Back in February, I touched on problems with the Llano Police Department. I had not seen an update on this until yesterday, when Reason‘s “Hit and Run” blog, of all places, ran a story covering the latest developments.
Summarizing:
Chief Kevin Ratliff is now ex-Chief Kevin Ratliff. He was fired July 26th…after being convicted of two counts of official oppression and one count of tampering with a governmental record.
These were all class A misdemeanors. I can’t tell if conviction on these charges requires Ratliff to surrender his peace officer’s license. It doesn’t look like the other indicted officers have gone to trial yet. (Former officer Harden is set for trial in October.)
But wait, there’s more! There was another incident that resulted in another Llano officer and a sheriff’s deputy also being indicted on official oppression charges!
Basically, the two officers responded to a domestic dispute. The male party wouldn’t open the door to the responding officers: so first they tried to pick the lock, then they kicked the door in.
“You’re going to jail,” Roberts told Holley as he stood over him. The officers held Holley in the back of a patrol unit for nearly an hour, then later took the handcuffs off and let him go.
Holley was never charged with a crime.
And apparently, there’s body camera footage of this whole affair as well.
When asked if there was a climate of corruption at the police department, [City Manager Scott] Edmonson said, “Uh, no.”
When asked if Edmonson could be certain of that given the city’s done nothing to investigate that angle, Edmonson replied, “Can we be sure of anything?”
Existential philosophy in Llano. Who’d thunk it?
The sheriff’s deputy is currently suspended:
The sheriff disciplined Roberts the Monday after the incident and stripped him of his police powers and put Roberts on paid administrative leave when the indictment came down. Blackburn didn’t allow Roberts to sit at home to earn his pay, he put his deputy to work in the county jail until the criminal charges are resolved.
“I think for the citizens of the county, if he’s going to be on paid leave, he should be working for it,” Blackburn said.
The Llano PD officer resigned.