Ex-Houston cop, city in skirmish

HOUSTON — The resignation of one of the few police officers patrolling the Valley’s smallest populated city has sparked controversy and some finger pointing.

Aaron Parker resigned from the Houston Police Department after about four months on the force.

Since then he’s apparently penned a letter laying out the reasons for his resignation, a lot of which, he said, has to do with the behavior of Houston’s mayor, Roger Purcell. Parker asked that the letter be distributed to the Houston City Council.

Which, apparently happened. Sort of.

“We were given about five minutes to look at it,” said Councilwoman Virgie Thompson. After the five minutes were up, “it was taken out of our hands.”

Thompson didn’t have a copy of the letter to provide to the press. The city’s clerk wouldn’t hand over a copy. Nor would Purcell, citing confidentiality considerations when dealing with personnel matters. Parker declined to hand a copy to the press or discuss its contents in anything but the vaguest of terms.

“It just talks about a variety of the issues, not all of them, but some of the aberrant stuff that the mayor has done that has forced my resignation,” Parker said.

He said the “aberrant” behavior was pretty egregious and had to do with unethical behavior.

“He’s hiding this and he’s hiding a lot of other things, too,” he said. He said that once Purcell knew he was on to him, “He started gunning for me.”

Purcell said he’d read the letter and didn’t find it all that consequential.

“I read the letter and I just shook my head and said, ‘whatever,’” he said. “I’m so used to being attacked for every little thing that goes on I’m almost numb to it, to tell you the truth.”

Parker said he resigned because he wanted to be able to speak more freely about what was going on with the mayor. He wanted to be able to talk to the council about it as a constituent rather than as a city employee.

Purcell said that when the investigation started, he proposed that a third party conduct it. He said when his name came up he didn’t want people thinking he was running the show.

As for why Parker resigned, Purcell wondered if there weren’t different motives at play.

“As a police officer you have to answer questions to an investigation by law, but if you’re not a police officer you can plead the fifth,” he said.

In the end, though, nobody would say what was in the letter or what exactly the city is investigating.

“Anything that comes right now through this into the city, it’s a personnel issue so it has to be handled as a personnel issue,” Purcell said. “We have to (make sure it does not) violate anybody’s employee rights or labor laws so we have to do it by the book.”

As for Parker, he said the mayor is trying to destroy his reputation. He said people have asked him if he’d consider returning to the department.

“I will not work for Roger Purcell,” Parker said. “He has to go before I’ll come back.”

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