Once again a request by the public and media for the results of the complaint filed by commissioner Jessica Tetreau-Kalifa against a female police officer who arrested her in the fifth domestic disturbance report filed involving her less than five months after her May 2011 election against Charlie Atkinson has been denied by the city's legal staff.
El Rrrun-Rrun filed an information request from the City of Brownsville Police Department when it was learned that a letter had been sent to the commissioner, the female officer involved in the arrest, and City Manager Charlie Cabler.
In the letter explaining the city's denial of the request for the information for, Assistant City Attorney Allison Bastian said that she had "sought an Attorney General's opinion as to the release of the letter (when the Brownsville Herald requested the same...and the AG) held...that the letter is indeed confidential pursuant to #552.101 and may not be released."
That law reads:"Sec. 552.101. EXCEPTION: CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION. Information is excepted from the requirements of Section 552.021 if it is information considered to be confidential by law, either constitutional, statutory, or by judicial decision.
Sec. 552.102. EXCEPTION: CONFIDENTIALITY OF CERTAIN PERSONNEL INFORMATION. (a) Information is excepted from the requirements of Section 552.021 if it is information in a personnel file, the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, except that all information in the personnel file of an employee of a governmental body is to be made available to that employee or the employee's designated representative as public information is made available under this chapter."
Now, we're not lawyers here, but to us it seems like a rather slim hook to deny information about what is clearly a matter of public interest generated by the acts of a public official accusing a public employee of acting unprofessionally because of purely personal motives related to their relationship in their high school days. In fact, it was the public official who instigated the inquiry on the officer's conduct and sought public scrutiny of the matter through statements through the media.
Whether the department and its employees are not affording the citizens of this city the professional conduct its expects from its employees– as Tetreau-Kalifa claimed – would clearly be the public's right to know and would outweigh any expectations of privacy on the part of the public official, we would think.
The officer – who is not identified – responded to the fifth domestic disturbance involving Tetreau-Kalifa and her husband since her election in mid-May 2011 at the couple's then-new home off Greenfield Drive around 12:55 a.m. in mid-September.
A police report shows it all started with a comment made by her husband Arturo Ochoa Kalifa the previous Friday afternoon. Kalifa was driving with three employees to the couple's car wash when he left his cell phone on while talking to Tetreau. According to the report, the four saw a woman walking her dog where Kalifa told them, "That dog looked like a rat and the girl, well..."
Teatreau allegedly argued with him at their business and said they went home where he told officers that she punched him and threw glasses of water at him before locking herself up in her bedroom, calling 911, and had scratched herself on her chest area before the officer arrived.
“I feel like a very, very big mistake was made by the police department," she said at the time and claimed that the officer had it in for her since they were both in high school.
The officer was reported to have said that when she graduated there were more than 700 graduates at Hanna High School and that she wouldn't know Tetreau-Kalifa from Eve.
The Herald's Emma Perez-Treviño reported at the time that the five incidents since May 2011 were the latest of eight reports filed with the police department since 2006. They included disturbances, arguments, assaults and assault/family violence.
The commissioner met with then-Chief Carlos Garcia who left the department for greener pastures at the Port of Brownsville three months after he met with the feisty commissioner.
"Mrs. Jessica Tetreau-Kalifa has visited with me today and voiced her concerns about how her arrest was handled," Garcia said in a statement to the press. "She has been offered the opportunity to file an official complaint as to the conduct of the arresting officer. An administrative inquiry will be conducted to determine if the complaint can be sustained."
It is the result of that inquiry that both the Herald and the Rrun-Rrun have requested and been denied by the city under the confidentiality clause of the governmental code.
However, Bastian did indicate between the lines that the commissioner's complaint had been found without merit when she said that "the letter sought relates to an allegation of misconduct by a civil service employee for which no disciplinary action was taken; said letter is kept in the Police Department's civil service internal file (commonly known as "G" legal file)...(and are) deemed confidential..."
Was the commissioner's filing of a complaint against a PD just a ruse to conceal her chagrin ather repeated practice of placing herself in the public scrutiny through her acts as a private citizen? Or was there really some merit to her claim?
Neither she, the City of Brownsville, nor the Texas Attorney General want you to know.
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