Join us for a captivating podcast exploring law enforcement and Texas politics. Former Travis County Sheriff and State Representative, Terry Keel shares insights on current challenges and the crucial role of legislative action in maintaining justice.
Explore Austin's law enforcement overhaul and the possibility of a state takeover. Gain a real understanding of the human side of law enforcement through personal stories shared.
We examine cultural and political shifts in Austin, extending gratitude to organizations like TMPA for their support of law enforcement professionals.
Don't miss this opportunity to gain insight into the crucial role law enforcement plays in our society and the challenges they face in today's world.
email us at- bluegrit@tmpa.org
Join us for a captivating podcast exploring law enforcement and Texas politics. Former Travis County Sheriff and State Representative, Terry Keel shares insights on current challenges and the crucial role of legislative action in maintaining justice.
Explore Austin's law enforcement overhaul and the possibility of a state takeover. Gain a real understanding of the human side of law enforcement through personal stories shared.
We examine cultural and political shifts in Austin, extending gratitude to organizations like TMPA for their support of law enforcement professionals.
Don't miss this opportunity to gain insight into the crucial role law enforcement plays in our society and the challenges they face in today's world.
email us at- bluegrit@tmpa.org
Texas values have to be reflected in the capital city. We cannot allow a state government to perform negligently or illegally and we have to have a stronger hand on local government in the capital city.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, it's BlueGrip Podcast. We are back today. Your co-host Clint McNear and Tyler Owen TO. How are you, sir?
Speaker 3:Good good, Got a little chilly this morning. That'll cold front move in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're 81 day and snowing in the panhandle the next day. It's all good.
Speaker 3:We're speaking of the panhandle. We've got some filled up, set it up there. We just got notified. A couple days ago it was like 300,000 acres on fire. Now we got notified today, this morning 1.1 million acres are burning Our panhandle. Our hearts and prayers go out to those affected by that, our members who are fighting courageously through all that. Man, I just could not imagine going through that. We had a small fire in East Texas, but a fire that size I could not imagine so yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And with the state of our cattle industry right now, cattle prices, meat prices are going up. There's a lot of hay and cattle have been lost up there. So if you guys have resources or barbed wire or hay or whatever, you can get up there to those folks, spare feed or any support, any support up there. Those ranchers in that community could show you some help right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. And you guys, if you want to help out speaking of the field reps that are going up there you guys can help out by donating to our TNPH charities Any members that are affected by that. We tend to kind of step in and fill that gap and fill that void by assisting those you know affected by natural disasters and so forth. So, again, our hearts and prayers go out to those affected. Who got to do?
Speaker 3:You know, god works in mysterious ways and I think that you know, in certain times, politics officer going on right now we've got super Tuesday coming up TNPH stands against the current DA in Travis County, obviously, as we oppose him, and so I reached out to a young woman here that was, I guess we can call her a victim.
Speaker 3:She was a. She got re victimized by Jose Garza's policies due to her cousin who was brutally murdered in the nineties and come to find out, the prosecutor on that case has been helping her along the way because Jose Garza exonerated the man without notifying the family. And so I was introduced to a man named Terry Keel Welcome to the stage and we know we can continue to, you know, communicate and talk with her, and once I found out his background. I was like hey, you know, we've got a, we've got a podcast I think you'd be interested in, and he, he agreed to come on. So, man, thank you so much. Former Travis County Sheriff state rep. I mean, you've got a lengthy, lengthy, lengthy resume, so thank you for coming on and telling us about you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's great to be here and I I really appreciate TNPA. I want to. I want to do this before I forget, which is thank you and your organization. In 2003, you gave me the legislative excellence award in the legislature and I'll never forget that. Oh cool, I actually have that posted on my website, so thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's awesome. Well, and speaking of state, you know, legislator, we, we commonly have our, our liaisons on here that walk the halls of the Capitol. It's so important for our members to understand the importance of our pack and and understand the importance you, being a former law enforcement and then, you know, fill in the fill in that role of a state rep. I think we can start it off just real quick and we'll kind of go back to where you grew up. But to talk about the importance of, of how, how important is it for law enforcement associations to be involved with you know, state legislators, uh, and to monitor those bills and have those relationships at the state, the state level?
Speaker 1:It's critical because it affects you in your day to day, unlike any other profession, because you're so vulnerable to civil and criminal liability If you don't have the support of your legislature. And fortunately in Texas we have a really good. We've traditionally had a pro law enforcement legislature and as a result, we've had success over the years in in in going to the legislature when we need to correct things. Now we've never seen anything like we've seen in the last three years, especially here in Austin where, for example, uh, the legislature has had to step in to even put in procedures that never existed before in order to be able to remove a district attorney who commits misconduct. And we have a situation where the governor has been involved like never before in looking at specific matters going on in accounting.
Speaker 1:We have the abuse of office by the district attorney here who had indicted a whole slew of police officers, let let most of them languish for over a year and then dismissed the cases. Now that's appalling and I'm hoping the legislature, I'm hoping it, gets their attention. Those dismissals that occurred because something more needs to be done. I mean, if I were an elected official in Austin, if I let's just I'm a Republican and let's just say, if I were district attorney here and I had conducted myself the way he conducted himself and let's say I, instead of police officers, was any other city or county officials. You want to come up with that I charged with misconduct and I indicted, say, 21 of them and then a year later I just missed 17 of them. I'm going to tell you right now, I'd be in front of the local bar grievance committee and I'd probably be under some sort of criminal investigation.
Speaker 1:Official oppression or something, yeah, official oppression, abuse of office, and the legislature needs to understand. We are under siege, law enforcement's under siege in Travis County, texas. Yes.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's so disappointing, A couple, well, numerous reasons, but two specific. You know, growing up, my whole life everybody in my family has been in law enforcement. My whole life the district attorney's office in law enforcement. We're not exactly aligned in that, you know. We have to quote the same quotes and we're on the same team trying to accomplish the same mission of putting bad guys in jail. And now it couldn't be any further from the truth.
Speaker 1:But the scary he's an adversary in. The scarier part is the weaponization of indictments.
Speaker 2:This is not a tool to weaponize and pervert for political purposes and to weaponize a tool like that.
Speaker 1:Let me give you an example, a really glaring example, of Jose Garza here in Travis County. He put out a. He put out a mailer door to door where he said I fulfill, you know he's. He's preaching to the democratic primary voters and he says I've held police accountable. Do you know, he? He doesn't have a successful prosecution of a police officer. All he's done is indicted them and then had to dismiss the bulk of them, which shows that he was wrong. And yet he is touting the fact that he ruined people's lives with false allegations because he dismissed those indictments for a reason he couldn't convict them, even with juries in Travis County. Well, and when you indict?
Speaker 2:someone knowing you're never going to do anything right. Yeah, additional you should be removed from office.
Speaker 3:You have to be removed and cops hate back cops just as bad as anybody else, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And police are already the most scrutinized profession in the world. In the United States. There's no other profession where when you, when you act as a professional to use force, let's say, or deadly force, you're not only going to be scrutinized by your chain of command. You're not only going to be scrutinized by whatever internal special investigation unit there is for that type of conduct. You're not only going to be scrutinized by the internal affairs detail. In addition to that, we have a special investigation unit and an internal affairs of detail in Austin Police Department. You're going to be scrutinized by the grand jury. You're going to be scrutinized by the United States attorney. You might be scrutinized by a federal grand jury and a state grand jury.
Speaker 2:And the one most important profession, that does that.
Speaker 1:And then on top of that, they create in the city of Austin another bureaucracy to investigate police, the police accountability bureaucracy within the city. And so then you add on top of that a district attorney whose whose aim is to disregard legitimate victims of crime and I can tell you about that if you want to hear about that but instead to prioritize prosecuting police officers who are trying to defend people from crime. Yep, that's what we're living with right now in Austin, texas.
Speaker 3:We've got all that going on. But then you got also got the court of public opinion and I will say, dealing with Austin, moving down here in Austin, clint, you've dealt with Dallas and I think we've seen a little bit of shift with media coverage in Dallas. No, I don't think it's as drastic as Austin, but the liberal coverage, as far as Austin's media it is, it's horrifying because they're trying to, you know, slant the narrative and slant what they want to see. But the court of public opinion tends to be the, you know, the most impactful.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. Because it's interesting. You say that because in some parts of the country the pendulum has gone so far as Q on this subject that the citizens themselves, which are traditionally liberal, left wing voting groups, like in San Francisco, they actually, they actually recall the DA and they're now after the mayor because they're all victimized. You can't walk around in San Francisco anymore.
Speaker 2:Oh it's.
Speaker 1:the city's been ruined and businesses are leaving.
Speaker 1:That's happening in large cities all over the United States because of this Soros prosecutor kind of approach. In Austin, I don't know. You know, I'm afraid that the constituency here has witnessing this. We've witnessed, like the, the degradation of our city and we seek this crime going off the charts and the police or don't even have enough police officers to make the calls anymore and crimes don't even get reported anymore because you can't respond to them. And yet I don't know that. You know we have a. We have an election coming up on March 5th.
Speaker 1:I don't know if the citizens have suffered enough that the Democratic primary is going to throw this guy out in favor of somebody who's actually going to do a good job. It may be that we're going to have to suffer through this for a few more years before we get this fixed here. And you know there's an old saying, you know the voters have spoken. Now let the suffering begin. And unfortunately in Austin, because what you talk about, the press coverage, the local paper, the alternative newspaper, they are completely on board with that, with the, with the anti-victim, anti-police, pro-criminal agenda that we've got here. Now we do have some talk radio. That's on top of it. And you know I noticed on social media Austin. I sure getting fed up with this, but this could be a long suffering. The weird part to watch.
Speaker 2:We've had a couple of guests on and we're really close with some folks in Seattle at the police department in Seattle and we talk often about Austin's about a year behind the Seattle experiment, the Minneapolis experiment, the San Francisco and the Portland experiment. They're about a year behind, which means Austin's had four examples of what not to do or how to turn back. But it continues and I keep thinking these other places are already starting to realize we screwed up. Seattle's starting to reelect conservatives again. San Francisco's recalling DA's. These other four places are beautiful examples but Austin just keeps. It's got. We're going to make this bad experiment work and you keep thinking Austin's full of reasonable people, smart people, there's a lot of educated people in Austin and if I had four examples of what not to do, you seem like you would think. At some point people go, oh, yep, shit, we need to stop that.
Speaker 1:We recognized this a few years ago, that it was happening and some of us including people who were like former, even former legislators and former staffers of the legislature, you know we got together and we were talking about it and we came up with a plan. We had no hope the city would turn around and I feel a little better down that maybe eventually it could happen. But at the time we're like this is in our lifetime never going to turn around and we propose let's just take the capital city's police away from the city of Austin. They have been negligent, they've been, they have ruined the department they have, they have taken steps against the public's interest. And let's put it under the Department of Public Safety and have and say in the state of Texas we're going to have the capital city governed by the Public Safety Commission of the Department of Public Safety. They'll set the budget, they will set the curriculum for the Academy and they will issue you know the badges for those. So you were on the state rep when that happened.
Speaker 1:No, I did it. I did it as a former state rep at parliamentarian, in conjunction with another parliamentarian. We gave a roadmap to Governor Abbott how to do that and Governor Abbott to his credit, a legislator sent it to Ledge. Council drafted the bill, but it didn't get introduced in the session. There was some some halfway compromises were Governor Abbott just decided he just deployed DPS to Austin. As you see, they're down there in the entertainment district helping APD.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And they're all over downtown helping APD because of the shortages we had with the negligence of the city council. The former mayor, who was the worst mayor in the history of the mayor's ad was, and so I think some people thought, you know, when a more moderate mayor came in, maybe things would turn around. And it's just not turning around fast enough. It's just very, very unfortunate what we're living with right now.
Speaker 3:Well, and so for the listener that that's listening to your back, let's dive off into who you are as a person, because I think that kind of legitimizes you know you speaking about the district attorney let's kind of go over your career path real quick and talk about how you started off and then because we were just joking around a while ago it's it's pretty lengthy you were with what you started off with Travis County as a yeah, what's the start from the beginning?
Speaker 2:Where would you grow up? Where are you born? I love talking about that.
Speaker 1:Who's Terry Great? I'm a fifth generation Austinite. My great-great grandparents were Italian immigrants to Austin, had a grocery store in the East Austin at 1100 East 11th and on my mother, on my maternal line, I go back five generations that has been here in Austin. All that time.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's unusual. I know some other people that are just a handful of us like that but I was born and raised here and I went to Sacred Heart Catholic School and then Pierce what they would call middle school now as junior high back then, and I went to Reagan and LBJ high schools and then I was an English major at the University of Texas, ended up in law school, attended UT and U of H law school and after I got my degree I was given I got out early and I took the bar in February and so I was licensed a little early and I was given a early jobs and assistant DA in Brazos County in Texas and prosecuted there for about 15 months. I'm sure you love being right next to College Station. It was awesome.
Speaker 1:It was you know and used to go over to College Station a lot, but anyway that was a blast. And I had been an intern in the Harris County DA's office before that and so I knew I was given. I was second chair to Capitol murder cases during that time, with Travis Bryan who was the DA, then Ronnie Earl who I knew. Ronnie Earl was kind of a celebrity to me when growing up in Austin. Ronnie had been a municipal judge when Austin was a small town and had been a state rep and then he had been elected DA and he was. It was kind of like when I went to work for him it was like going to work for a Hollywood movie star, you know, so cool working for him. And I, after I'd been an assistant DA in Bryan for about a year and a half, I came here and so that was just a wonderful thing. I ended up working for Ronnie for eight and a half years and I ended up being over the major crimes division and being assigned the best assignment you could ever be assigned.
Speaker 1:And so this is the eight was wonderful time and I was. I got assigned to the Austin Police Department full time, physically housed within a special federally funded program called the Repeater Fender Program. So I went through police training with with that unit and was physically housed with them and assisted in the actual field work that we did to follow, arrest, target and prosecute enhancements and targeting. Yeah, and so it was a great unit and crime probably was suppressed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was we. We would do things like follow criminals around and catch them committing robberies and before they could hurt anybody Wow, you know who would have thought that. So, yeah, who would have thought that it was a great thing, and we received a lot of accolades on that. They don't do that anymore Obviously Shocking. So having done that, I got a lot of support from the Austin Police Department and that's really how I got elected sheriff. I was elected sheriff in 1992 out of the DA's office, which was an unusual no kidding.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And so in 1999, and I was the first Republican elected since the Civil War, or something like that. So I don't in fact.
Speaker 1:I don't think any sheriff has ever been elected as Republican other than me, even after Civil War. Wow, or so anyway, it was shocking political, and I got to tell you it was the police that it was. All of the police came together and backed me in 1992 in the election cycle. It was the year that Bill Clinton's trounced George H W Bush. It was like swimming upstream to win in a heavily Democrat county as a Republican candidate for sheriff, but we pulled it off and so that was great.
Speaker 1:And towards the end of my four years my chief deputy was Alvin Shaw, who was an 18 year veteran of the Austin Police Department, renowned homicide supervisor. He ended up running as the Republican on me for sheriff at the end of my sheriff term and I was elected to the House of Representatives and ended up a decade there and then, after that, was brought back to be parliamentarian and I then ended up being executive director of a state agency, the Texas Facilities Commission, and for five years. And then Sid Miller, who was the you were talking about the fires going on in West Texas right now. This gets us back to where I am now. For the last nine years I've been an executive working for the statewide elected officials, sid Miller I'm his deputy commissioner, which is the top appointed official. We have about 700 employees engaged in the business of the Texas Department of Agriculture. We have five regional offices and a headquarters here in Austin. So that's what we do and that's what I'm doing now.
Speaker 2:So four years of sheriff, 10 years as a state representative.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, and then two years as parliamentarian in the house and then after that coming back over to the north side of the Capitol Complex and state agencies.
Speaker 3:Explain what the parliamentarian does, because for some of our viewers or listeners may not understand what that position is.
Speaker 1:So I was chosen by Tom Craddock to come in in the middle of a session when there was a huge revolt going on, and the parliamentarian is appointed by the speaker to advise the speaker on matters of procedure of the House of Representatives and of constitutional law. So if you ever watch the proceedings of the House of Representatives, either at the Congress in Washington or in Austin, in the House of Representatives the parliamentarian sits to the speakers left and guides the speaker on what to say and what to do and how to rule, and so that it's a very important high level of public trust because you have to be honest and ethical in the position, and so that was a real honor to do that for Tom Craddock.
Speaker 2:For our association members. It would be like Robert's Rules of Order advisor. And reminding the speaker hey, there's a point of order. This is how you handle a point of order or an amendment to an amendment to an amendment or kind of a senior advisor role. It sure is To relate to that.
Speaker 1:It is, and the position is such a position of trust with the speaker at least it was back then that you also have a heavy role in the actual administration of the speaker's office, and so it's a real important position.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:It was a lot of fun. That's great, but then the speaker, that speaker was not reelected the speaker and I went on to another role after that. But no, it's been a great career. I've been licensed as a lawyer since Wow, it's been 40. I just figured 41 years I can't even believe I'm saying that since I was licensed, and so it's a real blessing to be here with you guys. God has blessed us because none of us have been killed or indicted, so there you go and it brings back to the point.
Speaker 3:You know when, when, when I was talking to him I think we talked on the Sunday we kind of knew that time was was of the essence, and when I found out that you were representing Now for the listener and viewer out there, I want you to comprehend this this man represented or actually went against the suspect in a case of 1992.
Speaker 1:91. 91. Home side.
Speaker 3:He was the prosecutor on the case and to turn to turn for you know, full circle to now represent that victim's cousin, you know, 20 years, 30 years later, to make sure that that victim's family has the justice that they need, and to do it in such a manner of devotion and dedication that victim, she and I text every single day, and the amount of respect and love that she's got for this man, it speaks volumes for your character, it speaks volumes for your dedication and, quite honestly, I'll just say it right now it speaks volumes for your love for this city.
Speaker 3:And so it and we share that with you know what's going on in in Travis County, and what's mind boggling to me is that people continue to say Austin's not the city that I grew up in, it's not the city that I knew, and so my, my encouragement to those people you know they're not like you and I, they're not voicing their opinion or, clint, they're not voicing their concerns is is that well? What are we going to do about it? We can't just let it fall like San Francisco and Seattle. We can't, we can't sit back and let this happen. You know we serve in the law enforcement association and obviously, terry, you serve in different roles, but it's just, it's just aggravating to sit back and let this happen. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people voice that, even my wife. She's like let's get the heck out of this city because we get so frustrated with the politics here. But you know, I come from a large family and my siblings and I were like we're not leaving, we're going to make a stand, they're not getting rid of this is our town, we're not leaving, and it's you know. I hope that eventually, you know, people see what's happening in some of these cities, like San Francisco, baltimore, chicago, and they realize that we're on the wrong track. Here in Austin we're like you say when he all said it we're just behind them. Yeah, barely and um, eventually we turned it around here. But I do notice, like I'm raising my grandkids and I go to, you know, in public school, I go to a PTA meeting or whatever.
Speaker 1:And you know, in the old days I knew everyone there. Now it's a bunch of people who aren't from here, who are, who are at these kind of things, and I think I don't mind. People coming from California, that's great, but I wish they would quit leaving the disaster and then coming here and voting the same way. Yes, that's what frustrates me. I'm like did you not learn anything from what you left? Yes, you know, and you're welcome here.
Speaker 2:Just don't pack your politics with you when you make the trip.
Speaker 1:The good news is. Texas as a state, though, is becoming more conservative, and we were really making great strides with the Hispanic community. They are traditionally aligned with the values that, for example, the Republicans have pro life, uh, you know. Pro family, um, and that's why you're seeing the valley, you know, down in the valley, so these counties are slow. If you look at the map right now, it keeps creeping further south. Yes, these counties are going Republican, so it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2:Which I think the disconnected folks in DC.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Don't believe that they think well if any Hispanic is going to vote is going to vote liberally. That's right, they're wrong. They're dead wrong. The Texas border is is definitely not that way.
Speaker 1:Well, the big miscalculation for them was they thought if they opened our borders, they would have a natural ally from the south Texas Hispanics that would. That are, that are, you know, citizens of Texas, you know, and, and, and they're. They just miscalculated because they're. Now they are feeling the brunt of the disaster we're dealing with down there right now, and as are the agricultural community and their ranchers and farmers and they're being overrun.
Speaker 1:And so you go to these small towns. You know you're talking about Christina Bryant and she's from Falfureas. Down there and, and really there's, you might even have those counties that still tend towards voting in the Democratic primary, but those but if you talk to the people down there, they're the. They are the, the saviors of Texas, because they're the remaining middle class. We've lost middle class in Austin. We've kind of run the middle class out of the city of Austin, but the middle class still exists in the rural areas of Texas and it's a good thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, share, share. Briefly, we'll. We'll sidestep here and put a placeholder on the conversation because I want to talk about your involvement, dive into the miss Barrington's case. But for our listeners, what is the Agriculture Department, the administration, what can you give a cliff notes version, just to people understand what that is.
Speaker 1:So the Texas Department of Agriculture is involved in all aspects of agriculture in the state and our job is to promote agriculture and protect it. We also have a regulatory function. We regulate things like agriculture, pesticide and even structural pesticide like in homes, like when you get sprayed for bugs. Those people are licensed by our agency. We also have a huge trade and business development aspect to our agency and we have a food and nutrition part of our agency which is actually about two thirds of our agency, and that has to do with feeding people who can't feed themselves, feeding kids in school and summer meal programs, things like that. A lot of that is federally driven that part of our agency. The other part is state driven.
Speaker 1:The things we do with farmers, ranchers and consumers when you go to the grocery store and you buy you buy eggs, for example. Those have been inspected, buy us and grade it. So we have a metrology lab that sets standards on weights and measures. So it's a huge Sid Miller, my boss, he likes to talk about that. We do so much that people don't realize.
Speaker 2:And I can take a lot of time, and I was shocked to know how much you guys are involved in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and people are shocked how big our agency is. Not a big state agency, it's a medium size, but that means we have 700 employees. So that's you know, big by any standards.
Speaker 1:So we have a lot going on every day. We have inspectors all over the state of our five regions and they go out every day and they're inspecting and we try to assist on anything that comes up agriculture related. In fact, my boss has been involved heavily right now on the wildfires that are going on up in West Texas, as has our regional office, as has our emergency response employee from Austin, so we're we're involved in that right now.
Speaker 2:Also, before we jumped on, we were talking off record and he had a lot of good things to say. So just a quick shout out to all of our special rangers over at the TSCRA and what they do to support our ranchers Amazing people?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we work with them. We have export pens. We deal with Mexico directly, our agency does. We have Mexican veterinarians that come into our export facilities along the border and we deal with them in our export pen. So all, for example, livestock exports that go out of the state of Texas into Mexico go through our agency's export pens.
Speaker 2:Nice, it's cool. Yeah, I just want to share that. I want everybody to be sure we're interested about our agriculture department. That's my background growing up and raising cattle and yeah.
Speaker 1:And we need to protect it. It's it we're also my boss is big on. We need to protect farming. There's a push at the nation, at the federal level, to to hurt farmers and to hurt especially cattle ranchers and the ranching of cattle right now. That's they're pushing that.
Speaker 2:Well, the United States supply of cattle right now is I think it says it's at the numbers from 1971.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were low.
Speaker 2:And what that means to the consumers when you go buy a pound of ground beef yeah it's going to double and triple and it's going to continue to go up, because if there's not the quantity of cattle out there, right, that's got to come from somewhere.
Speaker 1:Well and if the feds have their way they'll put us out of the cattle business, but we're pushing back big time and the state of Texas, we are protecting that and all other aspects of agriculture and we have a great you know ag commissioner and he. And one good thing about Sid Miller is he he came from the industry. A lot of people run for ag commissioner and not really from. They don't have an agriculture background.
Speaker 2:He's the real deal, yeah.
Speaker 1:And he ran for it for the real reasons. Right, that's all. Because of the subject matter. Yeah, so it's been. It's been a real honor working. I got to tell you I've been there. I can't believe I've been there nine years. I didn't intend for that to happen but it did and I'm just. It's been a wonderful place to be. That's awesome, and I grew up going to my grandfather's farm in Tennessee and have a very modest agriculture background in that regard, but you know, it just has been like coming home doing this job.
Speaker 2:It's been great I used to.
Speaker 1:I guess I shouldn't say this one, but let's say that our cash crop was tobacco, and so I, as a child, planted you know we'd get on the back of the tractor with the wheel and plant the tobacco seed. Yeah, and we had cattle. We had some cattle grazing and some corn growing on our property there we were in the Cumberland River area of Stewart County.
Speaker 2:Tennessee oh, that's gorgeous, and I was a kid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, gorgeous Loved it. It's pretty neat yeah. Oh all right, we can jump out of that place holder and jump back in. Well talk to him about how you guys met and dive into some of that because it's incredible, I think also real quick.
Speaker 3:You know you having the DA office experience Clinton and I both regularly talk about this is that what the current DA in Travis County and quite honestly, other counties in Texas you know with, with Kim Ard, crizzot and, and you know Gonzalez, sometimes we find that the Soros funded, you know, discreturnees are weaponizing the Texas penal code to fit their political agenda. And from a person who worked lengthy, are very, for you know, a long time in the DA's office, explain kind of what that looks like from your perspective and then for our non listeners you know what that means and how they're weaponizing it.
Speaker 1:It's shocking. Yeah, you know I worked for what was perceived at the time as a liberal Democrat running Earl. Let me tell you what his highest priority as DA was. He believed in victims rights. He believed in making the victim whole and in the past that has been the liberal stance.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was victim driven and suddenly. It's not a pioneer in that I went out with him to.
Speaker 1:California where we went to all of these victims types of conferences, and he was he really was a leader in that he was the one who established a victims assistance office in the DA's office. It did not exist before Ronnie Earl. Ronnie Earl was actually a leader in the state of Texas on victims rights and the attention of the prosecutors to the victims. So this is a complete change that we've seen with this Garza DA here in Austin. I mean, this is a goes against it.
Speaker 1:They do not believe that the victim is a victim, they believe the charged street criminal is the victim because the system is systemically racist and therefore they, their priority is to not incarcerate a criminal, unless it's a police defendant, yes, in which case that is their priority. And you, you can't make up some of the things that have occurred.
Speaker 2:It was sent to me, probably 18 months ago, a clipping of a advertisement that Garza had put out, seeking If you are interested in moving to Texas yeah to prosecute police officers apply here. And I thought surely that's a joke, somebody is. Somebody has doctored that. Sure, that's the truth, that's what he thought they were caught.
Speaker 1:They were caught because they it's amateur hour at the DA's office right now. The people he has working for him in the highest levels and most of the office are do not have backgrounds. Well, they don't. They don't have backgrounds as plus prosecutors or law enforcement. They come from either a labor law or or public defender type background and so they really don't know what they're doing. I'm sure that that assistant DA who put that out he said we're going to, we're seeking people to go after a particular particular profession You're not doesn't even recognize the unethical nature of that statement by a prosecutor.
Speaker 3:I'm going to talk about her.
Speaker 2:I'll let's let's, let's talk about her. That seems almost discriminatory. No, it is Naming someone you want to target criminally.
Speaker 1:Well it's. It would be like a, a, a, let's say a. A Republican DA got elected and said I need, I'm seeking pro. We're going to start prosecuting these teachers in public schools, so I need people coming are willing to do this. That's it.
Speaker 3:That's exactly what that is yes, sir, so her name is the same thing.
Speaker 1:It's Trudy Schumberger. Yeah, I think I don't know that I've met that person in passing, but I don't know.
Speaker 3:She. She's the one that sent the email out to to New York.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And and and our uh in my research with with dealing with this uh. She's married to a gentleman named Ben Wolfe, but 50% of the staff that Jose Garza hired uh all came from innocence project type front law firms.
Speaker 1:Oh, there you go.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which which, by the way, out of national level, is heavily funded by George Soros. Yes, did you know that?
Speaker 3:Yep yeah, 100%. And then what?
Speaker 1:what dark money, contributions, it's projects, national efforts, that's explained dark money for our listeners that don't know politics.
Speaker 1:Well, we're in a situation in the United States right now where there's a lot of of nonprofits that are set up, and they are. They are exempt from the ordinary disclosures that, for example, a for-profit or a politician running for office would be in terms of disclosing contributors. So they're able to set up a, a thing like the tides foundation or, uh, some other nice sounding name of something that, uh, and and there's a huge, huge money that goes into those by by, by these rich oligarchs that that fund these things and fund these costs, and then they in turn give money out to to do, for example, the DA here was elected through largely through special interest money like that, through um groups that were that spent a total of like half a million dollars on a local DA race to get him elected and there's no accounting for it. You don't know who gave that money exactly. You just know the, the groups, the nonprofit groups that did it, and so which trace back usually, yeah Well by admission.
Speaker 1:sometimes George Soros will speak and he'll admit, like he admitted you know, that he was giving big money to the you know innocence project. You know, at one point up in New York and um, but anyway, it's, uh, it's dark money. In other words, austin's local official in that case was elected by money that wasn't from Austin, probably not from Texas, right, yeah. And yet he's got the local Democrat machine behind him on reelection right now. Yeah, it's Syllistine. I'm hoping Syllistine wins that primary. But I'm not in that party and I I don't have any control over it. I just hope people enough people with common sense in the Democratic Party go. We've got to stop this.
Speaker 2:I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful Reasonable people of Austin are starting to take notice. The the quiet majority of reasonable people I think are slowly getting moved to to to act. Yep, I hope, I'm hopeful.
Speaker 1:I think so too. I just don't know how. How soon. It may take a few more years, you know it may we may have to go to the San Francisco way, where it gets so bad. Yeah, the one thing, that one thing we kind of got going against this is how good our state government is. And you see all the cranes building buildings in downtown Austin, which shows a a a very good economy for our, for our cities. You know construction and and and businesses. We're not having buildings abandoned like San Francisco.
Speaker 1:But the state government needs to understand if at some point the state of Texas and I hope Governor Abbott hears this at some point the state is going to have to step in and say Texas values have to be reflected in the capital city.
Speaker 1:We cannot allow a state government to perform negligently or illegally, which which in some cases they have, and and and we have to have a stronger hand on local government in the capital city by the state, and I love it. Oh well, you're taking away local controller. Let me tell you something that that that you have no local control on the city of Austin police department anymore. It has been decimated. Yes, it is. It is run by unelected bureaucrats now that are that are deep inside, not the police department, but are deep inside the city. And it is, it is absolutely been a disaster. The underfunding, the chronic underfunding. The state did address all that, if you'll remember. They passed bills and say we're going to cut your state funds if you, if you, but at some point we're going to have to recognize in Austin that that the city is not going to fix it.
Speaker 2:My, my heart goes out to we're friends with Michael Bullock and over at the APA, the president of the APA, and my heart goes out to the men and women at the APD, but sadly, uh, I admire the hell out of them but, by self-admission, I don't think I could have stayed and I respect that they're all staying.
Speaker 1:Um, let me tell you how bad it is it used to be in the nineties and in the 2000s and even early 2000s, the most coveted local political endorsement anyone could get would be the Austin police department's APA endorsement. They now have politicians here now run from that endorsement because it's been, it's been demonized and they have been so abused the police department and the Austin police association. They've been so abused that their own city council doesn't want their endorsement Now. I never thought I'd live to see that day.
Speaker 3:What is where we're at?
Speaker 1:now, and that's how wacky our city council prior to the George Floyd incident times Pretty much, pretty much started that start.
Speaker 1:They started handing money back Around that George Floyd time because they were so running so hard the I'm talking about the elected of it, yes, city council running so hard to the left that they that they did crazy things like cut one-third of the agents of the Austin Police Department Started putting people's lives in danger yeah, started, you know, disavowing any money being taken from the, from the political action committee of the police department, of the police officers of the city.
Speaker 3:Which is an incident that didn't even happen inside, and I've said this time and time again and then for an incident that even happening in Austin Not he did not did not happen in Travis County, didn't happen in Texas and and we're still, and then the thin blue line is called upon to save the city from riots that were burning buildings, were vandalizing vehicles and burning vehicles, threatening to go on into property and hurt people.
Speaker 1:They get out there, they do a great job and what happens? They what?
Speaker 2:how many of them now have? 21 were in died 21 and died it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and of course, none of them are guilty of anything, but their lives have been destroyed, and that's the. That's the city we live in. We're putting up with that, folks. You got to get rid of this, da.
Speaker 2:Well then you have. Then you have Kassar, who? Yeah wants to disavow the police, but then immediately ask for extra patrol at his home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, here he lives in, just north of Canaan, and he's he's asking for special protection while his neighbors Are out there living. His policies of being their cars being broken into in their houses burglarized, but he wants special protection.
Speaker 2:What a hypocrite, yeah do away with the police. Send a few over to my house if you don't mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, these people are hypocrites. Same thing with Garza. He's got to have a little special dignitary protection squad for him. But the heck, the heck with the ordinary run-of-the-mill citizens of this town real quick what?
Speaker 3:what do you know about the office of Forensic and capital ritz? If anything, is that a state-funded office?
Speaker 1:It is that was created, it is mostly, I think, the court of criminal appeals deals with it. They are set up solely To help with ritz of habeas corpus for indigent capital defendants who are on death row.
Speaker 3:okay, what it you you working at a DA's office, hypothetically speaking, that If you were to go or be involved with a case, even not so much directly in the trial, would you have to divulge that information to the courts? That if your spouse worked for that agency, would that be something the courts or the defense would need to know?
Speaker 1:I think if you were an attorney in a capital murder case where you're seeking the death penalty, most definitely. But there, here's the deal. I don't think this, this DA's office will ever seek the death penalty because, because they are Against so, they're supposed to be standing up for victims and they're supposed to be prosecuting people Pursuant to the law. They're not supposed to ignore aspects of the law. That's a state law. Now that he could, the DA can be removed from officer doing that. But I'm gonna guarantee you right now that DA, no matter how heinous the murders, even if it is a Multiple murder situation or a murder in the course of rape or kidnapping, he will not seek the death penalty.
Speaker 2:Well, the jewelry store Owners that were murdered in downtown the Sun and girlfriend murdered the jewelry store folks.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They were taking a plea on capital offenses and it got held over. And then when Garza soon as Garza got an office, they all pled to pretty much nothing.
Speaker 1:When the previous DA had them, we spent a whole it's incredible on the, the rapes and Murders, the plea bargaining down that's going on. They're not Prosecuting cases, they are giving away lenient sentences for violent crimes. You know, this whole Opposition to Garza in Austin that you see from victims is a genuine, like a it's. It's not political, it's a genuine movement of victims because they're so offended by his office he doesn't care.
Speaker 2:Well, the suspects are the victims according to him, which Revictimizes the actual victims exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, victim I, an aggravated robber who beats a store owner and Steals their things and puts a gun in their mouth. He's the victim because, because he's a victim of the of the Systemic system we have here, according to the DA's office.
Speaker 3:It's truly sick, it is but there's been, historically, a number of defendants and it goes back to the. You know that there was, I guess, in the back of the 90s. You know APD was accused of the homicide. You know investigations that were, I guess, supposed to be overturned is is the the articles that I read. That's what they blame it on. But historically, how many cases is Garza overturned on capital murder offenses with with the finnets since he's been in office?
Speaker 1:You know I.
Speaker 3:Don't have statistics either they are.
Speaker 1:They are trying to overturn not just capital case everything they can. They're trying. Then this gets to the buying tin case, which you know I've only come back from state government on my own time, by the way, taking my own vacation to come back and do two Cases. One was I defended along with Brad Halman, officer stallings, in October of 2022. We took it to jury. He had this. Da's office was trying to convict him on a felony multiple counts and try to To ruin him and bring him a criminal. We got a an acquittal from the jury in October. That was an Austin police officer that was.
Speaker 1:Austin police officer and that was one I came back on and did. And then the only other time is I was asked by the victims family in this buying tin case To come help them, and we're they're not even a party to the proceeding, they are just the victim and I helped this family, I've helped this family. We filed an amicus brief in this case and, just so your listeners will know, we had a situation with 1991. We had a horrible homicide in Austin where a beautiful young lady was murdered and her name was Anita buying tin and I was one of the prosecutors on the case and the case went to jury in 1992. He was, he was convicted, fully confessed, fully confessed, convicted. It was upheld on appeal under in an opinion that scrutinized all the evidence and it was declined, reviewed by the court of Court of Appeals. So it's a solid conviction.
Speaker 1:Yes, this office, this guards office, has paired with the innocence project. Surprise, surprise, and Without marshaling competitive evidence, looking at, in other words, the inculpatory evidence completely, a one-sided presentation was made in secret for a year in front of a district judge filing things in secret in a proceeding an 1107 writ which by law is supposed to be public but was kept secret for a year and from the get-go, from the first document filed by the DA's office, took the side of the criminal. Now your, your listeners, may not believe this. I'm telling you. Yeah, the first document they filed. A year before these documents, we found out about them, the DA's office Agreed with the innocence project before one witness, it even then put on the stand in the re hearing of course they did and and Did nothing to underscore or point to the inculpatory evidence.
Speaker 1:And this went on behind the scenes in the in Against state law, which mandates 1107 hearing is public went on in secret for a year. This was not a grand jury proceeding, which was how you would normally do this. Right, if you want to keep the secret, this was a mandated public proceeding that was held in secret. My client and Christina by and to Anita by Enton's cousin, and and Anita by and said the best friend got a hold of me and they said who's basically like a sister? I mean she's, yeah, she was like a sister to a fancy green and she they caught, got a hold of me and this was last fall and they said Terry, are you aware that this is going on? I said yeah, I am, because I got contacted by the DA's office and they wanted to affidavit from me and it was a real. Obviously it was a. It was an affidavit that wasn't telling the whole story and I gave them an affidavit but it wasn't what they wanted and so I said they said what are they up to?
Speaker 1:And I said I think they are trying To exonerate this guy and I don't think they're conducting a fair hearing and I said I hope I'm wrong. Well, make a long story short, because I don't want to. This is kind of inside our baseball, but to make a long story short. Once we started looking into it, we found out our, our nightmare was in fact correct. They weren't doing a fair, measured Examination of the old case. They were doing everything, on one sided, to show that he should be exonerated and in doing so they left out all the incorporator Incorporatory evidence. So it's, it has been representatives of the, of the killer, that being the innocence project attorneys and the district attorney's office. They're on the side. There is no party to the proceeding saying whoa, wait a minute, what about the? And so anyway, I won't get into the details of it, it's, but it's, it's appalling.
Speaker 3:So was there anybody from the office of capital and forensic?
Speaker 1:ritz. They wouldn't be involved in that case because this was a first-degree murder. It didn't involve the death penalty. This was in 1991. She was Beaten to death, anita Bynton, and it it resulted in murder of the first degree. That's okay, but anyway, the only reason I bring up these details You'd asked about it. And, by the way, christina Bynton, fancy green, those just too extraordinary women. It's just amazing that I've I've kind of gotten to know Christina and re Kindled a friendship with fancy, because these women are really strong.
Speaker 1:And the DA's office miscalculated this because they treated the victims family horribly. They lied to them, they misled them, they didn't inform their whole constitutional amendment that gives victims rights. Every Single right of victims family would have in this case was violated by guards as DA's office. They didn't communicate with them, they didn't tell them what their true intent was. They lied to them when they said no, we haven't made up our mind about what the outcome of this, because Christina was smart enough to ask those questions. Yeah, and then we found I said hey, christina, look at this.
Speaker 1:In November 2022, they already filed a doubt. The very first answer they filed agreed with the, with the killer, his position on the case, and so the only thing we have, fortunately I'll wrap this up because I want to take up to him so fortunately, the ultimate Decider on this will be the court of criminal appeals, and they are a court of integrity, as Everyone knows. So it's they. They will get a shot at this and you better believe the victims family is gonna be heard, but the killer is walking free right now. Yeah, he got paroled out anyway. He see, he had gotten, he had been out on parole in due course and so he got out. Literally at the same time, they started this whole exoneration thing up and they used him as a advertisement for raising money for the innocence project, implying that he was innocent Before the hearing even started or evidence was even marshal.
Speaker 2:And, to be clear, travis County taxpayers' monies are paying for the district attorney's office to act as defense counsel.
Speaker 1:And to abuse victims' families. Not only is that happening.
Speaker 3:But they also have eight prosecutors employed on a state grant that Travis County matches for their salaries to essentially open old cases like that For the innocence project.
Speaker 1:And let me say this because Ronnie Errol did this. He did go back and try to look at cases to find out. Did we make a mistake? Because I'm going to tell you, I prosecuted over 50 cases to conclusion, and I would be the first one to want to know if anybody was innocent and I would be the first in line to, but they did it right under Ronnie Errol's you know review and they even went back and redid cases with DNA and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:In this instance, garza's office is not doing that. They are concluding the outcome and then marshaling evidence to lead to that conclusion. They're not genuinely exploring the conviction. They are trying to come to a conclusion and they prove it with what they file. They themselves are. They admitted it.
Speaker 2:Is there a personal tie to this defendant, specific, or what caused them to fly his flag so so aggressively?
Speaker 1:Because the innocence project took it up and and they got a federal grant to. And I think and I don't know the details of it I know the office has a some sort of grant in conjunction with the innocence project on this case or or that this case applies to.
Speaker 2:So it's follow the money.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I haven't. I haven't looked into that ass, but but the grant?
Speaker 3:the grant was cosine or co-authored, supposedly by Kazar.
Speaker 1:Let's say you know more about it than I do. See I haven't looked at, I've been focused on the criminal, old criminal case. And so I've gone back and I've looked at all of the old evidence in this case and you know, I've I've assisted Christina in filing what's called an amicus brief, because we're not a party. All we can do is do a friend of the court brief, which we did, which exposes all of this that I've been talking about, about the DA's office. But the outcome is is sealed. I mean, the outcome is is certain because the judge has no other evidence except what caused.
Speaker 1:These advocates and and the DA's office are are advocating in joint. You know advocacy. So it's gonna it's it's gonna end up at the court of criminal appeals and hopefully the court of criminal appeals will look at it and go, oh my God, what the heck is going on in Austin, texas, and I think they will. And there I think that when the court of criminal appeals gets done with this, this, if this, if this goes into guards' second term, I think this is gonna be grounds potentially for someone to seek to remove him from office, because that's how egregious the victim's rights have been violated in this case, and how wrong the evidence has been presented in terms of being one-sided. One-sided, yeah, yeah. So you know, let him go, let him make his mistakes. It's criminal behavior.
Speaker 1:It's it's awful. So you know, I'm just a full-time state official so I can only do this stuff as a hobby.
Speaker 3:But, but, but I mean for the fact that you take vacation out of your time. You don't do that.
Speaker 1:Well, it's, it's been a, it's been a, it's been a pleasure and I gotta tell you, getting to know Christina Bynton and, and you know it's just been great, you know, and she's all over social media and has done a lot of work. She's got a, she's got an article on medium.
Speaker 3:I don't have the site, but anyway it's, it's you know I can post it on on this, on this YouTube channel, and it's great, it is great.
Speaker 1:You know, she says the the DA's move to pervert justice and writes the whole story. This could be a book. I hope she writes a book. I'm telling you you need to write a book about this because no one would believe how she's been treated. Yeah, they thought she was stupid. See they, they thought they could fool her. Yeah, she's brilliant. She's brilliant. And she called them on everything.
Speaker 2:What a testament to her love for her family.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Yeah To to fight.
Speaker 1:She's there where Anita's buried in Falfurious Texas, and one of the whole family. I knew Anita's parents real well because Ronnie had asked me to help with that family after the case was ended and I actually was sheriff at the time and then I was state representative and he knew I had a good relationship with a sonny and Sarah who were Anita's parents, and so that was nothing I ever. That was something I've never talked about. But I but I had assisted Ronnie on some of these victims, with some of these victims on cases years after I was no longer there and I just felt an obligation to help the family. When they got in touch with me again and I was hoping I was wrong, I said you know, I think this DA's offices is going to stack the deck and try to do something bad here and I hope I'm wrong. But boy, we were right. We were absolutely right on it, wow.
Speaker 2:That's crazy.
Speaker 1:The citizens of this town have no idea what's going on at that office.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's sad. Yeah, it is, that's. That's. That's kind of a brief, kind of summary of how you and I met. And, man, you know I said this at the beginning of this podcast God works mysterious ways, yeah, and who would have thought on a Sunday afternoon you and I would connect and the background again of Terry's? Just, man, it's, it's remarkable.
Speaker 2:So I got three questions throughout you. What would we'll say? You're 50 years old.
Speaker 1:I'm 66.
Speaker 2:What would 66,? You look great for 66.
Speaker 3:What would?
Speaker 2:66 Terry tell 16 year old Terry.
Speaker 1:You know, I think I think you. When you I think I till 16 year old Terry stay in school and and which I did, fortunately because I had a good influence from my parents I say your schooling is really going to be your ticket to what you do in life. And they're not ever going to build statues to you and no one's really going to remember you when you're gone, but your family will, and your family is what it's all about, especially your kids and your grandkids. That's what I'd tell 16 year old Terry.
Speaker 3:I like that you know and you're not.
Speaker 1:you know, you're, you know. I always tell people I hope I'm like. My grandfather lived to be 103 and we went to his funeral and I remember being there and he had outlived all his contemporaries. He was a World War one hero and, wow, great guy. This was the farmer I'd been with and a very simple man, but wonderful man. Anyway, my point is you know, I go to this funeral and I'm sheriff at the time. This was back in the 90s when he died and there's no one there that would have been his contemporaries, but it's a huge crowd of generations below him because they loved him so much. And so I was like holy, I was struck by that. I was like that it was mostly family, you know, and friends, and that's really what matters at the end of the day. Your professional life is secondary to that. Yes, and that's what you learn.
Speaker 2:Well, and you said, family matters in the end, and I think Christina is proving that. She sure is, she's living it. Yeah, she's proven.
Speaker 1:And you know there's. It's been a wonderful thing reacquaining with her, with her family and with fancy, and that's been a lot of fun. But there's an undercurrent of real grief there that we all feel because we relive this from the 90s and but at the same time there's a lot of joy and I think a lot of things she does is she says what would Anita want me to do, and that gives her energy to take on some of these challenges.
Speaker 2:So some kind of interesting.
Speaker 1:And when you're homicide, when you're involved in homicide I need you guys would know this Sometimes your affiliation with the family never ends and your friends with that family for the rest of your life. Several families like that in Austin that that has occurred on cases that I've worked either is either at the police department in the repeater fender program or it as a prosecute.
Speaker 3:Well, that trust that you gain with those family members. You can never give that up.
Speaker 1:You could never give that up, and it's a wonderful thing, it really is. It's what makes it worth. It's why y'all went into this profession, why y'all do do what you did and do what you do. But that's why law enforcement's a wonderful thing, and I've got a case. I've got a case. I'm going to be writing a book starting in the end of this year, on a case I prosecuted in 1988 where a police dispatcher's daughter was killed in 1979 here in Austin. Sydney Myers and I went to high school with the victim oh wow and ended up prosecuting the case, and it's a real, real interesting.
Speaker 3:Well, I tell you, when you get done writing the book, yeah, we can come on here, yeah, and we can talk about it and debut it and we can help you push that.
Speaker 1:We'll do it. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Yeah, it's. It's an interesting case and she was a wonderful girl. I actually went to junior high school and high school with the victim and miss her to this day. Wow, yeah it's awesome.
Speaker 2:I want to link him up sometime too with Wayman Lewis. We had Wayman Lewis on here and he was his first week on the job when the tower shooting occurred and he had a rifle in the I think architecture building chicken joint barred. A rifle getting architecture building in his first week on the job at APD and you guys would. He loves Austin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was playing soccer in the backyard in 1966 and that occurred. I remember, when we all ran inside and we were watching the live feed from the public television station right next to UT, we could see the smoke from Whitman's rifle coming off. Wow, it was a man. That was a big day in Austin.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah, Change, we had him on the podcast office in the link.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's an incredible story that y'all have looked up with him. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:So my question two and three you have a hell of a career. You've done enough different things for two or three people state rep, sheriff, prosecutor still going strong, volunteering your time helping victims. I mean a hell of a career, thank you. Through all that you've done, through all you've seen, through all you've experienced what was, what was your very, very best day and what was your worst day.
Speaker 1:That's easy on the worst day and y'all have been there too because when you have to tell someone their loveliness has been killed, it's murdered, and, in particular, one that was tough for me I'm going to try not to get emotional. I had to call the parents of an infant who had been kidnapped and we thought possibly was still alive, but the kidnapper killed the baby and we found the baby in a rural field in Belle County and I had to get on the phone and call the parents and tell them no, the babies did. That was rough. That was the Brandon Maw case.
Speaker 1:That one was tough because we had been working on it for days, even though when we had the FBI involved and we had a suspect out of state and bring her back and she had drawn a cruise map and we had to play hardball to get it and I even had to go to court to get it and I got a lot of cruises from forcing that, from the attorney for that suspect, from the local newspaper which took the side of the attorney, but ultimately the court of appeals ruled in my favor, which wasn't reported by the paper later. But that was a tough day. To this day it bothers me, you know, and other cases like that that involved infants. Best day, you know, there were a lot of those. I'll tell you. The night I won that election for sheriff, which wasn't supposed to happen and which went against all political prognostications, and everyone said I couldn't win it. And that night, about midnight, that night when the clerk had to grudgingly admit, oh, he's got a lead that didn't going to be over Kyle is like yes.
Speaker 1:And my brother said I just we were like high five in it and it was like it was just a blast. That was a great day, um, and I, you know, starting, starting, it was a great day when the first day I walked in and worked for Ronnie Earl too. It was a great day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't really convey how what that was like working for him. I guess it would be what I'd give you as an analogy is if you were like going to go work for Bob, but look, you know it was like you know, this for me at a local level was like holy smoke. You know he was the kind of guy I'd want his autograph, yeah, so those were great days.
Speaker 2:With all you've done, you've probably been a lot of good days, oh yeah, there was a lot of good days.
Speaker 1:We had a lot of fun. The the the funnest time I had was the five years I was actually physically co-located with the police at the police department and they adopted me and took me in like one of their own. It was great. I trained with them and it was wonderful. It was uh, and to this day, those guys and I haven't seen a lot of them in years. I do still stay in touch with some of them every day, but, uh, they made me an honorary member of the Austin police association.
Speaker 2:And they gave.
Speaker 1:They gave me all these awards that are on my website, you know, and it's like I look at them now and I'm like, wow, you know, once upon a time it was, it was a lot of fun. That's cool. Yeah, it really was. They treated me great. That was a real brotherhood and sisterhood there at the Austin police department back in those days. It still is. Yeah, you know, that's still healthy over there in that regard. Yeah, it's just officials. Yeah, we had this support of the county attorney, the district attorney, the governor, the mayor, you know, the city council. We, we were able to do good for people, uh, in the city of Austin. We made it amazing things, uh, following serial robbers and taking down drug dealers and and and arresting murderers. You know, we, we did amazing things and it it's really, uh, I feel bad for people going into law enforcement now here because they it's there's it's such a disadvantage compared to the support system we had back then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we had cops go back then and we had we had them held accountable, but it wasn't perfect and it wasn't a perfect system, but it was a functioning. You know, it wasn't dysfunctional like it is now with the DA it's. It was, it was a functioning system.
Speaker 2:Listen, listen to you talk reminds me a lot. We lost a legend. For us, mario Martinez was a lobbyist. Um, he'd been a lobbyist 45 years, I think. Uh, inside the inside the Capitol down there and listening to you talk and being old school, original Austin, walking, I would walk the halls with Mario. And Austin's a massive city but it's kind of a small. A lot of people are connected and they go back yeah, they go back decades and they know each other's family members and, um, when you get behind the barriers of the madness of Austin, it's kind of a small. It's not a small town, but there's a lot of people have been around a long time and a lot of it's a connected place. It's a. Really, it's exactly right, you know it's a neat place.
Speaker 1:We had a lot of people, a lot of good people have have passed away and uh, but we still are connected and, like you know, you heard, did you hear about uh, Judge Berg Carnes and his wife were killed in a horrible situation. When I grew up with that family, the Carnes family they've like four houses down for me and, uh, their father was career FBI and where I grew up in Northeast Austin we had, we had two FBI agents, jimmy Chapman's father and the Carnes father, and we had two secret service service agents right there next to our. You know, right, oh, it was a middle class neighborhood. It was just great, that's cool. And that old Austin, uh, it's still there, but you got to kind of look for it.
Speaker 1:You know it's lost to history in some, some manner and uh, people like you were trying to dam this to.
Speaker 3:uh, you know, to bring that back, and so we thank you for it.
Speaker 1:Well, that's how I got elected sheriff. I got to thank everybody out there listening. He was part of that because really that's what, that's what got me elected, for those connections to the whole Austin and the police believe in it what I can do.
Speaker 3:So well, we're going to continue this friendship, uh, I know between you and I, and uh, I look forward to it. I appreciate you answering the phone on a Sunday.
Speaker 1:Oh, glad to do it. If I can ever do anything for TNPA, let me know. And um, I appreciate what y'all do and I tell everyone who's uh, you know civilians that aren't in law enforcement. I said, man, let me tell you something. It weren't for the police groups, this would be whole completely steamrolled and it would be no one Police.
Speaker 3:Well, that's why we have this podcast, you know number one reason we're not going to be silenced.
Speaker 1:That's a good job.
Speaker 3:Good job.
Speaker 2:Keep it up Appreciate it, you got anything else? No, sir, I cannot thank you enough for coming on.
Speaker 1:It's my honor. Thank you, and again thank y'all for the award you gave me and when I was in the legislature. I'll never forget it. That's hanging up at home and I'll make everybody look at it.
Speaker 3:So well, this is about wraps it up. I'm hearing some thunder outside, so, uh, I'm scared that we're going to lose this episode with uh loss of electricity. You guys stay safe. Again, our thoughts and prayers are with everybody affected by the wildfires in the Panhandles. Y'all, y'all, be careful out there. God bless you and, as always, may God bless Texas.