Corruption Case Swallows the Police Force of a Texas Town

It happened without warning. The FBI swooped in, shut down Troup’s five-man police force and jailed the chief and a sergeant -- the 2005 Chamber of Commerce officer of the year, no less -- on charges of corruption.

Startled residents watched in silence as authorities secured the tiny station with yellow crime-scene tape and swarmed the building for evidence.

Sgt. Mark Turner, 47, was charged with delivering marijuana and tampering with or fabricating evidence. According to a search warrant, Turner gave marijuana to an undercover agent, assuring him later that there was more where that came from: the police evidence box.

Police Chief Chester Kennedy, who led the force for 14 years, also was charged with evidence tampering. He admitted to investigators that he gave Turner 24 cans of light beer from a 30-pack seized in a bootlegging case, but said he planned to buy more if the case went to court. “Beer is beer,” he said, according to a Sheriff’s Department affidavit.

Events unfolded so quickly here that, weeks after the March 3 raid, stunned residents are still talking about it when they meet on the street. Some, however, are less surprised; rumors of police misconduct had circulated for years.

“Mind you, they’re innocent until proven guilty, but I think there was too much temptation,” said Addie Herring, 85, who has lived in Troup for half a century. “This used to be such a good place to live, but now we’ve got all this dope.”

Here in rural East Texas, methamphetamine labs can operate unnoticed. Misdemeanor drug charges in Smith County, about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, are as common as drunk driving arrests, Dist. Atty. Matt Bingham said. But in the last six years, the Troup police force sent just 11 drug cases to the district attorney’s office.

Maj. Mike Lusk, head of criminal investigations for the Smith County Sheriff’s Department, said Troup police had sent a total of two drug evidence samples to the Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab since 2000. “We do that much in an hour,” he said.

Bingham said: “It appears from the current investigation that the problem is not with the Troup Police Department prosecuting innocent people, it is that they were not prosecuting guilty people.”

Lawyers for Kennedy and Turner could not be reached for comment.

Since the police force was shut down, a notice has been taped to the front door of the darkened station: Dial 911 or call the sheriff in an emergency.

Turner, unable to make $500,000 bond, remains in jail. At an emergency City Council meeting held days after his arrest, he was fired.

Kennedy, 59, posted $400,000 bond and often can be seen at his regular table at the Farmer’s Cafe in Troup. The waitresses welcome him with smiles, but fellow diners shoot sidelong glances as he keeps his eyes on his meal. At a special City Council session March 10, Kennedy too was fired.

At that meeting, resident Vicki Risvold stood and said what had festered inside for too long. For years, she said, drugs were sold openly from the house across the street. Risvold said packets of white powder were traded so casually that her young daughter recognized a sale in progress. Twice Risvold reported the drug dealing to police, who promised to look into it but never did, she said.

“We moved from Austin for a small-town life, but my children weren’t exposed to the drug culture until we came here,” said Risvold, 43. The city officials sat in a semi-circle in front of her. Risvold looked hard at one who, when she had told him about the drug dealing, had merely asked if she was sure.

“I hope you can sleep at night,” Risvold said, her voice quaking with anger.

Mayor John Whitsell, 30, has brushed off suggestions that Troup had turned a blind eye. If there was talk of wrongdoing, it was rumor, and “in any small town, you’re going to have rumors,” he said.

Whitsell said he had no idea there might be a problem with the police until he got a call from authorities about the arrests. “I was shocked,” he said.

It took one of the department’s own to call attention to the alleged corruption. In January, patrolman Justin Johnson told a Smith County sheriff’s investigator that Kennedy and Turner were accepting money or drugs in exchange for covering up crimes. Before long, Johnson was wearing a recorder and talking to Turner about taking drugs from an evidence box for personal use.

Authorities searching the station after it closed found a department in disarray, Lusk said. Drugs were lying in open bags or had not been tagged; some evidence bags were empty; rape kits were stored in a refrigerator next to rancid, moldy food. As the investigation continues, more charges and arrests will come, Bingham said.

Since the FBI raid, Bingham said, the district attorney’s office has fielded dozens of calls from citizens complaining of crimes they said were poorly, or never, investigated by Troup police. “People feel like they can come out and tell us things now,” Bingham said.

Troup bills itself as the “good neighbor town.” It has 1,949 residents, one medical doctor and 12 churches. Its main street is a study in shuttered stores, but the businesses that seem to sustain small Texas towns hang on: a beauty parlor, a video store, a tanning salon. Outside of town are oil pumps operated by heavy-booted riggers, who stomp into eateries and leave behind trails of red dirt.

Robin Bradford works on the production line at a plastics factory, cleaning just-made buckets as they roll down a conveyor belt. In December, she said, someone stole her furniture and a lifetime of possessions from a rented storage room. The thief took an urn that held her father’s ashes but left a large painting of Jesus.

“It seemed that all Mark and Chester did was take fingerprints. The more I thought about it, the more upset I got,” Bradford said, stabbing a piece of fried catfish with her fork.

But some in the diner where Bradford was eating defended the officers as caring professionals who often performed acts of kindness.

Kennedy had the city turn on Rodney Colbert’s water when he was new to town and waiting for his first paycheck, Colbert said.

Anita Watson said Kennedy sometimes picked up children at school in his patrol car when parents couldn’t get off work.

“The children trust him,” Watson said. “That says a lot about what kind of person he is. I’m worried about how the children will feel.”

Bradford looked up from her plate. “I’m worried about the children too, what kind of example he’s setting for them,” she said.

If Kennedy is found guilty, waitress Lisa Duley said, she won’t hold a grudge. “Even if he did it, he’s still Chester. Everybody makes mistakes. You deal with them and move on,” she said.

Town leaders are focusing on cleaning up the mess and restoring Troup’s reputation. The three remaining police officers have been transferred to the public works department. County constables and sheriff’s deputies are temporarily filling the void, patrolling the town with vigilance.

“This is the most Sheriff Department cars I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been living in the same spot for 45 years,” one woman said.

Though relieved that change is coming, Risvold hates that Troup’s problems have been so publicly exposed. She’s protective of the place where she raised four children, where her friends and memories reside.

“You want people to see the good in it, not the bad,” she said. This is my home.... But I think it’ll take a long time to trust the police again.”