As in every job or profession, there are good people and there are bad people. When the bad apple is a cop, we all have a little more to fear. They have power over our lives when we interact with them. It’s scary to find out that one of them is a criminal, as in this Case of Lawbreaking Law Enforcement.
I write about a commercial property developer in other stories in my book, and he’s both a great friend and has been a good client in the past as well. He was developing shopping centers, office buildings and subdivisions in Texas when he called me for help in this case.
He was developing a subdivision in Southeast Houston, and he was experiencing a lot of theft from homes under construction and model homes. The thieves were primarily stealing appliances. It was a big subdivision and a major problem for him. He wanted it stopped and we began surveillance immediately.
There were too many homes under construction and model homes to watch them all. I decided to strategically place motion detectors in homes and garages around the subdivision. One of our investigators would be covertly stationed in the subdivision waiting for one of the detectors to signal a break-in.
Since the thefts were happening at night, we took our station at 6 PM and stayed all night. On the second night a motion detector went off and we witnessed the theft of a new refrigerator and stove from a model home. Over the next two weeks we viewed 4 additional thefts.
Intervening too early could keep us from catching all of the thieves. We also wanted to follow them to find out where they were selling the items to put the fencing operation out of business as well. We followed the thieves and found that they were dropping the stolen items off at a private residence.
Uh-oh, it’s a Case of Lawbreaking Law Enforcement
In checking out the address, to our surprise we found that a Houston police officer resided there. He was 22-years old and had been on the force about two years. We put him under surveillance and followed him to where he was fencing the stolen appliances and air conditioning units.
I called the Houston Police Department Internal Affairs Division and gave them our findings and information on where the items were being fenced. They immediately opened up an investigation of the police officer. We continued to work with the HPD, putting together criminal cases on all of the thieves and the police officer.
In February of 1986, the police officer and 6 others were arrested. All of them were charged with different degrees of theft. The police officer rose to a higher level though. Not only was he charged with felony theft, but also with possession of over two pounds of cocaine!
It was a great outcome for my client and there were no future thefts in that subdivision.