Leaving his badge behind
Hickman proud of accomplishments in 18-month tenure
Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman steps along the cement floor and past the steel doors of the county jail like a veteran lawman at peace with his recent electoral loss and a legacy shaped in part by scandal and the limitations of the shortest-lived administration in about 150 years.
Guards shake his hand and wish him well. They say they’re sorry his 18-month tenure is coming to a close. He’s cleaned out his office for the most part, ordered business cards for his successor, and left a gold sheriff ’s badge in the drawer of the desk he will sit at come Jan. 1.
“It has been a great tour,” said Hickman. “There are the feelings I’ve left some things unfinished, but we did accomplish a great deal — in 18 months we got a lot done.”
The former constable and policeman, who has 45 years in law enforcement and who will turn 62 on Thursday, is not sure what awaits him next.
But of this he is certain: There was nothing more he could have done to win the
November election; and the jail over which he presided — one plagued by overcrowding, abuse of inmates, and lack of adequate staffing — is a better facility than the one he inherited when Adrian Garcia resigned to launch what would be an unsuccessful bid for mayor.
As Hickman heads into the sunset, he can hang his trademark Stetson Llano hat on the fact that the troubled jail, the state’s largest with more than 9,000 residents at any given time, recently passed a state inspection, for the second straight year.
Approximately 120,000 people a year make their way through the a jail system, and they have to have their medical and mental needs met as well as be guarded, fed and moved to and from courthouses — all while keeping every aspect of the facility up and running properly and within state guidelines.
And in Harris County, that burden falls on the shoulders of the county sheriff.
“We aren’t into rehabilitation; we aren’t into punishment,” Hickman said. “Our job is to keep them safe and care for them while they are moving through the process. When you get the impression reading about jail facilities, you think of a dungeon like environment, slime on the walls. It is a pretty clean facility, and it is pretty orderly.”
Goforth shooting
He now passes on responsibility of running the facility to incoming sheriff Ed Gonzalez, who will have to pay the price for Hickman’s success, which was attained in part by using massive amounts of overtime to overcome manpower shortages.
“Because of the amount of the (inmate) population we have, too many (jail employees) have to work double shifts too many days of the week,” the sheriff said. “A minimum of two extra shifts a week; some of them work three or four days a week double shifts. How long could you do that before you got burned out?”
Though short, Hickman’s tenure as sheriff saw its share of stormy weather, not the least of which was the murder in 2015, shortly after he took office, of deputy Darren Goforth, who was shot in the back at a northwest Harris County gas station.
The death, which was shockingly random and pointless and which was captured by a surveillance camera, rattled the department and drew an outpouring of emotion from the public.
“I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff, really bad stuff — things people do to their little kids — but to see a guy walk up and put a gun 8 or 10 inches from the back of somebody’s head and just drop him and then stand over him and pump 13 or 14 more rounds into his head, that is rough stuff to watch and to see what it did to the heart of our sheriff ’s department family,” he said.
Goforth’s murder by a black man came at a particularly difficult time nationally, with the Black Lives Matter movement in its ascendency, sparked by numerous incidents across the United States in which unarmed black men were killed by police.
Hickman drew strong criticism from the community when he appeared to blame the movement for Goforth’s death, or at least link it to the murder. His comments, he said this week, were aimed at reducing rhetoric, not trying to blame Black Lives Matter.
“I actually said, can we tone down the rhetoric? We have heard black lives matter, white lives matter; cops lives matter too,” he said. “Why can’t we just say all lives matter? But they took that to mean I’m blaming Black Lives Matter.”
The shooting also led to a sex scandal within his department that dogged Hickman for months. Goforth had been having an affair with a woman who was with him when he was killed. One of the department’s senior investigators was fired for having a sexual relationship with that same woman, who is a witness in the capital murder case against accused shooter Shannon Miles.
Another deputy was also fired over ties to the same woman, but authorities have not revealed much detail.
How to house bad guys
As sheriff, Hickman’s administrative world has been divided into two parts — overseeing the capture of criminals in the streets and their housing in jail after their arrest.
“Most of us came into law enforcement to catch the bad guys,” he said. “It is like a dog chasing and catching a Chevrolet — now that I’ve got it, what do I do?”
Hickman said, that in addition to keeping the jail safe and secure, among his other accomplishments were upgrading the required training of new deputies and enhancing the department’s use of technology to fight crime.
On his watch, approximately 500 surveillance cameras were added to the main jail complex building at 1200 Baker St. Prior to his arrival, there were none, he said. Cameras in other buildings were also upgraded in terms of technology as well as positioning, he said.
The jail played a prominent role in the campaign he lost to Gonzalez, a former city councilman and Houston Police officer, who criticized Hickman for, among other things, the use of overtime, the time burden of adding more training to new guards and having to send inmates to other counties with more jail space.
A team of five inspectors from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards recently wrapped up a review. They are not whiteglove inspections but have been known to include inspectors searching through pipe chases, poking around inside cells and combing through files.
“For them to pass and it not be a train wreck is always a good thing,” said Brandon Wood, executive director of the commission. “They have got a lot of moving parts down there.”
Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack, a former Houston policeman, said the sheriff was handed a bad situation in the jail from the start, and that any sheriff coming into office will struggle being both policeman and jailer.
“I think he inherited an absolute mess with unbelievable amounts of money wasted,” said Radack, who added that it would be tough to point to any sheriff who has not had troubles running the jail because they tend to have expertise in catching criminals, not housing them.
Incoming Sheriff Gonzalez said that he intends to move forward and not dwell on the past or his criticism of Hickman.
“My focus will be on what we need to do right now — how do we stop the bleeding? What are our long- and short-term fixes?” he said. “We’ll look at what works and what does not. Maybe I’m naive, but I’m excited about the opportunity going in.”
What’s next?
There is some debate over whether Hickman was the 28th or 29th sheriff in the department’s 175-year history, as one man in the 1800s was a chief deputy who briefly oversaw the department after a sheriff committed suicide.
The last to serve a term as abbreviated as Hickman’s was Sheriff Irvin Lord, who was appointed in September 1865 and served until June 1866 when elections were held at the close of the Civil War, according to the sheriff ’s office.
Hickman’s career of late speaks of a man striving for more in his later years. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 2005 from the University of Alabama and wears the school ring. He recently completed the FBI’s National Academy, including the challenging 6.1 mile obstacle course.
Hickman said he is not sure what he’ll do next, but like his time as sheriff, he won’t be making many more walks through the jail.
Heading down the corridor where Goforth’s alleged killer and others are housed, a staff member put her arm around Hickman and told him how sorry she was to see him go.
“You can only hear that so many times,” Hickman said.