New website brings data on bad cops to public

Since the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020 there have been loud cries for public databases to track officer disciplinary records so “bad actors” can be more easily identified.

Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin had a history of misconduct that showed a pattern of aggressive behavior before he ever murdered George Floyd.

Even now, here in the San Antonio Police Department, or SAPD, there are officers who have multiple suspensions on their records for misconduct, such as lying, not turning on their body cameras, drunken driving, assault and more. What’s more, several officerinvolved shootings in recent years have involved the same officers time and time again. San Antonio Police Department Officer Stephen Ramos was involved in the shootings of 13-year-old Andre “AJ” Hernandez last year and John Pena Montez the year prior. Similarly, SAPD Officer Robert Encina was involved in both the deaths of Jesse Aguirre and Marquise Jones.

There have also been instances of officers who have been fired for an offense at one department, simply jumping over to another police department for employment — a problem coined “wandering officers.”

For instance, Officer Elizabeth Montoya was fired from SAPD for kicking a handcuffed pregnant woman on camera but was hired by the Elmendorf Police Department months later. Former SAPD Officer Matthew Luckhurst, infamous for somehow being able to retain his job after giving a homeless man a dog feces sandwich, was later fired for a separate incident in which he vandalized a women’s park police restroom. He recently gained employment at Floresville Police Department, but has since been let go after public outcry.

A major contributor to this problem in Texas is lack of access to officer employment or disciplinary records.

In fact, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, or TCOLE, does not gather or share data about officers terminated for excessive use of force or other serious offenses. This makes it hard for the public to easily find out about the number of terminated officers or their employment status. The cries for transparency and accountability measures to combat wandering officers have been answered, however, at least for SAPD.

I serve as the executive director of ACT 4 SA, a nonprofit focused on police reform, which has launched copthedata.com. This is a public dashboard showing SAPD suspensions and firings from 2010 through 2022. You can search this dashboard by officer name, incident type, disciplinary outcomes or view indefinite suspension data. The dashboard does not include suspensions issued for purely attendance-based violations.

Officers of note in this dashboard include Lee Rakun, who was fired and rehired multiple times by SAPD due to arbitration. A settlement agreement was reached in his last firing to retire with more than $477,000 in backpay that made him the highest paid city employee in 2020. Luckhurst can also be found in the dashboard.

Besides serving as a “watchdog” for officers who violate standards and departmental policies, the dashboard can be used as a tool to hold officers accountable and be a deterrent for bad behavior. ACT 4 SA also hopes that this dashboard will help highlight disciplinary loopholes in current police contracts that allow for the rehiring of fired officers.

The goal is to continue adding more local police and sheriff departments from across the state so that copthedata.com can become a statewide dashboard.