External inquiry clears some personnel, questions remain for family
Several Mission firefighters recently accused of harassing a coworker with a disability have been cleared by an investigation completed by a Harlingen law firm that is on a retainer with the city.
The six and a half page investigation report, obtained by the Progress Times, cleared 6 of the 9 fire department employees that Joseph Fisher (Joseph) and his mother, Margaret Fisher (Margaret) accused of creating a hostile work environment for Joseph.
The report states there is no evidence that firefighters Kevin Lopez, Eric Lopez, Manny De La Garza; Lt. Inspector Willie de la Garza, Deputy Chief of EMS Joey Flores and Lt. Captain Central Station Justin Longoria harassed or committed ADA-related discrimination (Americans With Disabilities Act) against Joseph.
Photos courtesy of city of Mission
Completed by Camela Sandmann, senior associate attorney at Denton Navarro Rodriguez Bernal Santee & Zech law firm, the report is dated April 8. The firm’s website states Sandmann practices labor and employment law, and the firm bills itself as, “creative representation for governmental entities.” In August of 2024, the city of Mission signed an engagement letter with the Harlingen firm for special legal services.
Three personnel listed in the Fishers’ complaints filed with the Mission Police Department are Fire Chief Mike Silva, Captain Assistant Fire Marshal Michael Reyes and Firefighter George Balderas: their names do not appear anywhere in Sandmann’s report.
Silva was cleared of wrongdoing in an internal investigation conducted in February by the city’s human resources department and Co-Interim City Manager Andy Garcia. Silva was not included in the Sandmann inquiry because he is not a civil service employee, Mayor Norie Gonzalez Garza told the Progress Times.
When told Reyes and Balderas were not listed in Sandmann’s review, the mayor said, “Then that would be incomplete.”
“There are two people not in report, but staff hadn’t noticed that,” Garza said, after checking with Co-Interim City Manager Andy Garcia. “We’re working on an addendum to be provided to the city.”
The mayor hopes to receive the addendum within the next week and possibly place it on a future council agenda for discussion.
The document shows Sandmann reviewed Joseph’s complaint and supplemental materials and is not clear if she considered the police reports filed by the Fishers. The report also states the accused employees provided written statements and denied Joseph’s claims.
It does not appear that the accused personnel or Joseph were interviewed in person by Sandmann, according to the report.
Joseph is an adult employee who is able to perform his clerk duties but relies on his mother for support in framing and discussing workplace concerns, Sandmann wrote.
In the report, Sandmann wrote several times that Joseph’s complaints lacked a detailed account of events, such as the precise date and time of the alleged offense, information that was listed in the police reports previously written about by the Progress Times. The report, light on details, also states there are no witnesses to Joseph’s complaints and doesn’t explain if other personnel in the department were interviewed, or if potential witnesses were asked to come forward without fear of retribution.
“Across all allegations, the complainant provides detailed accounts of events that he believes occurred, while the accused individuals provide direct denials,” Sandmann wrote. “The critical evidentiary weakness is the absence of corroboration.”
The Progress Times requested the investigation report from the city of Mission on April 15 under the Texas Public Information Act. The city responded by writing a letter to the Texas Attorney General and asked that it be allowed to withhold the entire report due to “common-law privacy.” The letter. signed by city attorney Alyssa Aleman, states common-law privacy protects information that contains highly intimate or embarrassing facts and is not of legitimate public concern.
Joseph, who is challenged, was a fire department volunteer for about 10 years, a dispatcher for 10 years, and now a receptionist for five years, a total of 26.5 years under four fire chiefs without incident. Silva was named fire chief in 2025.
Since then, the Fishers have filed police reports complaining of workplace bullying and harassment with claims of hurtful comments about his size and weight and an allegation that one person attempted to remove a continuous glucose monitor from his arm. Joseph said he is often excluded from department activities, he’s been assigned a separate lunch hour, and he eats alone.
“What they’re doing now is psychological,” Margaret said. “They changed all his job duties where he doesn’t go out anymore, he doesn’t deliver packages anymore, and they changed his tasks, they’re keeping him in the office.”
“When I say psychological harassment, for example, it’s because during administrative assistant week, the chief took them out to Olive Garden and had a cake, and Joseph was excluded completely, even though he’s supposed to be part of that group,” Margaret said. “So, he just sat in the office. He’s going to be fired, they’re doing these little steps, slowly but surely, they’re going to get rid of him.”
Joseph filed a claim with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and is waiting for an appointment to make his case. The EEOC is a federal agency that enforces laws against discrimination of an employee or job applicant due to race, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability and genetic information. The agency can conduct its own investigation and try to settle the outcome or can file a lawsuit against an employer.
It would be illegal for the city to terminate or retaliate against Joseph simply because he filed an EEOC complaint, according to the EEOC website.
The omission of Reyes and Balderas from the report shows the investigation was not done properly, and a paper trail is being created as the city prepares to terminate her son, Margaret said.
“Joseph has never had a job evaluation as a receptionist in the last five and a half years,” Margaret said. “But now, he just got one last week, and it’s from last year.”
On April 30, Joseph received a written job evaluation as a receptionist, from January 1, 2025, to December 31, 2025. The fire department’s administrative coordinator, Juanita Alvarez, found Joseph needs improvement in 7 of 26 categories, the evaluation, obtained by the Progress Times, showed.
The city suddenly put several other concerns in writing in the last two weeks, documents show.
On April 20, Alvarez met with Joseph to review his job duties and procedures, and she provided him a written memo to that effect, which states he is to notify Alvarez of every phone message he takes for staff.
On April 24, Garcia sent Joseph a memo, listing the process for communicating workplace concerns: coworkers are to be reported to his immediate supervisor, Alvarez, and the department head should be reported to the human resources department. Garcia’s memo does not identify Alvarez or chief Silva as the department head.
And on May 1, Joseph received an email from Alvarez informing him that he could not have personal items delivered to the office.
“Moving forward, these items are to be addressed and delivered to your home,” Alvarez wrote.
Joseph told the Progress Times that fire department personnel had received new desk chairs, and he did not get one. When his chair broke, he purchased a new chair with personal funds through Amazon, and had it delivered directly to the fire department, he said. Then came Alvarez’s written warning, he said.
Before the Sandmann investigation was complete, Margaret said she reached out to the mayor for help.
“She invited me to meet with her at her home on Sunday, March 29th,” Margaret said. “I told her everything, we talked very honestly and openly, and I thought according to what she was saying, that things were going to be very different.”
“We talked about the third party investigation, and I told her I did not want the Harlingen law office because they’re on retainer with the city and that’s not being unbiased or objective,” Margaret added.
Margaret claims the mayor told her she would speak to Mission police chief Cesar Torres to ask for his recommendation for a third party that doesn’t know the city of Mission.
“She told me that first thing the next morning, on Monday, she would speak to Chief Torres, and I felt confident that she was going to get that done,” Margaret said. “But she lied to me.”
Garza confirmed she invited Margaret to her home.
“My conversation with any concerned citizen will be sincere and in my opinion, our conversation was sincere,” Garza said. “I wanted to get her perspective on the situation. We all want what is best for our family members.”
The mayor also defended the city’s use of the Harlingen law firm, which is tapped for special legal issues.
“They’re not necessarily connected to the city,” Garza said. “They’ve done one other investigation for us, that one was in the police department. We have to hire the third party investigator, and that’s the relationship that we have with this firm.”
Garza said her authority as mayor doesn’t weigh into personnel investigations.
“As mayor, I don’t have influence or input in these investigations,” Garza said. “This is all handled by staff following procedures in place, the mayor and council, we don’t get involved in the investigation, we don’t have input.
“We could have done an internal investigation,” Garza said. “We wanted to be sure it was fair, it was unbiased, so we decided to do the third party firm.”
“I don’t know if it was a front, our conversation, she seemed so sincere and then she just dropped everything,” Margaret said, adding that they even discussed some of the mayor’s grandchildren. “We were mother to mother, she’s a grandmother, and I told her, ‘It’s going to be hard at school, it’s going to be hard when they get a job,’ and she said she understood.”
Margaret has ruled out a lawsuit of her own, and stressed she’s not interested in being compensated.
“I’ve never done anything like that in my life, but this needs to be corrected,” Margaret said. “The city council knows about this too, and no one has done anything. They’ve sacrificed Joseph, he will be fired. They don’t want him there.”
