By Juan Montoya
Criminals up the valley hit upon the idea early: Dress like cop, pretend you're the law, and you can con people and make money.
This make believe idea has caught on fire and now we have stories of people making believe they are nurses (35-year-old Juan Manuel Perez stole the LVN license number that belonged to someone else with the same name, and used it to gain employment as a nurse at local health care institutions for the last 18 months), cops ( Walter Sigler, 49, who was fired from Mission PD in 2013 was caught impersonating a Mission PD officer in May, when he disrupted a man’s arrest by Palmview Police Department officers), and God knows what is next.
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Pseudo cops raids in the northern part of the Rio Grande Valley have been a headache for law enforcement and a nightmare for residents who don't resist when look-alike cops show up and barge in the door demanding they hand over drugs and money they charge are in the house.
Usually, they get away with the ruse and the fake-cop raids continue.
Here in Brownsville, for some reason, we have not suffered the spate of fake-cop robberies except for the fake-cop arrests on 14th Street when tipsy patrons came out of bars and – afraid they would be charged with PI or DWI – handed over their wallets and keys to the fake cops who would later peel off and throw their empty wallets and keys down the alley.
In a way, those victims were lucky.
There has been a mass contagion of pseudo everything here that has plagued the local community.
You have fake U.S. students whose parents rent a hovel or trailer space in the city and acquire an address to get a free education compliments of the real citizens.
But it goes even further.
You have pseudo city commissioners (Jessica Tetreau and Deborah Portillo) whose opponents correctly pointed out that they had used their parents' addresses so they could run for their positions on the city commission.
But, of course, that complements the fake city manager (ex-cop Charlie Cabler), the ehtics-challenged pseudo city attorney (Mark Sossi), and the fake fire chief (Carlos Elizondo.)
Why fake?
Cabler does not have one graduate course of city management or urban planning under his resume and might as well have been fire chief since his main occupation seems to be to put out brush fires in city government and then sweep the ashes ( and some live cinders) under the rug. Meanwhile, he can orchestrate mass self-hugs by city officials while Browntown burns. A goodly part (more than $2 million) of the city's expendable grant income is then diverted to stuff like bike trials for the Queen Isabella Causeway which we all know is inside the city limits. Does anyone know when we annexed Port Isabel?
Same goes for Sossi, whose legerdemain has allowed him to cover up his long list of sins including theft of a $167,363 judgment intended for his previous employer, the Willette & Guerra Law Firm, incompetence, two malpractice lawsuits from Brownsville residents who trusted him to represent them, reportedly stealing another $20,711.66 intended for employee unemployment benefits from the Texas Workforce, and a $100,000 tax lien from the I.R.S.
Add to that his appointment by Da pseudomayor Tony Martinez to draft a code of ethics for the city and the picture could not be more complete of a would-be city attorney.
Elizondo is not much different. Until recently, he had denied that he had been charged with felony theft back in 2002. That charged was "dismissed" by now-imprisoned 404th District Judge Abel Limas and Elizondo was defended by convicted court-appointed lawyer (and former District Attorney) Armando Villalobos. The "dismissal" was based on the fact that Villalobos negotiated a plea deal to have Elizondo pay restitution to the felony-theft victim and all was forgotten.
He then tried to pass a captain's exam at the city's Civil Service for the fire department and failed by two points scoring a 69. After two reviews, Elizondo's grade somehow changed to a 71. This angered firefighter Sacramento Diosdado who had scored a 70 and he sued in court. That, too, was "settled" and Cabler nonetheless made him fire chief over more qualified candidates.
Pseudomanager Cabler has also chosen to ignore City of Brownsville Personnel Policy Manual that prohibits a city employee from holding elective office in the Brownsville Independent School District. Or perhaps the delay is part of a bigger plan that is awaiting the propitious time to remove Elizondo from the district's board and replace him with an appointed trustee to the liking of the majority after those pesky elections are done in November.
It's not much different at Cameron County where we've had a pseudocounty judge riding shotgun over the other commissioners. Pete Sepulveda (actually the CEO of the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority at a $230,000 salary) does not get paid by the county per se. His salary is paid by the CCRMA which gets its money from the $10 surcharge on license plates and on value-added taxation on Transportation Reinvestment Zones. Sepulveda has been there since Carlos Cascos went off to become the Texas Secretary of State and will give up the reins to county government in January to county judge-elect Eddie Treviño, the very same Eddie who oversaw the $1 gift to Carlos Marin as the architect of Imagine Brownsville-United Brownsville cum OP 10.33.
Taking over the job Sepulveda held preciously as county administrator is another psuedoadministrator David Garcia, in reality a political hire under Gilberto Hinojosa as a favor to Lencho Rendon, Solomon Ortiz's administrative assistant. Garcia as been doing fine, thank you, at his inherited $180,000 salary to administer five entire departments ranging from Public Works to Engineering, the international bridges, etc. Of course, no mere human being can do that, but we're playing make believe, remember.
Over at the BISD we have a pseudo superintendent who was picked from a pseudopool of one after a majority of the trustees under psueudocoach Joe Rodriguez conducted a psuedonational search, hired a pseudoconsultant, and formed a psuedocommunity committee to hire a new superintendent.
Every move was run through pseudoeducation attorney Baltazar Salazar, whose pseudo credentials in educational law were approved by the board trustees even after his firm scored lower than the six finalist law firms they considered. His efforts to expunge his criminal record were stymied by the Texas Department of Public Safety even after he appealed to an appeals court.
And among those trustees is none other than trustee Jose Chirinos whose dismal performance as BISD Transportation Director where he racked up more than $2 million in pseudo overtime for the bus drivers union and piled a redundant inventory that saw tires deteriorate on the racks and office supplies that were staked up to the ceilings, earned him the selection as head of the budget committee. Chirinos, who has fooled himself into thinking he is a real-issue trustee, is running for reelection in November.
We also have a pseudo university whose main campus is in Edinburg while a semblance of a real one is passed off as UTRGV-Brownsville. The new UT Sytem chancellor saw what a sham the new "Institute of the Americas" was under former UTB president Juliet Garcia and axed the position, making her an advisor to his office instead. She is now writing a history of the origin of the UTRGV. Will there be a chapter on her utter failure as a "community university" president whose dismal performance forced local residents to put an end to the pseudopartnership between the UT System and UTB that resulted in the UTRGV being established?
Oops, we forgot. No pseudohistory of the UTRGV is going to contain the real truth.
And while we're at it, how about the pseudogovernment known as Imagine Brownsville-United Brownsville-OP 10.33?![]()
We have a pseudo government running things here in the abeyance of city government and the psuedo mayor (really a real real-estate speculator with real public money) posing as an elected official while handing over the reins of government to the non-elected United Brownsville Coordinating Board (AKA United Brownsville cum OP10.33) ) and abdicating his civic responsibilities.
Now, pseudo Messiah Mike Hernandez III with pseudo philanthropist Carlos Marin (who formed the pseudo government Imagine Brownsville-United Brownsville cum OP 10.33 for a very real $1 million greenbacks) has allied with these pseudo philanthropists Ed Rivera and Fred Rusteberg, to uplift the masses from their poverty-induced stupor.
(Rivera, by the way, was also a pseudo candidate for the Brownsville Navigation District despite the fact that he lived in Laguna Vista, outside the district boundaries.)
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The latest OP 10.33 gambit and public relations stunt was to hand out insect repellent to a few residents living downtown with the stated aim of combating the Zika virus at the border, a pseudogambit to elicit goodwill from the peasants. The face of the OP 10.33 PR tour de force was none other than George Gavito, the former Port of Brownsville Chief of Police who left under ambiguous circumstances. In no time, they were self-congratulating Hernandez (Our Organization's Founder) on a job well done. It was a huge non-success! No Zika virus cases were reported on that day...or the next.
And representing us at the state legislature are pseudo Senator Eddie Lucio, his son Eddie III and perennial Rep. Rene Oliveira. All these fine gents make us believe they are the public's representatives while simultaneously making a bundle by selling the public trust as "consultants" to such interests as engineering firms (Dannenbaum Engineering in Lucio Jr.s case which "engineered" the $21 million Bridge to Nowhere), and to private prison interests (in Willacy County), and the saying that fruit that doesn't fall from the tree was never more true than in the case of son Eddie Jr. who is now a $38,000 a month consultant to OP 10.33's Mike Hernandez III. Oliveira's subservience to delinquent-tax collector Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson and out-of-state PACs is the stuff of legends in Austin.
Add this to a pseudo downtown Brownsville, a psudo Cyclobia, a psuedo Healthy Communities, and a pseudo All-American city and one can see why others would try to emulate our leaders. And who is watching over all this falsity? Why none other than our pseudonewspaper (the Brownsville Herald) and a pseudo district attorney (Luis V. Saenz) who has mistaken political convenience for a very hazy conception of PR justice and law-and-order.
Criminals up the valley hit upon the idea early: Dress like cop, pretend you're the law, and you can con people and make money.
This make believe idea has caught on fire and now we have stories of people making believe they are nurses (35-year-old Juan Manuel Perez stole the LVN license number that belonged to someone else with the same name, and used it to gain employment as a nurse at local health care institutions for the last 18 months), cops ( Walter Sigler, 49, who was fired from Mission PD in 2013 was caught impersonating a Mission PD officer in May, when he disrupted a man’s arrest by Palmview Police Department officers), and God knows what is next.
Pseudo cops raids in the northern part of the Rio Grande Valley have been a headache for law enforcement and a nightmare for residents who don't resist when look-alike cops show up and barge in the door demanding they hand over drugs and money they charge are in the house.
Usually, they get away with the ruse and the fake-cop raids continue.
Here in Brownsville, for some reason, we have not suffered the spate of fake-cop robberies except for the fake-cop arrests on 14th Street when tipsy patrons came out of bars and – afraid they would be charged with PI or DWI – handed over their wallets and keys to the fake cops who would later peel off and throw their empty wallets and keys down the alley.
In a way, those victims were lucky.
There has been a mass contagion of pseudo everything here that has plagued the local community.
You have fake U.S. students whose parents rent a hovel or trailer space in the city and acquire an address to get a free education compliments of the real citizens.
But it goes even further.
You have pseudo city commissioners (Jessica Tetreau and Deborah Portillo) whose opponents correctly pointed out that they had used their parents' addresses so they could run for their positions on the city commission.
But, of course, that complements the fake city manager (ex-cop Charlie Cabler), the ehtics-challenged pseudo city attorney (Mark Sossi), and the fake fire chief (Carlos Elizondo.)
Why fake?
Cabler does not have one graduate course of city management or urban planning under his resume and might as well have been fire chief since his main occupation seems to be to put out brush fires in city government and then sweep the ashes ( and some live cinders) under the rug. Meanwhile, he can orchestrate mass self-hugs by city officials while Browntown burns. A goodly part (more than $2 million) of the city's expendable grant income is then diverted to stuff like bike trials for the Queen Isabella Causeway which we all know is inside the city limits. Does anyone know when we annexed Port Isabel?
Same goes for Sossi, whose legerdemain has allowed him to cover up his long list of sins including theft of a $167,363 judgment intended for his previous employer, the Willette & Guerra Law Firm, incompetence, two malpractice lawsuits from Brownsville residents who trusted him to represent them, reportedly stealing another $20,711.66 intended for employee unemployment benefits from the Texas Workforce, and a $100,000 tax lien from the I.R.S.
Add to that his appointment by Da pseudomayor Tony Martinez to draft a code of ethics for the city and the picture could not be more complete of a would-be city attorney.
Elizondo is not much different. Until recently, he had denied that he had been charged with felony theft back in 2002. That charged was "dismissed" by now-imprisoned 404th District Judge Abel Limas and Elizondo was defended by convicted court-appointed lawyer (and former District Attorney) Armando Villalobos. The "dismissal" was based on the fact that Villalobos negotiated a plea deal to have Elizondo pay restitution to the felony-theft victim and all was forgotten.
He then tried to pass a captain's exam at the city's Civil Service for the fire department and failed by two points scoring a 69. After two reviews, Elizondo's grade somehow changed to a 71. This angered firefighter Sacramento Diosdado who had scored a 70 and he sued in court. That, too, was "settled" and Cabler nonetheless made him fire chief over more qualified candidates.
Pseudomanager Cabler has also chosen to ignore City of Brownsville Personnel Policy Manual that prohibits a city employee from holding elective office in the Brownsville Independent School District. Or perhaps the delay is part of a bigger plan that is awaiting the propitious time to remove Elizondo from the district's board and replace him with an appointed trustee to the liking of the majority after those pesky elections are done in November.
It's not much different at Cameron County where we've had a pseudocounty judge riding shotgun over the other commissioners. Pete Sepulveda (actually the CEO of the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority at a $230,000 salary) does not get paid by the county per se. His salary is paid by the CCRMA which gets its money from the $10 surcharge on license plates and on value-added taxation on Transportation Reinvestment Zones. Sepulveda has been there since Carlos Cascos went off to become the Texas Secretary of State and will give up the reins to county government in January to county judge-elect Eddie Treviño, the very same Eddie who oversaw the $1 gift to Carlos Marin as the architect of Imagine Brownsville-United Brownsville cum OP 10.33.
Taking over the job Sepulveda held preciously as county administrator is another psuedoadministrator David Garcia, in reality a political hire under Gilberto Hinojosa as a favor to Lencho Rendon, Solomon Ortiz's administrative assistant. Garcia as been doing fine, thank you, at his inherited $180,000 salary to administer five entire departments ranging from Public Works to Engineering, the international bridges, etc. Of course, no mere human being can do that, but we're playing make believe, remember.
Over at the BISD we have a pseudo superintendent who was picked from a pseudopool of one after a majority of the trustees under psueudocoach Joe Rodriguez conducted a psuedonational search, hired a pseudoconsultant, and formed a psuedocommunity committee to hire a new superintendent.
Every move was run through pseudoeducation attorney Baltazar Salazar, whose pseudo credentials in educational law were approved by the board trustees even after his firm scored lower than the six finalist law firms they considered. His efforts to expunge his criminal record were stymied by the Texas Department of Public Safety even after he appealed to an appeals court.
And among those trustees is none other than trustee Jose Chirinos whose dismal performance as BISD Transportation Director where he racked up more than $2 million in pseudo overtime for the bus drivers union and piled a redundant inventory that saw tires deteriorate on the racks and office supplies that were staked up to the ceilings, earned him the selection as head of the budget committee. Chirinos, who has fooled himself into thinking he is a real-issue trustee, is running for reelection in November.
We also have a pseudo university whose main campus is in Edinburg while a semblance of a real one is passed off as UTRGV-Brownsville. The new UT Sytem chancellor saw what a sham the new "Institute of the Americas" was under former UTB president Juliet Garcia and axed the position, making her an advisor to his office instead. She is now writing a history of the origin of the UTRGV. Will there be a chapter on her utter failure as a "community university" president whose dismal performance forced local residents to put an end to the pseudopartnership between the UT System and UTB that resulted in the UTRGV being established?
Oops, we forgot. No pseudohistory of the UTRGV is going to contain the real truth.
And while we're at it, how about the pseudogovernment known as Imagine Brownsville-United Brownsville-OP 10.33?
We have a pseudo government running things here in the abeyance of city government and the psuedo mayor (really a real real-estate speculator with real public money) posing as an elected official while handing over the reins of government to the non-elected United Brownsville Coordinating Board (AKA United Brownsville cum OP10.33) ) and abdicating his civic responsibilities.
Now, pseudo Messiah Mike Hernandez III with pseudo philanthropist Carlos Marin (who formed the pseudo government Imagine Brownsville-United Brownsville cum OP 10.33 for a very real $1 million greenbacks) has allied with these pseudo philanthropists Ed Rivera and Fred Rusteberg, to uplift the masses from their poverty-induced stupor.
(Rivera, by the way, was also a pseudo candidate for the Brownsville Navigation District despite the fact that he lived in Laguna Vista, outside the district boundaries.)
The latest OP 10.33 gambit and public relations stunt was to hand out insect repellent to a few residents living downtown with the stated aim of combating the Zika virus at the border, a pseudogambit to elicit goodwill from the peasants. The face of the OP 10.33 PR tour de force was none other than George Gavito, the former Port of Brownsville Chief of Police who left under ambiguous circumstances. In no time, they were self-congratulating Hernandez (Our Organization's Founder) on a job well done. It was a huge non-success! No Zika virus cases were reported on that day...or the next.
And representing us at the state legislature are pseudo Senator Eddie Lucio, his son Eddie III and perennial Rep. Rene Oliveira. All these fine gents make us believe they are the public's representatives while simultaneously making a bundle by selling the public trust as "consultants" to such interests as engineering firms (Dannenbaum Engineering in Lucio Jr.s case which "engineered" the $21 million Bridge to Nowhere), and to private prison interests (in Willacy County), and the saying that fruit that doesn't fall from the tree was never more true than in the case of son Eddie Jr. who is now a $38,000 a month consultant to OP 10.33's Mike Hernandez III. Oliveira's subservience to delinquent-tax collector Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson and out-of-state PACs is the stuff of legends in Austin.
Add this to a pseudo downtown Brownsville, a psudo Cyclobia, a psuedo Healthy Communities, and a pseudo All-American city and one can see why others would try to emulate our leaders. And who is watching over all this falsity? Why none other than our pseudonewspaper (the Brownsville Herald) and a pseudo district attorney (Luis V. Saenz) who has mistaken political convenience for a very hazy conception of PR justice and law-and-order.