Houston mayor calls controversial video a ‘smokescreen’ (video included)

HOUSTON — There’s a shakeup brewing at City Hall, with controversy over two topics apparently threatening the jobs of two employees.

Sgt. Charlie Seidl with the Houston Police Department said that he was told he needed to be at an emergency meeting at 6:30 p.m. this evening to discuss his job performance. He said he was told he was on suspension and that he needed to hand in his gun, his badge and his equipment. He said he wasn’t told why, but that he has his suspicions.

“It sounds like somebody’s trying to retaliate and cloud what’s going on here, keep me quiet,” Seidl said.

They want him to keep quiet, he said, over a video that’s been posted to YouTube that purports to show Houston Mayor Roger Purcell using flashing emergency lights on a drive to Fairbanks in a city-owned police SUV.

“How can I go out and enforce law and apprehend violators and issue citations when I have knowledge that he’s done this and then I just ignore it?” Seidl said.

He said the meeting tonight was scheduled to be behind closed doors, but that he plans to ask that it be held in open session. He doesn’t want to give the mayor the opportunity to say things in private.

As for Purcell, he said if anyone is trying to cloud anything it’s Seidl. He described the YouTube video as a “smokescreen” designed to distract attention from the eight animals Seidl put down at Houston’s animal shelter last week.

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See the controversial YouTube video here:

Seidl has said repeatedly that Purcell ordered him to put the animals down. So he did. With his service pistol.

Not so, Purcell said. All he ordered Seidl and animal control staff to do was their jobs.

“It was disgusting out there. I told them to straighten it out and they had a time frame to get everything in line,” Purcell said.

As for the video, Purcell said he couldn’t comment too much on it, but did call into question its validity and Seidl’s motives. The video, he pointed out, has an incorrect time stamp. It’s purportedly from a trip he made in December, but the time stamp says May 2010.

“If he wanted to he was supposed to take that to the deputy mayor, not me, if there’s a problem, but instead he takes it to my political opponents,” Purcell said. “It was a hatchet job because they did it while I was in Juneau and I wasn’t here to defend myself.”

He said Seidl made a bad decision regarding the animals and because of that he plans to seek Seidl’s termination at tonight’s meeting.

The YouTube video came form Seidl’s car. He said he was the only one who had access to the slot holding the camera’s memory card; you need a key to get to it and Seidl’s the only one who had the key.

“I can verify its validity,” he said of the video.

As for his actions at the shelter, Seidl said the city was behind him on that issue, the mayor told him he’d acted properly and had his support.

“Just last week he was saying basically what a good job I was doing,etc.,” he said.

But then the YouTube video hit and now, apparently, the ax is about to drop, he said.

That’s not to say the incident at the animal shelter passed by without ramifications.

Dennis Lords, the city’s community service officer in charge of animal control duties, was fired earlier today.

After the animals were shot last week, Deputy Mayor Wilson said the city determined euthanasia by lethal injection was too expensive and the price was slated to double. Since being quoted in the Frontiersman saying such, Wilson said he did some calling around himself.

Wilson said he found the figures Lords was giving him were not correct. Local veterinarian clinics often donated time and services to the city, meaning euthanasia costs were around $35, not the $65 Lords told him. Additionally, the clinics had never given any indication of raising those prices.

Asked if the animals would have been shot in light of this information, Wilson said unequivocally no.

See Tuesday’s edition of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman for a report on Monday’s meeting.