HOUSTON — The family disturbance call to Baytown Police began unremarkably. A man was arguing with his grandmother, and she wanted him to leave her home. When two officers arrived and the man refused to do so, they placed him under arrest for disorderly conduct.
Then things quickly changed.
As then-Baytown Officer Steven Tran began walking the handcuffed suspect to his patrol car, he swung at the suspect’s head.
“Oh my God, look at this,” the suspect said. “I’m not doing anything.”
Tran’s initial left hook didn’t make contact, so the 4-year police veteran pinned the suspect against a fence and landed three closed fist strikes to the head. “Resist some more, resist some more,” Tran said on his body-worn camera video. But Baytown’s police chief later determined the suspect was not aggressively resisting, and “indefinitely suspended,” or fired the officer.
Records show Tran appealed that termination and a mediator reduced the punishment to a 16-day suspension. He later found another law enforcement job at the Liberty County Precinct 2 Constable Office. Constable Leslie Hulsey didn’t explain his hiring decision and Tran had no comment.
KHOU 11 Investigates found Tran is among nearly 200 Houston-area officers who resigned or were fired for misconduct -- including excessive force, sexual harassment, untruthfulness and criminal arrests -- and were later hired at another agency.
Another incident of police misconduct in Lake Jackson involved a citizen using his phone to record a minor accident scene, his First Amendment right.
“He’s taking pictures of other people’s vehicles and license plates, which is against the law,” then-Lake Jackson Police Officer Johnny Cagle was heard saying on his body-worn camera.
That video showed the citizen claiming he was on public property and refused to leave. A heated verbal exchange between the two ended with Cagle tackling the citizen to the ground, causing a bloody head wound.
An internal affairs investigation found Cagle, a 21-year licensed peace officer, violated department policies for use of force and unsatisfactory performance.
“You took extreme action based on the erroneous belief that taking images of a license plate in public was against the law,” Lake Jackson Police Chief Paul Kibodeaux wrote in March 2022.
Cagle resigned before his termination. Six months later he was hired by nearby Oyster Creek Police, where Chief Richard Foreman had nothing to say about that decision. Cagle did not respond to requests for comment.
The ‘wandering officer’ problem
The two cases are examples of a larger problem in policing. In August, KHOU 11 Investigates uncovered more than half of the 50-officer Coffee City Police force had serious disciplinary histories at previous law enforcement agencies. Two weeks later, Coffee City council members abruptly fired Police Chief JohnJay Portillo and shut down the entire department. A Henderson County grand jury indicted Portillo and six other former Coffee City officers on felony tampering with government document charges for allegedly lying on their police job applications.
After the disbandment of the Coffee City Police Department, KHOU 11 Investigates sent out more than 100 open records requests for personnel files to Houston-area law enforcement agencies. The documents revealed at least 184 “wandering officers” between 2020 and 2024 -- cops who received unfavorable employment discharges from one department and were later hired somewhere else. Under state licensing rules, a “general” discharge is given to an officer who resigned, retired or was fired for misconduct or a documented performance problem. A “dishonorably” discharged officer resigned, retired or was terminated for untruthfulness, insubordination or allegations of criminal misconduct.
Those officers with less-than-honorable discharges include seven cops who were fired for off-duty DWI arrests and found jobs at other agencies.
Galena Park Police hired an officer who was fired from a previous agency for making unwelcome sexual advances toward a dispatcher. Galena Park Chief Richard Wagner did not directly comment on his hiring decision but provided a general statement about officers with checkered pasts.
The Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Office hired a cop who had been fired for stealing groceries from a local Walmart. Constable Mark Herman provided a statement about his agency’s general hiring practices but did not address the specific case.
Clear Lake Shores Police hired a former sheriff’s lieutenant who was fired for using racial slurs, telling a black colleague, “We don’t want a n---- here.” Clear Lake Police Chief David Donaldson said he was an assistant chief at the time and was against hiring the officer, who resigned less than two years later.
“If he put an application here today, he would not have been hired, period,” Donaldson said.
And Southside Place Police hired a sheriff’s deputy who was fired for calling a coworker “gay” and another a “fat mother f-----.” Chief Don Mcall said the deputy claimed the allegations were false and was appealing his termination. McCall added that he had known the deputy for more than 30 years as an “excellent” peace officer. After the officer left Southside Police, records show two other agencies later gave him a job.
“Why would you hire that individual with that track record?” said Luis Soberon, a policy advisor at Austin-based Texas 2036. “It’s bad for the agency, it’s bad for the community.”
The non-partisan, nonprofit think tank published a report analyzing Texas wandering officers over 10 years.
“The prime destination for wandering officers are smaller agencies and more sparsely populated parts of Texas,” Soberon said. “The hiring pool for these smaller communities is relatively small.”
Soberon said smaller departments don’t have law enforcement academies of their own to train officers, and the pay they can officer is generally pretty low.
“It might seem easier for the hiring agency in a small town to take the veteran that's already been trained, that already has experience, even if they have some baggage, well, maybe they messed up one time there. There's a way to rationalize that probably,” Soberon said.
Agencies that hire the most wandering officers
The top five Houston-area agencies that hired the most wandering officers, by percentage of their total force, were all small departments according to KHOU’s analysis of records from 2020 to 2024.
The Arcola Police Department hired six wandering officers, or 38% of its total sworn officers. Surfside Beach hired 10, or 36%. Patton Village hired four wandering officers, or 33% of its entire force. Kemah Police hired 6, or 29% of its total force; and Prairie View Police hired four, or 24% of its total sworn officers.
Patton Village Police Chief Chris Hernandez declined an interview request. The police chiefs at Kemah and Prairie View did not respond to requests for comment.
Arcola Police Chief Arika Carr said she only hired some of the wandering offices since she took the job in 2022, and others have since left the department. Carr said a less-than-honorable discharge should not be an automatic career-ender.
“It depends on what the officer has done,” Carr said.
She said in some cases, officers appealed their unfavorable discharges at a state hearing and got a dishonorable discharge upgraded to honorable. In another case, a termination for an off-duty DWI arrest, the criminal charge was dismissed.
“Yes, we’re police officers and we’re held to a higher standard, but we do have times where a person has made mistake, they’ve paid for that mistake,” Carr said. “Whether the case was dismissed, or it was overturned for whatever reason, and we give them that opportunity.”
At Surfside Beach, Chief William Moncier said he refuses to hire dishonorably discharged officers, and his department is “no longer a second-chance agency.”
Moncier said all of the wandering officers KHOU 11 Investigates identified were hired before he took the top job about a year ago.
“If they would have applied here as I was chief, none of those officers would have been hired,” Moncier said. “Officers have to have integrity, if we don’t have integrity, then how is the public going to trust us.”