‘Wandering officers’ must be watched
The nowformer Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo was fired by the school board in August with a less-than-honorable discharge.
Arredondo’s failure to take command of the situation was at the center of what a legislative committee called law enforcement’s “lackadaisical” response to the Robb Elementary School mass shooting.
Last month, Arredondo’s discharge was upgraded from “general” to “honorable” by default because no one initially contested his effort to appeal. This past Friday, in the wake of increased public scrutiny prompted by Texas 2036’s findings about Arredondo’s appeal, the school district asked for a rehearing to uphold the original discharge.
No matter how Arredondo’s discharge is finalized, the events following his firing should spur legislative action to reform a little understood process governing the separation of a peace officer from his or her employer so a situation like this doesn’t reoccur.
Any time an officer leaves a law enforcement agency for any reason, the agency files an F-5 report to the state. The agency checks one of three boxes — “honorable,” “general” or “dishonorable” — to describe the discharge. If the officer applies to work somewhere else, the discharge is one factor a future agency can consider before hiring.
For Arredondo’s case, a “general” discharge under state law is for when an officer is terminated because of a “disciplinary investigation of conduct” or a “documented performance problem.”
If an officer receives either a general or dishonorable discharge, that officer can file an appeal challenging the agency’s determination to receive a better discharge status on the F-5
form.
The F-5 system was intended to address the problem of wandering officers — those who are fired from one agency for cause and then find work at another. In theory, a general or dishonorable discharge was supposed to serve as a red flag for a hiring agency.
In practice, it’s a red flag that doesn’t work.
The discharge categories are overly broad, the appeals too often lead to default upgrades, and confidentiality shields the process from scrutiny. A report by Texas 2036 last November showed how the F-5 system not only fails to adequately address the problem but can also facilitate an officer’s wandering to other agencies. It found almost 60 percent of the discharge upgrades that occurred in 2021 were won by default, with confidentiality contributing to the phenomenon.
Arredondo’s general discharge happened in broad daylight. One has to ask why Uvalde CISD has to litigate the
obvious — or whether we can have a system that more easily avoids absurd results.
There are multiple ways to address this, including giving the state teeth to enforce professional conduct standards against licensees. Lawmakers this year should focus on what
happens at two critical points: What an agency does when an officer leaves and what an agency does before an officer is hired.
First, replace the ill-defined discharge categories on the current F-5 report with neutral, descriptive reasons for separation. Sticking to objective descriptions can also dramatically cut down the number of F-5 appeals and thus the number of default judgments. Simply abolishing any reason for separation — a current recommendation in the Sunset process — would provide even less information and transparency on wandering officers.
Second, ensure that all law enforcement agencies maintain detailed personnel records. Legislation passed in 2021 took a step in the right direction by requiring records-sharing between agencies, but the quality of a hiring agency’s background check is only as good as the quality of the personnel information maintained by the firing agency.
Third, ensure that the basic information on the report is publicly available. Ensuring the transparency of neutral, factbased separation information will enable better monitoring of statewide trends and agency practices.
Lastly, require agencies to check a national law enforcement database such as the National Decertification Index before hiring. Over the past decade, hundreds of officers started their policing careers outside of Texas law enforcement agencies. This would provide an extra assurance that officers with a checkered work history do not bring it to Texas without notice.
For Texas to be the best place to live and work, public safety, which is predicated on trust in law enforcement, is critical. That trust can be shaken and tarnished by a few who do not uphold the profession’s high standards. The Legislature must seize the opportunity this session to improve safeguards against wandering officers, strengthen the profession and better protect all Texans.