Rights Concerns Told : Reining in the Texas Rangers

The Texas Ranger, crippled and able only to inch along the living room using a cane, eased himself stiffly into one of the comfortable rocking chairs of the ranch house.

He was in pain with the infirmities of age, yet he had taken great care with his clothing--his Texas Ranger tie clasp, a replica of the circled star badge he once wore, the Ranger belt buckle given to him at retirement, and the boots that must have been an agony to pull on. No man would see him, even now, looking anything but his best.

His name is Dudley White, and though he retired 15 years ago, he still considers himself a member of the force. His father, a Ranger before him, was killed in the line of duty. And his two uncles were Rangers before they joined what was then a new organization--the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Protected Settlers

Today’s Rangers are descended from men called upon in the early days of Texas to “range” over the land, fighting Indians and Mexicans and protecting settlers when there was no other law. The Rangers are White’s love and, coming from him, their oft-repeated slogan--”If you’re right, then don’t let hell stand in your way”--does not seem at all contrived.

But not everyone in Texas sees it White’s way nowadays. Only last week, the Rangers suffered a dressing-down from the Texas attorney general’s office which, as part of an overall investigation, accused them of “some incredibly sloppy police work” in the case of confessed serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. The attorney general’s office contends that the Rangers closed the books on a number of murder cases that Lucas did not commit.

The Rangers have suffered other criticism in recent years. Members of the state Legislature periodically introduce bills calling for their disbandment. Three prominent Mexican-Americans wrote a book in 1979 arguing that the Rangers should be abolished because of repeated civil rights transgressions against minorities.

Head-Knocking Methods

While the Rangers have a long record as effective crime-solvers, in the past they often have resorted to head-knocking as a way of obtaining evidence. White himself says things got all “bum-fuzzled up” with the coming of civil rights and the fading away of the old days, when you did what you had to do and worried about the nuances later.

Those were the times, those Ranger days. When he was working out in West Texas, White says, he covered so much territory that it sometimes took him the whole day to get from one place to the next. And if a crook crossed the state line, why you just kept on following him. The letter of the law was for others to watch over. The men he worked with took direct action and did right as they saw it.

“We was out to protect lives and property,” he said.

But White’s world is a fading memory now.

Today, there are just 94 Texas Rangers, an elite band which still roams the state but which indeed has to worry about civil rights. The days of restoring order with a cold stare and firepower are gone, replaced by the everyday drudgeries of police work--mounds of paper work and hours in crime labs, days of leg work that often lead to dead ends, modern offices shared with the highway patrol, state-issue cars rather than horses and, as in the Lucas case, public censure when an investigation isn’t up to snuff.

Much of the Rangers’ mission nowadays is helping small-town sheriffs who need assistance in solving more difficult crimes. They have become cops like other cops. But despite the sporadic calls for their disbandment, they endure, an integral part of Texas history.

Shadows Cast on Image

And while shadows have been cast on the Ranger image, it remains the stuff of legend. The Rangers have an aura, enhanced by everything from comic books to dozens of Grade B movies to the saga of their fallen-away comrade--the Lone Ranger--all of which emphasize their virtue and play down their rough ways.

“I just wanted to be a member of the finest law enforcement agency in the world,” said Wesley Styles, a Ranger stationed in Huntsville, explaining why he joined the force 16 years ago. “I thought the Rangers were at the top of the ladder.”

Just as they still wear circled star badges pounded from antique Mexican coins, the Rangers still have an image that begs for the likes of John Wayne to play the part. A professional baseball team, automobiles, ships and bicycles have been named after them. A statue of a Texas Ranger is the first thing you see when entering Love Field, one of Dallas’ two airports.

Ranger stories, particularly of the old days, fill bookshelves at the Texas Ranger Museum in Waco. But perhaps the most often-told story is the one about a riot that swept a small Texas town in the mid-1920s. The townspeople sent an urgent message to the governor, asking for a company of Rangers. But when the train pulled into town, a single Ranger stepped on the platform.

Sent One Ranger

“You mean they only sent one Ranger?” asked an irate citizen.

“Well, you ain’t got but one riot, do you?” replied the Ranger.

The story was apocryphal, but it did spawn the legend of “one riot, one Ranger.” And, over time, that legend grew and fed on itself.

“The Ranger image was that of a tall, quiet-spoken Westerner who preferred his horse to female society, who wore a well-oiled pistol and knew how to use it and who, when called upon, would destroy the forces of evil by killing them,” wrote historian T. R. Fehrenbach in his book “Lone Star.” “The Texas Ranger and his six-shooter would enter American consciousness, to be eulogized under different names and in a hundred different places, in song, story and on the screen. A new prototype was born.”

The Ranger also was typically loath to elaborate on how he got the job done, often because of his uneasiness with the written language.

One early report went like this:

Crime--Cattle theft

Defendant--Ollie Peterson

Disposition--Damn bad, had to kill him

Criticized on Lucas Case

It is that quickness of action that has led to the latest criticism of the Rangers, who headed a task force looking into the confessions of Lucas, the man who confessed to more than 200 murders. The Dallas Times Herald, which conducted an exhaustive investigation into the Lucas case, said the task force had ignored or failed to pursue leads that would have proven Lucas was lying in many of his confessions, thereby closing cases that should have remained open. That, in turn, led to the attorney general’s investigation.

But Jim Adams, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, defends his Rangers, saying their job was only to be coordinators of other law enforcement agencies that were looking into the murders, not actually to investigate them. However, both the attorney general’s office and the Times Herald say the Rangers were much more involved than that.

“I think the Rangers have gotten a bad rap in that some people tried to make it look like they believed everything Lucas said,” Adams said.

The Rangers call the Lucas case an aberration. They prefer to point to such successes as the dramatic rescue of a kidnaped 13-year-old girl last year, the solving of difficult murders, and their quiet assistance in small-town police work. They say they don’t seek the limelight and deny that they think of themselves any longer as the only law in town. They admit that their past is filled with brutality and quick triggers, but say they have changed with the times.

Effectiveness Told

“There has never been a period in Texas history when the Rangers were any more effective than they are today,” Adams said.

That statement covers a lot of ground.

Founded in 1823 by Stephen F. Austin, the Rangers fought valiantly in the Texas war of independence and were among the first to use the Colt revolver, the gun that gave their small forces superior firepower over their Indian and Mexican enemies. They developed a reputation for unmatched courage--and for being borderline outlaws themselves before putting on the badge. And they had a motto, first spoken by a legendary member of the force, Capt. L. H. McNelly: “No man in the wrong can stand up against a man in the right who keeps on a-comin’.”

But over the years, the Rangers have had their problems as well. They have been universally distrusted by the Mexicans of Texas, stemming from the days when the two were bitter enemies. Even into the 20th Century, Rangers were known as men who were quick to kill Mexicans and figure out the reason later.

They fell into disfavor with another group of Texans during the Prohibition era, when they broke up stills that local officials would have preferred not to deal with. In the 1930s, corruption was rampant among the Rangers, their ranks were swollen, and even convicted criminals were given the coveted badge. In 1970, a Texas civil rights advisory board called for the Rangers’ disbandment because of fear and hatred expressed by the Mexican people. Frances (Sissy) Ferenthold made abolishing the Rangers one of her platform planks during her losing campaign for governor in 1972.

Critics Quieter

Of late, and with the exception of the Lucas case, the critics have been quieter. But every so often the question of disbanding the Rangers comes up again.

That doesn’t bother Joaquin Jackson. They can call for disbandment all they want, but he doesn’t think it will happen. Not in his lifetime.

He was sitting with his boss, Capt. Dan North, in the Rangers’ Houston office. Jackson is out of Uvalde, which isn’t close to anything, and he has been a Ranger for 20 years. He looks the part: 6 feet, 5 inches, 230 pounds, leathery face, still with all his hair and the reputation of being a Ranger’s Ranger.

Jackson ranges across vast areas of mesquite-choked plains, where the local law enforcement agencies aren’t always crack outfits. Sometimes he rides horseback in a cattle rustling case, but more often he does that kind of work from a Department of Public Safety helicopter. A lot has changed in the last 20 years, he said.

North jokingly agreed. “Now it’s one Ranger and 50 highway patrolmen for a riot,” he said.

Place in Modern Society

Jackson was saying there was a place for a Ranger, even in modern society. It may not be the same role as in the old days, he said, but that was just as well. You can’t go around knocking skulls together to get a confession.

“We don’t use brutality, we use our heads,” he said. “The most ignorant man in the world can go out and use brutality and get a confession. The old Rangers, it was different for them. They went straight to the point of trouble. They didn’t rely on physical evidence and hard criminal investigation. They’d use their hunches, face up to the suspect and he’d end up confessing, one way or another.”

Jackson got up to go. He had to see a taxidermist about a stolen deer trophy, the antlers of one of the biggest bucks ever shot, back in 1932. He knew that the taxidermist was involved or knew who the thief was, because he had the evidence in his briefcase to prove it.

And for the confrontation ahead, he was ready with a tactic right out of the Rangers’ old days: “I’ll just tell him he can either be a witness for the prosecution or a defendant. That’ll be his choice.”

But he wasn’t going alone. He was taking a game warden with him. One riot, one Ranger was no more.