“I’ll tell you one thing is going to happen from all of this. Someone is going to get killed,” Edwards County Sheriff Don G. Letsinger said about the current climate of prosecuting law enforcement officers, including one of his own.
Letsinger has noted five highly publicized cases brought by the United States Attorney’s Office, Western District of Texas. That “someone” that may be killed is not likely to be a civilian, according to Letsinger. “The checklist is getting too long before you [as a law enforcement officer] decide ‘is it going to be me or you,’” he said.
Letsinger is Deputy Sheriff Gilmer Hernandez’s boss. And today Hernandez sits in the GEO Group jail in Del Rio, Texas, awaiting sentencing that could incarcerate him for ten years in a federal penitentiary. Hernandez’s crime was that he used a firearm, he contends, in self-defense. The feds say he violated the civil rights of an illegal alien in doing so.
On April 14, 2005, at almost midnight, Deputy Gilmer Hernandez was nearing the end of his shift that had started at 4 p.m. His wife, Ashley, called and asked if he would give her a ride to get a Coke out of a nearby soda machine. With his house not far off the path of his last patrol, Hernandez picked his wife up, expecting to drive from the Coke machine back to the sheriff’s office to end his shift. From there, he and his wife would drive home together in their own car.
Fate would interrupt the plan when a blue Chevrolet Suburban ran a stop sign in front of Hernandez. Hernandez flipped on his lights and pursued the Suburban for .8 mile until the driver finally pulled over on U.S. 377, just north of Rocksprings, away from any streetlights. Hernandez dismounted from his patrol car and approached the Suburban on the driver’s side according to procedure. Hernandez walked to just behind the driver’s door and ordered the driver to roll down the window. Inside, he could see seven or eight people hunched over, as if hiding.
Rocksprings, in Edwards County, Texas, is 80 miles from the Texas border with Mexico. And while drug trafficking and people smuggling is not as concentrated as it is in Val Verde and Maverick County that are directly adjacent to the Rio Grande, the sparse population of Edwards County makes it an attractive conduit for traffickers making their way to the Interstate 35 corridor, and onward to Austin and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
And while human smuggling and drug trafficking are nothing new to Edwards County, “One thing changed it all for us and that was 9/11,” Letsinger said. Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mainland, federal agencies have informed border law enforcement agencies with plenty of information about the kinds of human smuggling that may be happening in their backyards……
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Sheriff Don Letsinger’s Letter to Judge Robert T Dawson on convicted Edwards County Deputy Gilmer Hernandez
“Your Honor,
I have served the enforcement of the law and the protection of the public for 25 years, 15 of them as an elected Sheriff. I have been cross-designated with the DEA. I was the Task Force Officer and case agent in the prosecution of a Conspiracy to Traffic Narcotics in violation of Federal Statutes. I fully understand the need to protect the rights of all individuals, especially the rights of the accused. I understand the need to defend the rule of law and the Constitution. I understand the need for 18 USC § 242, Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law. I also understand the Doctrine of Self-defense from the use and threatened use of deadly force.
I have always believed that those of us that protect and defend the law are obligated to truth. The truth to disclose to a Jury or Grand Jury all the facts, all the evidence, the truth and the whole truth. We must do this even if the guilty are not indicted or found not guilty. Justice is only truly served with the truth.
I cannot begin to explain to anyone my dismay when I was informed of the guilty verdict handed down against Deputy Sheriff Guillermo F. Hernandez. I assure you that I became truly ill. I could have not been any more upset if the verdict had been passed on my own son.
My first thoughts were that the system that I have served for 25 years had failed. For about three days I was ashamed to be part of the law enforcement community that serves and protects the Constitution. Finally I remembered what I already knew. The Grand Jury did not fail, they indicted on the information they were given. The Jury did not fail, they convicted on the evidence presented. The Court did not fail the system. The Court does not control the investigation or the prosecution’s presentation of the fact.
Your Honor, I respectfully request that you sentence Guillermo Falcon Hernandez to time served and release him from custody.
Sincerely,
Don G. Letsinger,
Sheriff, Edwards County……
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Article brought over from Immigration Watchdog for you to read.
