A local newspaper reported Saturday that Police Officer Jose Flores, one of El Paso’s Finest, was fired from the El Paso Police Department last October for (apparently) summarily executing handcuffed prisoner Daniel Saenz in the sallyport of the El Paso County Jail in March of 2013.
That’s the punishment for murder by police in El Paso. After six months, you lose your job. You might be able to then gain employment at one of the adjoining jurisdictions, like in Socorro, or get a job as a junior constable, because, you know, stuff happens.
At least you get fired if it’s all caught on video. Without the video, Officer Flores might have been promoted. Maybe. The perfidity of the local prosecutorial regime cannot be fully understood.
And for those of you who are thinking that there are bad apples in every bushel, let me point out that the rest of the bushel, in the form of the Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas, jumped behind Officer Flores to help him weasel his way out of an indictment. So yeah, there may be good cops, but they don’t do a damn thing about the bad cops except enable their behavior.
Now the City of El Paso is facing a federal civil rights lawsuit, so just because Officer Flores has moved on to the daily grind, don’t think that this thing has gone away. We will all still be paying for it for quite some time.
Curious, isn’t it, that none of our elected officials chose to publicly address the issue of a handcuffed prisoner getting shot like a rabid dog while in the custody of the El Paso police? I guess they figured that the welfare of the citizens is none of their concern.