WILL RAUL FALL ON THE SWORD FOR ERNIE?

By Juan Montoya
Last week on Wednesday we walked over to the Dancy Building and snagged a hard copy of the Cameron County Commissioners Court agenda for last week's meeting.
We could have easily retrieved one from the county site except for the fact that the postings there do not include the backup as does the City of Brownsville. We have already bent County Supervisor Pete Sepulveda's ear on the subject, but up until now, if you want the backup materials for the agenda, you must bodily trek out to Madison Street and get one from the county clerk or county judge's office.
Wen we were there the courthouse was abuzz with the news that Cameron County Sheriff Department investigators had been interviewing Raul Salazar, Pct. 2 Commissioner Ernie Hernandez's adminitrative assistant. We were told that they had also stopped briefly to chat with Sepulveda.
The speculation around the courthouse corridors was that it had to do with the investigation into the hiring of Ernie's brother-in-law Roberto Cadriel and the subsequent resignation  of former HR interim director Robert Lopez.
The case stirred suspicions that the civil service process had been subverted to allow Cadrfiel to get a job as a noncommissioned security guard at Veterans Memorial Bridge even after he had flunked the civil service exam miserably. Tallying scores in the middle 30s, Cadriel then supposedly took it again and the third time it was a charm with a score in the upper 90s. Nobody swallowed that piece of work and the heat got to be too much for Cardriel who resigned after one day on the job. Then Lopez followed up and left the county.
Incoming District Attorney Luis Saenz has vowed to get to the bottom of the case and the interviews last week indicate that the process has begun.
It is noteworthy that both Cadriel and Salazar have been in legal trouble before. Cadriel was found guilty of a felony and Salazar – former acting Brownsville Fire Chief and Fire Marshal – has had to live down a conviction himself having to do with using the power of his office to aid the fire department's fundraising efforts in 2002.
In a plea agreement with the Cameron County District Attorney's Office, Salazar pleaded guilty to one count of bribery and one count of theft by a public servant.

In return, the Cameron County's district attorney's office agreed not to oppose probation at Salazar's  sentencing if he is ordered to pay back $10,000 in restitution to the fire department's Christmas Charity Fund and agreed to testify truthfully in any upcoming cases.
Salazar was indicted Jan. 9, 2002, on 13 felony counts listed in four indictments ranging from bribery to official abuse of capacity. The count of bribery, to which Salazar pleaded guilty, was accepting or agreeing to accept money from Seunghoon Lee, manager of El Gran Mercado on 1232 E. Elizabeth St., in exchange for not enforcing fire codes at the store.

Evidence introduced by the district attorney's office at the plea showed that the bribery was discovered when Lee bungled delivering an apparent payoff to Salazar.

In the case relating to the Cadriel, there were some leaks from the county that there were some affidavits on record from some bridge employees that then-Human Resources director Robert Lopez or one of his representatives had told them that Hernandez wanted his his brother-in-law hired.
News stories from 2006, when Cadriel was employed as a code enforcement officer, indicate he was indicted by a Cameron County grand jury following an investigation into allegations that he and another city employee abused their positions by soliciting and taking bribes from local mechanic shop owners between 2005 and 2006. They were accused of selling building permits. Cadriel was charged with various counts under a law preventing a gift to a public servant by a person subject to his jurisdiction, abuse of official capacity and tampering with governmental records. He was convicted on six of the counts. He also has a felony theft conviction dating to the 1980s." 

BPD Chief Garcia – now at a cushy job at the Port of Brownsville – when the Cadriel hiring mess surfaced, relayed to Sepulveda his reply that the BPD would decline to investigate allegations that another county employee took a civil service test for him.

Now, with the county investigators visiting the county offices in matters related to the Cadriel hiring and subsequent bloodletting at HR, will Salazar turn out to be the fall guy in this mess?