SAPD officer arrested for making terroristic threat against family member – KSAT
An officer with the San Antonio Police Department has been arrested. [from KSAT]
This dashboard houses a wealth of suspension and firings data that shed light on the conduct of officers from San Antonio Police Department (SAPD), Bexar County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) and San Marcos Police Department (SMPD). Not only does this tool serve as a community “watchdog” for officer behavior, but it also aims to hold officers accountable, deter misconduct, and assist in bettering hiring decisions. Furthermore, they help highlight disciplinary gaps in law enforcement contracts and inform training practices across various crucial areas such as de-escalation and mental health. Please note that while we strive to update our databases regularly, some suspensions may not be represented due to limitations in the data we receive.
An officer with the San Antonio Police Department has been arrested. [from KSAT]
Officer Jeremias Duque Jr. was handed a second suspension late last month, and will serve it if his previous indefinite suspension is overturned, an SAPD
A veteran San Antonio Police Department detective has been suspended 15 days after sending threatening text messages to his girlfriend and then pulling out a
The San Antonio Police Department said one of its officers was arrested early Thursday morning. [from KSAT]
A San Antonio police lieutenant fired last year for leaving his shift early the night officers shot and killed a woman inside her Southwest Side
Years after he was hired by the San Antonio Police Department, an officer has been terminated for failing to disclose that he was the subject
The San Antonio Police Department has fired an officer accused of taking weapons and ammunition during a city councilman-sponsored gun buyback event outside the Alamodome
A Bexar County Sheriff’s detention deputy was arrested on family assault charges Tuesday evening. [from KSAT]
A Bexar County Sheriff’s lieutenant fired months after posting selfies outside the U.S. Capitol during the deadly 2021 riot has received a $395,000 settlement from
Newly released body-worn camera video shows multiple San Antonio Police Department officers failed to thoroughly search a teen who killed himself while being booked into
Despite a guilty sentence that came with no jail time and a short stint of community supervision, Michael Fernandez told KSAT Investigates the stigma of
A fired San Antonio police officer awaiting trial for the 2022 shooting of a teenager subdued a suspect accused of breaking into a vehicle outside
A Bexar County Sheriff’s deputy fired amid accusations he falsified jail paperwork was indicted twice last year in separate continuous sex abuse of a child
In 2023, 22 people were hit by bullets fired by San Antonio police — 14 of them died, according to data obtained from SAPD by
In 2023, nine SAPD officers and nine BCSO deputies were arrested. The charges range from driving under the influence to murder. [from KSAT]
KSAT noticed two different disciplinary actions taken against an SAPD officer and BCSO deputy for a domestic violence charge. We wanted to take a closer
The City of San Marcos has resolved a lawsuit involving an incident in 2020 when a group of vehicles known as the “Trump Train” surrounded
A former Bexar County sheriff’s detention officer who resigned this spring was hired and worked for the agency for years despite facing a felony theft
A veteran San Antonio police officer has been suspended after calling 911 and telling dispatchers a woman inside his home was going to kill him,
A man who San Marcos police officers shocked with stun guns during a 2021 incident has received a $125,000 settlement from the city, court records
A pair of lawsuits pending in federal court in Austin accuse San Marcos police of quickly resorting to the use of stun guns to violate
Departments have had to take back hundreds of officers over the past decade after appeals required by union contracts. [from Washington Post]
A recent investigative series by the KSAT 12 Defenders, “Broken Blue,” looks into why officers involved in some of SAPD’s most notorious firings were… [from
Texas’ approach to regulating law enforcement is toothless. [from New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung Online]
San Antonio police officers accused of violating the department’s body-worn camera policy are rarely suspended, a months-long investigation by the KSAT 12 Defenders found. [from
Across 13,394 employees, the city of San Antonio paid a total of $842 million in wages and $1.2 billion in total compensation to fire, police
In the past decade, arbitrators have overturned 10 San Antonio Police Department firings, allowing cops accused of serious wrongdoing to stay on the force. [from
The list below shows Bexar County sheriff's deputy and detention officer suspensions from January 2013 to the present for last names that range from the
In February, San Marcos seized the title of First City to Ever Repeal a Police Contract in Texas. But how?
This Officer Suspension Dashboard has been created as an effort to offer further transparency to the public about the conduct of San Antonio Police Department (SAPD), Bexar County Sheriffs Office (BCSO) and San Marcos Police Department (SMPD) officers. We have collected suspension and arbitration documents from 2010-2024 for SAPD, 2014-2024 for BCSO and 2020-2023 for SMPD and will be updating our data as it is received. It should be noted that we have inputted all the data we have received but there may be some suspensions not represented. All incident types are based off of SAPD language. Some incident types have been combined with others for accessibility purposes.
This dashboard will serve as a “watchdog” for officers that violate laws and departmental policies. Not only will it alert the community but will be a tool to hold officers accountable and be a deterrent for bad behavior, and assist smaller law enforcement agencies in making good hiring choices, to reduce the issue of “wandering officers.” It is our hope at ACT 4 SA that this dashboard will help highlight disciplinary loopholes in our police contract that allow for the rehiring of fired officers. Finally, any trends from this data will better inform training practices for law enforcement agencies on de-escalation, cultural sensitivity, mental health training, hiring practices, and more.
This dashboard is comprised of 4 pages and can be searched by incident type on page 2, officer name on page 3, and disciplinary outcomes on page 4.
This dashboard was a project funded by the Catalyst Grant offered by the Urban Institute and Microsoft Justice Reform Initiative. We would like to thank the Microsoft team, Urban Institute, and our current and former data leads: Brittany Sharp, James Dykman, and Juanes Zapata for working tireless hours to make this project a reality! We would also like to thank the fellows at Bluebonnet Fellows for their support.
SAPD data has been received through Open Records Requests (ORR) from the City of San Antonio and from SAPD’s data and transparency page. BCSO and SMPD data has been received through ORR. Unlike SAPD, BCSO and SMPD do not publish suspension or arbitration documents on their website. If you would like access to any of these records please email us at info@act4sa.org!
State-wide data is also currently being received through the National Police Index, a data tool built by the Invisible Institute. The data we use is available to download on their website. Much gratitude to the Invisible Institute for their generosity and willingness to collaborate on our intersecting data projects. To learn more about this project, you can visit their site here.
The most common officer misconduct for SAPD is Agency Vehicle Crash, Responsibility to Serve the Public (this is a wide ranging category that includes violations like using profane and derogatory language, being rude to civilians, and general bad behavior), and Use of Government Resources (using confidential police information for personal reasons, and remaining on a call for service for longer than necessary).
It should be noted that 32 arbitrations have yet to be determined, as there is a backlog due to COVID-19.
30.5% OF INDEFINITE SUSPENSIONS (FIRINGS) GO TO ARBITRATION.
64.05% of all firings resulted in an officer being reinstated. As backlog cases make their way through the process this number is subject to change.
The most common officer misconduct for BCSO is Responsibility to Serve the Public (this is a wide ranging category that includes violations like using profane and derogatory language, being rude to civilians, and general bad behavior), Responsibility to Know Laws and Procedures, and Created Unsafe Jail Conditions.
OUR DATA SHOWS THAT ALL BUT 2 USE OF FORCE INCIDENTS TOOK PLACE INSIDE THE JAIL AND 7 OF THESE USE OF FORCE INCIDENTS LED TO THE ARREST OF THE DEPUTY.
BCSO no longer has an arbitration process and instead all appeals go through the Sheriff’s Civil Service Commission. We have not received many of the Sheriff Civil Service Commission or past Arbitration documents as the new process has been getting set up over the last few years – there is a suspected backlog. Our data is not comprehensive enough to come to any conclusions or to share statistics from.
Our data from SMPD consists of 11 disciplinary actions. This is partially due to SMPD being a small department and difficulties obtaining requested data.
The most common officer misconduct for SMPD is Responsibility to Serve the Public (this is a wide ranging category that includes violations like using profane and derogatory language, being rude to civilians, and general bad behavior), Shouting, Abusive Language or Cursing, and Weapons Violation.
An officer is placed on unpaid leave for a given period of time.
An officer has been fired.
The officer agrees to the suspension given to them. They can either agree to the full term of the suspension or sometimes agree to reduce the suspension, but not appeal it.
Use of an outside lawyer (known as an arbitrator) to settle a dispute, such as appealing a firing or suspension. Arbitrators will review an entire disciplinary case and make a decision to sustain, reduce, or reverse an officer’s suspension/indefinite suspension.
The BCSO disciplinary process no longer includes arbitration as of the newest Collective Bargaining Agreement ratified by Commissioner’s Court in February of 2022. San Marcos PD ended third-party arbitration in their new meet and confer agreement.
This was put in place by the newest BCSO Collective Bargaining Agreement in lieu of Arbitration.
This is an agreement between an officer and the department to reduce an officer’s indefinite suspension. By the time a settlement agreement is made, most officers have spent time on unpaid leave for their indefinite suspension. Officers may receive back pay if the reduced suspension is shorter than the time they have spent on unpaid leave.
Types of incidents that did not fit into other categories and were not common enough to have their own category. These types of incidents include making off duty traffic stops, vehicle pursuit violations, improper handling of evidence, various violations regarding administrative tasks and failure to arrest, issue a citation or run a drivers license check.
While sifting through collected data, we noticed that detailed documents were not provided to us by BCSO for all suspensions or firings. We are requesting these documents but are missing incident summaries and incident types for these suspensions.
Do you have a suggestion for how to improve the Officer Suspension Dashboard? Let us know! Provide your input below. We are continuously working to make the dashboard more informative for our community.