Fallout
Houston Police Chief Clarence Bradford stepped down today (he says temporarily) after being indicted by a Harris County grand jury on charges of perjury.
Those charges date back to a much earlier effort by HPD to discipline Captain Mark Aguirre, the field commander of the bizarre Kmart/Sonic/JCI/ERACER raids that took place a few weeks ago. Instead, that much earlier effort to discipline Aguirre backfired, and became a controversy over whether the police chief regularly used profanities (something he denied, but that a subordinate later contradicted him on). It takes some ineptitude to screw up a routine disciplinary matter and turn it into a criminal investigation against one's self, but that's our police chief. At this rate, he'll be able to follow the lead of Mayor Pothole (who was an inept police chief in Houston, among other stops), right to City Hall.
HPD is having its troubles. Just when the ERACER raids had sort of fallen off the local news, the police chief is forced to step down on a semi-related matter. I wonder how many heads will roll after the internal investigation of ERACER is complete? A bunch, I would hope.
(09-07-02) Laurence Simon hopes Chief Bradford's leave is permanent.
[Posted at 22:17 CST on 09/06/02] [Link]
