commissioners and the DA," said the officer.
Other complaints include the hiring of his wife with a private office, his assigning a police officer to chauffeur commissioner Jessica Tetreau during Charro Days and the cover up of an affair between his brother and a female department employee.
But it was the overturning of the work schedule that broke the camel's back. The return to the old schedule as a result of his tiff over the Gowen bike caper upset many who said that the sudden turnaround actually cost them days without pay (as much as a week, some said) and upset the arrangements they had made for time off during the upcoming Christmas and New Year's holidays.
"This is not over by any stretch of the imagination," one of the protesters said. "We need a professional chief, not one who is going to jump every time a city commissioner gets a hair up their behind."
