The letter of the law

HOUSTON — A letter addressed to the city council from a former police officer describes what the officer alleges are severe ethical lapses of the mayor.

“His conduct is totally unacceptable, a gross deviation from acceptable conduct of a mayor, and some of which may constitute crimes of moral turpitude,” Aaron Parker says in his letter.

Parker details five main complaints against Houston Mayor Roger Purcell:

• That the mayor showed up at the Alaska State Troopers’ Palmer Post in a police uniform with a sidearm and troopers kicked him out.

“This action not only has contributed to bringing disgrace to the City of Houston but it has brought some embarrassment to the Houston Police Department,” he wrote. “This action would in other contexts be construed as impersonating a public servant.”

• That the mayor attempted to get clearance from the Transportation Safety Administration to bring a gun on commercial aircraft.

“I became very concerned both for the reputation of our agency as well as for both state and national security if a non-law enforcement officer were to illegally access aircraft while being armed,” Parker wrote.

• That the mayor used city employees working through a borough grant program to dispose of his freezer after it broke.

“The program is designed to assist communities in clean up and to remove abandoned appliances without having to pay the $35 disposal fee,” he wrote.

• That the mayor told council that grant money to hire a new officer would be forthcoming when the work hadn’t been put in to even apply for the grant, then blamed it on staff when the grant fell through, even though it was Purcell’s fault.

“The Mayor stated that he was upset that he felt that if anything was to get done in the office that he would have to do it himself,” Parker says in the letter.

• And, finally, that the mayor told Parker to report directly to the mayor instead of to his sergeant, then used this circumvention of the chain of command to initiate disciplinary action against Parker.

“Basically he set me up and lied about the circumstances of my conduct,” Parker wrote.

For his part, Purcell disputed every one of Parker’s claims.

“It says that I showed up there and (Trooper Capt. Dennis) Cassanovas kicked me out of the place. No, Cassanovas never did that. I go to that place on a regular basis and talk with those folks,” he said.

He said what did happen was that once, long before Parker started working for the department, Purcell went for a ridealong with troopers and wore his flack jacket, not a uniform. Purcell said he doesn’t do ridealongs anymore, even with his own department, because he gets attacked too much when he does.

“Anytime I even look at a car I get accused of doing police work,” he said.

As for the clearance to fly armed, Purcell said he wanted to sit in on the department’s training in order to better understand what resources the officers would need to get certified. He never wanted to fly commercial with a pistol himself.

“I would go to jail. I’m not stupid,” he said.

As for the freezer, Purcell said he did have one that broke, but that he gave it to a man who fixes them and the man still has it. There were two refrigerators taken from his property, but they had been abandoned there before he even bought the property. And he didn’t put in a request for the city to remove them until the city stopped getting requests for the program and there were still spots open.

“It’s a very sad day in society especially when you have an officer who’s just a police officer who decides to come after the mayor for picking up garbage and hauling things out of the brush so that kids can’t get trapped in them,” he said.

Purcell said that when he talked to the city council about the grant to hire a new officer he reasonably assumed that it was being taken care of and that when it fell through it was due to an oversight on the part of his staff.

Afterwards, he said, he sat down with staff. He wasn’t angry and didn’t yell at anybody. They just tried to make sure they had a plan to fix the problem.

“We need a way of making sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again,” he said.

Purcell said that Parker’s claims that he was reprimanded for following the mayor’s orders are lies. He said he didn’t ask Parker to circumvent his sergeant and that the current investigation has to do with some other, much more serious allegations against Parker.

“I just put him on administrative duty until the investigation is done because if the allegations that other people are making are true, it’s serious,” he said.

Both Parker and Purcell agree that Parker considered putting in a bid to become police chief.

Purcell says that he turned Parker down. Parker didn’t fit the city’s criteria. He said that afterwards, Parker started coming after him.

Parker, on the other hand, says it’s Purcell that’s coming after him — for investigating the mayor’s malfeasance.

And both agree on one other thing — that there are bigger things to come.

Purcell said the investigation into Parker’s behavior is going to be eye-opening.

Parker says he handed over some more damning allegations to state attorneys.

“People need to understand it has a huge effect and in the end the public is not getting the services they need as  result,” he said in an interview. “There are huge problems in Houston and they need to be solved.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.