Harris County needs a new Sheriff and we need him or her before the November elections. The former elected Sheriff, Adrian Garcia, had to resign because he is running for Houston's mayor in November. The Harris Co. Commissioners Court therefore appointed Ron Hickman. Because there are more Republicans on the Court than Democrats, Houston, one of the most diverse cities in the U.S., found itself with a Republican white male for Sheriff.
A good old white boy appointed to a post in a city in which whites are a minority.
Many of us were surprised by this appointment but since there isn't much time between the appointment and the November election how much damage could Hickman do?
More than one imagined.
Unfortunately Ron Hickman made big waves as soon as he took office. He immediately filled eight of his command posts with white males.
However, Adrian Garcia, the county's first Latino sheriff, called it "unconscionable" that all those on Hickman's command staff to date are white and male. Garcia resigned to run for mayor of Houston.
Some rumblings of discontent also have begun among the rank and file.
"A lot of African-American deputies have approached me … asking me to say something about this. We are going back to the days of (Sheriff) Tommy Thomas," said J.M. "Smokie" Phillips Jr., president of the Afro-American Sheriff's Deputy League. "They are expressing concern that we are going backwards to the old days of racism, the good old boys' system, discriminatory practices and disparity in treatment."
Sure enough, Hickman ushered in the good old boy system.
In the roughly two weeks since Commissioners Court appointed him to serve the remainder of Garcia's term, Hickman has lined up two-thirds of his command staff. He kept two members of Garcia's top staff, but most of his command picks came from Precinct 4, where Hickman was constable, or, in the case of one new hire, out of retirement.
Adrian Garcia's command group was diverse and reflective of the city's cultural and racial make-up.
The command group in place when Hickman entered the picture included two black men, two white women, a Hispanic male, an Asian-American male and four white males.
Firing diversity.
Hickman terminated Maj. Penny Crianza, a white woman who directed crime data analysis, ran the information technology division and had worked 23 years for the sheriff's office. Hickman demoted Maj. Debra A. Schmidt, a white woman who had implemented sweeping new protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex inmates and employees. Schmidt has served 29 years for the department. Hickman transferred one black male, Maj. Edwin A. Davis, to a civilian post with a lower salary, and he fired another black male, Chief Deputy Marlin R. Suell, who led the investigation into abuses at the jail.
Hickman also dismissed Maj. Michael F. Wong, the first Asian-American male in command, who directed the sheriff's Homeland Security operation, which included the port, helicopter operations, marine units at the Houston Ship Channel and intelligence. And he fired Maj. Edison Toquica, a Hispanic male managing criminal investigations who spent 23 years with the sheriff's office.
But the worst was yet to come.
It happened last week when Sheriff Hickman decided to politicize a horrible tragedy.
Despite his track record many of us were nonetheless stunned when Hickman made his remarks about the recently slain officer Deputy Darren H. Goforth's murderer. The murderer gunned down Mr. Goforth, execution style, while he pumped gas.
Knowing little at the time except for the gunman's race, Hickman immediately jumped to a racially divisive conclusion.
The Harris County sheriff, Ron Hickman, admitted as much in a news conference: “We have not been able to extract any details regarding a motive at this point.”
But Hickman departed from proof and protocol to deliver a dangerous, unsupported political statement.
Hickman suggested that Goforth “was a target because he wore a uniform,” but offered no evidence of this.
Hickman said further: “At any point when the rhetoric ramps up to the point where calculated, coldblooded assassinations of police officers happen, this rhetoric has gotten out of control. We’ve heard ‘black lives matter.’ All lives matter. Well, cops’ lives matter, too. So why don’t we just drop the qualifier and just say ‘lives matter,’ and take that to the bank.” Hickman offered no evidence that the shooting was connected to Black Lives Matter protesters.
The Harris County District Attorney echoed Mr. Hickman's conclusion.
The Harris County district attorney, Devon Anderson, said at the same news conference: “There are a few bad apples in every profession. That does not mean that there should be open warfare declared on law enforcement.”
Again, no evidence was offered that the killing was part of any “warfare” on law enforcement.
When a motive is discovered, the sheriff and district attorney may well be proved right, but you don’t make statements and then hope the facts support those statements. That’s operating in the inverse.
At this point, the “war on police” rhetoric is not only unsupported, it’s dangerous and reckless.
Fox News and right wing media outlets have insisted #BlackLivesMatter is a hate group. All are singing the same song.
But many in the media who are hostile to the movement went even further, using the chant and Goforth’s tragic death as tools to support and promote a narrative that Black Lives Matter itself is a hate group that has declared war on the police, even though, at this point, there is no evidence whatsoever that the suspect, Shannon J. Miles, was affiliated with or influenced by the Black Lives Matter movement.
(We do know that Miles “spent four months in a mental hospital in 2012 after being declared incompetent to stand trial in an aggravated assault case,” according to The Houston Chronicle.)
The thing that many people have criticized the protesters for — exploiting a tragedy, rushing to judgment, putting narrative ahead of facts — was precisely what they did.
Yes, indeed. Mr. Hickman and Ms. Anderson were
wrong to jump to conclusions in Mr. Goforth's slaying. They jumped right on board the right wing hate machine.
"This crime is not going to divide us; this crime is going to unite us," Devon Anderson told reporters, citing the diverse crowds of people who have held vigil for Goforth following the murder.
If only that message had come sooner. If only Sheriff Ron Hickman had echoed it.
If only Harris County's top law enforcement officials hadn't turned a white deputy's death, allegedly at the hands of a black man, into yet another wedge between police and communities of color.
With a motive still unclear, Hickman seemed to cast early blame on a civil rights movement known as #blacklivesmatter, which attempts to raise awareness about racial bias in policing. It was inspired by a string of high-profile police shootings of unarmed black men.
The last thing Houston needs is a Sheriff that knee jerk reacts to a murder of a white officer as a racially motivated evil act. The fact that he immediately went there speaks volumes about Sheriff Hickman's own thinly veiled racism.
Any city leaders that are influenced by extreme right wing rhetoric and purveyors of hate are not fit to govern in a city as culturally rich and diverse as Houston.
