Police are usually in bed with the D.A.’s office seeing as how they represent the same long arm of the law. That relationship and bond is hard to sever but sometimes a member must be cut to preserve the rest of the body.
Most of the time however, running afoul of the law results only in a slap on the wrist.
Such is the case of Deputy Andrew McDermott.
The 26-year-old Bexar County Deputy was facing a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after attacking his wife. He was also facing a charge of domestic violence because the victim was his wife. McDermott allegedly cut his wife with a knife.
Late Monday afternoon, the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office released a statement:
“The case was rejected as a result of the victim consistently being uncooperative with our office and the arresting agency who initially investigated the incident. There were repeated attempts to secure her cooperation by phone and mail. Ultimately, the case was rejected when it became apparent we would not have the cooperation of the complainant.”
This is not the first time McDermott’s name crossed the desk at the district attorney’s office.
In January 2016, the deputy’s then-girlfriend told his brothers-in-blue that he had twisted her arm and repeatedly hit her in the face in front of a witness.
The San Antonio Police Department launched an investigation only to kick responsibility of the investigation over to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff’s office filed an assault/bodily injury charge against McDermott.
The Bexar County District Attorney’s Office later dismissed the case against the disgraced lawman.
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar accidently told reporters he may refile those charges if he can.
“If I’m still within the statute, yeah, I’ll refile it,” Salazar said. “I think that if there’s a case like this, when at some point it was important enough to arrest someone on, and at some point it was important enough to file on, that concerns me. Now they may have found new information that we weren’t privy to at the time of the arrest.”
Salazar claims that he believes the earlier dismissal has nothing to do with the DA office’s relationship with law enforcement.
In the latest case, McDermott was still on administrative leave from the department. He was living with his estranged wife according to KENS5 when an argument over messages on her phone erupted.
KENS5 reports:
At some point, McDermott became aware of a messaging exchange on the victim’s phone and attempted to take the device from her by force. Salazar said the phone was actually in the victim’s pocket and McDermott attempted to remove it with a knife, cutting the victim in the process.
The victim called the sheriff’s office and alerted them to the incident, and McDermott took off in his vehicle. A deputy pulled McDermott over for a traffic stop at around 4 a.m. Wednesday and located two knives and a handgun in his vehicle.
It seems there are a different set of rules for Bexar County Sheriff’s deputies than for the regular everyday citizen.