Mission PD suspended sergeant two days for inappropriate behavior

The Mission Police Department suspended one of its sergeants for two days without pay this June after an internal investigation sustained complaints from subordinates who said he’d behaved inappropriately.

 

The department did so after Police Chief Cesar Torres criticized the manner in which those complaints were submitted and after the police department initially responded to an open records request for the complaints by saying they didn’t exist.

 

Torres’ investigation found that the sergeant, Jesus Delgado, had done a variety of things that violated department policy.

 

 

The investigation identified six individual allegations in a pair of complaints written by investigators Francisco Becerra and Jonathan Gutierrez.

 

One of those allegations was that Delgado had made a racially charged joke about incarcerated people being sexually assaulted in jail.

 

“The sixth allegation was that on December 20, 2023 you made a statement saying ‘Criminals don’t like going back to jail with Tyrone and get a burrito put up their bahony’ while in briefing,” the findings of the investigation say. “Although it is not clear as to who Tyrone is, (research indicates that Tyrone is a male given name of Irish origin), it appears to the complainants that Tyrone means (a black person). The definition of “bahony” is not found in the dictionary. It appears to the complainants that this word means (the behind of a person).”

 

Another time, during a Criminal Investigations Bureau briefing in February, Delgado was discussing a shooting that happened in Mission.

 

“That’s what the guy gets for boinking (slang for having sexual intercourse with) someone else’s wife,” Becerra recalled Delgado saying. “Subsequently, SGT. Delgado began to laugh. Nobody in the briefing room laughed as it was a serious topic, and he continued on despite the obvious tension.”

 

Complaints describe other misbehavior at Criminal Investigations Bureau meetings.

 

On one occasion last November Becerra and Gutierrez remembered Delgado rubbing his nipples during one of those meetings while discussing a vehicle theft case the department had been working.

 

“Sgt. Delgado stated on said briefing, that our administration gets happy when cases are solved and results are quick,” Gutierrez wrote. “Sgt. Delgado then made an inappropriate gesture. He proceeded to grab his nipples. Sgt. Delgado started rubbing his nipples and rubbing them, while making a face trying to portraying excitement.”

 

Other sustained complaints relate to Delgado cursing in the workplace and yelling at subordinates.

 

Torres notified Delgado about the findings of the investigation in June and told him that in addition to a two-day suspension he’d be required to complete certain training.

 

Torres also noted that corrective action was taken regarding Delgado’s supervisor, whose name is redacted in copies of the investigation released by the city through public information act requests.

 

 

Delgado accepted his suspension without any effort to appeal.

 

“You shall be mindful of your tone of voice, choice of words and attitude when communicating with employees,” Torres wrote to Delgado. “The art of effective leadership includes an open line of communication with every member of this organization and those who you come into contact with. This experience will enhance your ability to effectively lead your subordinates. Further acts of policy violations can lead to more severe discipline.”

 

A personnel file obtained through an open records request shows Delgado has worked for the city of Mission since 2011, when he was hired as a jailer.

 

In 2002, Delgado worked as a police officer in La Feria.

 

In 2006, however, he briefly found himself on the other side of the law after McAllen police arrested him on an assault charge.

 

Court records show that charge was dismissed after a witness stopped cooperating.

 

Torres received Becerra and Gutierrez’s complaints from Javier Lara, the president of the Mission Police Association.

 

He criticized Lara for sending them, noting that neither complaint had been signed and telling Lara he shouldn’t have sent the complaints to anyone outside the police department.

 

“Lastly refrain from sending these types of emails to HR or the City Manager’s Office, as this is not within your authority as a Police Officer,” he wrote in an email. “You have been warned in the past about this!”

 

Torres Tuesday described his resistance to complaints being filed outside of the department as an efficiency measure.

 

“We’re gonna investigate them,” he said. “You know, I don’t want them to feel like they need to send them over there because they’re not being investigated here. Every complaint that comes through here gets looked into.”

 

Patricia Rigney, the city’s attorney, said Wednesday that she’s not aware of a policy that would prevent a police officer from complaining directly to city hall.

 

“The city, that I know of, has an open door policy,” she said. “So I’m not aware of any policy that would prohibit employees from filing a complaint or addressing their concerns with HR or the city manager.”

 

The city strongly resisted releasing the complaints regarding Delgado through a public information request.

 

Lara submitted the complaints on April 1.

 

Once he’d resubmitted them with signatures attached, Torres began his internal investigation, notifying Delgado about it on April 3.

 

The Progress Times submitted a public information request for the complaints on April 5.

 

Three days later Victor Solis, a records bureau supervisor with the Mission Police Department, said the department had no documents responsive to that request.

 

 

The Progress Times asked the city to have a public records custodian formally swear that those records didn’t exist.

 

No one would do that.

 

Instead, later in April the city acknowledged those records existed but said they couldn’t be released because they hadn’t resulted in disciplinary action yet.

 

The city also claimed the investigation into the complaints was criminal in nature and that releasing the complaints could hinder the investigation.

 

On Tuesday Torres said those complaints wouldn’t have existed at the police department when the Progress Times requested them.

 

“Because anything that you request regarding disciplinary, we send all those documents, we don’t keep them here,” he said. “We send all those documents to the A-file, which is in HR.”

 

Rigney, who wasn’t working for the city in April, says that it’s possible that those complaints would have migrated to city hall when the Progress Times submitted its initial public information request — though the city also failed to release any complaints.

 

“It was a mistake,” she said. “Because there was a document that existed.”

 

The city responded to new public information requests about the complaints and the documents related to it with partially redacted copies of responsive records this month.