By Tanya Eiserer
The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — Police Chief David Kunkle on Thursday fired two veteran police officers who had been investigated for writing tickets in improper ways.
Senior Cpl. Jeffrey Nelson and Senior Cpl. Al Schoelen were fired for entering “inaccurate, false or improper information on citations” and engaging in an unacceptable “pattern of enforcement activity,” according to police. Cpl. Nelson also was fired for using “inappropriate force” on a handcuffed woman and having people sign blank citations.
Chief Kunkle also suspended a third patrol officer, Senior Cpl. Timothy Stecker, for 10 days after he admitted having a homeless man sign a blank citation.
David Schiller, an attorney representing Cpls. Stecker, Schoelen and Nelson, said the firings were excessive.
“None of these charges merit termination at all,’' Mr. Schiller said. “These are excellent officers who were out there every day working with the lowest common denominator ... in an area that needed enforcement.”
A supervisor, Sgt. Walter Clifton, was suspended for five days after internal investigators concluded that he acted improperly when he instructed officers to make up occupations on citations as a way to obscure the fact that people were homeless because he said he believed municipal court judges would not issue arrest warrants on unpaid citations if they thought a person was transient.
“They were disciplined not on any specific incident,” Chief Kunkle said at a news conference. “But for a general pattern of enforcement — enforcement activity that we as a department think is inappropropriate.”
Chief Kunkle’s decision comes more than year after internal investigators began looking into the activities of the three patrol officers who worked overnight shift in Old East Dallas.
Cpls. Nelson and Schoelen had faced discipline after investigators concluded that they engaged in a pattern of unacceptable enforcement activity when writing tickets. One activity included arresting vagrants, prostitutes and other habitual offenders and also writing them citations that were mailed, even though many of these people did not have stable addresses.
The officers were also issuing tickets to people under more than one name at the same time.
Investigators also concluded that Cpl. Nelson used inappropriate force in an incident involving a handcuffed woman.
They also later concluded that Cpls. Nelson and Stecker made homeless people, prostitutes and others sign blank citations so the officers could fill out the tickets later.
The way was cleared for the disciplinary hearing after a judge ruled recently that the three patrol officers couldn’t proceed with a lawsuit to halt the city’s investigation into their activities until after the officers exhausted “their administrative remedies” through the city’s disciplinary process.
The three officers had filed the lawsuit in mid-December, contending that an investigation into their activities was illegal because it was triggered by an anonymous complaint. State law says a complaint against a peace officer must be signed and in writing before it can be “considered.”
But city officials have said that a signed complaint from a police officer triggered their investigation. They also argue that the law does not preclude the department from merely looking into an anonymous complaint.