Ex-chief: Dallas cop kept on job to not tip him off to probe
DALLAS — The Dallas Police Department allowed an officer to continue patrolling for more than a year while investigating whether he ordered two people to be killed because it didn’t want to tip him off, the city’s former police chief said.
U. Renee Hall, who left the department at the end of 2020, said in a statement posted on Twitter late Thursday that police investigators, in collaboration with the FBI, recommended not placing Officer Bryan Riser on administrative leave after he was identified as a person of interest in 2019.
Hall’s explanation came hours after Riser, 36, was arrested on two counts of capital murder. Riser was being held Friday on $5 million bond after a court appearance Thursday night.
Dallas’ new police chief,
Eddie Garcia, said that someone came forward in 2019 and told police he kidnapped and killed two people, 31-yearold Liza Saenz and 61-yearold Albert Douglas, on Riser’s instructions in separate 2017 attacks. Garcia said neither killing was connected to Riser’s police work, but that investigators were still trying to determine the motives.
Garcia didn’t explain why Riser was arrested nearly 20 months after the witness came forward, and police declined to answer subsequent questions about the timing. Both victims were shot and their bodies were dumped in the Trinity River, according to investigators. Saenz’s body was recovered, but Douglas’ wasn’t.
Three men were charged
Bryan Riser with capital murder in the killing of Saenz: Kevin Kidd, Emmanuel Kilpatrick and Jermon Simmons. Kilpatrick is serving life in prison for the killings of a father and son. Kidd and Simmons are jailed on capital murder charges stemming from the killings of Saenz and the father and son. Simmons is also charged in another death.
One of the men charged with Saenz’s killing told police that he and Riser were involved in burglaries when they were young, according to an affidavit for Riser’s arrest that doesn’t identify the man by name.
More recently, Riser and the man allegedly hatched a plan to rob drug stash houses, but they didn’t follow through with it, according to the affidavit. Instead, the man told investigators that Riser offered to pay him a total of $9,500 to kidnap and kill Douglas and later Saenz, the affidavit says.