Ex-Texas City officer facing theft charges
Family alleges money stolen from pockets of dying 74-year-old
Michael Mabe on Thursday described how a Texas City police officer last December allegedly rifled through his dying father’s pockets and took more than $2,000 in cash that the 74-year-old grandfather-to-be was carrying for Christmas presents.
At a news conference, the son said he wonders if his father, James Mabe, might have survived, if the officer had provided immediate medical assistance instead of allegedly stealing his money after he was found unresponsive in his pickup truck Dec. 19 in the coastal city of 50,000 near Galveston.
The Texas City Police Department said Thursday that charges, including theft, were pending against Linnard R. Crouch Jr., a third-generation officer whose personnel file details a history of complaints from citizens and supervisors. Crouch resigned under pressure Jan. 30 after more than a decade with the department.
The department’s announcement came the day after James Mabe’s widow, Linda, filed a federal lawsuit against Texas City and Crouch seeking a jury trial and punitive damages.
“What happened to Jim haunts me daily,” Linda Mabe said at the news conference, her voice cracking. “I cannot accept it.”
James Mabe, 74, was driving his pickup when congestive heart failure incapacitated him, Michael Mabe said.
Someone called 911 to report a truck stopped on a major Texas City thoroughfare, according to the lawsuit. Crouch was dispatched, found the elderly Mabe unresponsive in the driver’s seat and called for paramedics.
Later that day, shortly after Linda Mabe learned that her husband of 46 years was dead, Crouch walked up and handed
her a clear bag with a stack of cash with a $100 bill on top, Michael Mabe wrote in a February letter to the police department.
Linda Mabe said she had given her husband $2,400 in cash to shop for Christmas gifts; her son said at the news conference that the couple did not use credit or debit cards.
When family members checked the bag after returning home, the lawsuit says, they found the wad of cash was a single $100 bill with smaller bills tucked inside.
“Mr. Mabe was well known by all that knew him to never carry $1 bills in his pockets,” the son wrote in his February letter. “Instead, he collected them in the console of (his) truck for his soon-to-beborn granddaughter. He was known to suggest he was starting her college fund.”
Only one with access
The couple’s son, a real estate attorney, called the police department several times that month to lodge a complaint. He said he asserted that Crouch was the only person with access to both the wad of $100 bills in James Mabe’s pocket as well as the stash of $1 bills in the truck’s console, suggesting Crouch intentionally used the $1 bills to conceal the missing thousands of dollars.
A supervisor who responded to the son’s first phone calls said on Jan. 3 that the department found no evidence of wrongdoing and that, besides, no officer would “risk his career for such a small amount of money,” Michael Mabe wrote in his February letter.
However, further investigation uncovered video footage from Crouch’s body camera.
The family has obtained a memo dated Jan. 17 from an assistant police chief to the chief describing footage showing Crouch “removed money from Mr. Mabe’s right front pocket he appears not to have reported.”
Sgt. Kenneth Brown, a department spokesman, said Crouch was confronted and chose to resign rather than face disciplinary action and firing. The investigation then continued, leading to evidence of theft as well as possession of a controlled substance.
“These charges have been presented to the Galveston County District Attorney’s Office and will be presented to a grand jury upon completion of the investigation,” a news release stated. The grand jury will decide whether the ex-officer should be indicted.
The Mabe family’s lawyer questioned what happened in the six months between the Jan. 17 memo and Thursday’s announcement of pending charges.
“If that had been you or I, we would have been arrested that day,” said civil rights attorney Randall Kallinen. “I believe that six months is an extremely long time for a simple crime: theft, caught on video.”
The Mabe lawsuit asserts Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure violations and argues that Texas City failed to train, supervise and discipline its officers, permitting a “code of silence.”
The December incident was not the first to land Crouch in hot water. He faced a variety of unsatisfactory performance reviews over his decade on the force, according to personnel records obtained by the family and included in the lawsuit.
In 2011 he got several “unsatisfactory” ratings in his annual performance review. Supervisors cited “poor decisions throughout this year” leading to a loss of confidence, such as when he “hung up on, yelled at, and pointed his finger at a sergeant of this Department. Inexcuseable! (sic)”
On that evaluation, Crouch acknowledged that he “had a bad year,” which he attributed to going through five surgeries and a divorce.
‘Pattern of dereliction’
More recently, he was reprimanded and suspended last year due to a “pattern of dereliction by Cpl. Crouch in not completing reports,” including a missing one that may have jeopardized a case.
No one returned messages left Thursday at phone numbers listed for Linnard Crouch or his parents. Since he has not been charged, there are no court records that would list an attorney.
In a twist, the incident that led to Crouch’s resignation came almost exactly a half-century after a 1966 incident that led the same agency to fire Crouch’s grandfather for theft, according to civil service commission records.
His grandfather, Clarence L. Crouch, was fired from the department after an incident on Nov. 29, 1966, according to civil service commission records.
Clarence Crouch and his partner were on patrol when they found a door ajar at a business, which they entered, according to the commission records. Crouch “removed several transistor radios without the owner’s permission (and) stated to the officer accompanying him that the radios would make good Christmas gifts.”