From dealing heroin while in uniform to molesting children to beating inmates (and their domestic partners) to driving while drunk, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office in Texas has seen 32 of its deputies arrested since 2018.
That can mean either one or two things.
One, the Texas law enforcement agency is the most corrupt in the country with an average of more than one deputy getting arrested each month.
Or two, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar is the most honest sheriff in the country for cleaning up his department of rogue deputies instead of covering up for them which is the norm within agencies across the country.
“If you are going to act like a thug, we are going to treat you like a thug and you’re going to jail. It doesn’t matter if you wear the uniform or not,” Salazar told News 4 San Antonio last year after 24 deputies had been arrested that year.
The latest deputy to be arrested is 23-year-old Nancy Cruz who was arrested Thursday night for driving under the influence with a child younger than 15 in the car.
Cruz, who had been hired in July 2017 but had been on unpaid administrative leave since April 1 for ongoing attendance issues, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
Now the department is in the process of firing her.
“BCSO administration has begun termination proceedings for what is a pattern of misconduct for this employee, and will be serving her with those documents later this morning,” according to the news release.
- Armando Trevino was arrested last month after he was caught buying heroin while in uniform which he intended to sell to inmates, something he had been doing for a while.
- Markese Djuan Shands turned himself in on Friday on an arrest warrant for official oppression after a ten-month investigation of a March 15, 2018 incident in which he “pushed the inmate hard and knocked him down.”
- Mishal Mathew was arrested on May 14 on a felony charge of tampering with a government record after an inmate died on his watch in which he claimed he had checked all the cells but that proved to be a lie.
- Arnold Juarez Gomez was arrested on May 5 on a misdemeanor DWI charge.
- Andrew McDermott was arrested April 23 for aggravated robbery and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for cutting his ex-girlfriend’s arms over text communications he found on her phone in June 2018.
- Ryan Storm Ferrell was arrested on March 15 for DWI and was quickly fired.
- Rachelle Balmez was arrested January 1 for choking her domestic partner. She had been on paid leave since September 2017 for a separate domestic violence incident.
“I will make it a point to hunt you down and cut you down like a cancer,” Salazar said during a press conference on March 30 where he announced the firing of several deputies from this year.
