Senior Officers Bust Burglars Parked Across from Crime Scene

Willie Montez and Alfred Rios grew up together in the ‘70s in south San Angelo. From elementary through junior and high school the two got to know each other better, both graduating a year apart from Central High School in 1980 and ’81, before taking different career paths that would ultimately meet 10 years later.

“When I started in ’83, there was an oil boom going on at the time,” Montez reflects. “That was the last oil boom. As a rookie…I was still in the…field, training, and I still remember working nights…and on weekends. Especially the north side of town seemed like it was the worst because there was so many bars.

“Weekends, it was one bar fight after another and the oilfield crowd was just wild and crazy. I have to admit it was overwhelming for a rookie like me. I’d go home at the end of that shift and be like, ‘Surely it’s not going to be like this every day,’” he continues. “Thank God it wasn’t like that every day.”

Climbing into his Shamu and outfitted with pens, paper and whiteout, Montez recalls a different time in San Angelo police history, with a nostalgic shimmer and placidity in his voice that is often absent from the hard-hitting, lets-go-get-‘em enthusiasm expressed by less senior officers.

“We’ve dealt with criminals that we grew up with, their kids, their grandkids, too, unfortunately…” he said. “It’s a sense of pride protecting the same neighborhood we grew up in. There’s a lot of good people in every neighborhood in town. We know a lot of elderly people that have been there 50-60 years, but it’s a sense of pride—“

“…to help them,” Rios finishes. “They know us by name, they saw us grow up, they see us doing this job and normally they’re the first ones that call us. They know our parents and our grandparents and they’re proud that we’re doing this job and that we’re still in the area looking out for them.”

Unlike Montez, who applied to the police academy fresh out of high school, Alfred Rios started a career in construction after graduation, making good money framing houses and starting a business he runs to this day. Twenty-two and a half years later, Rios says his career as a patrolman is also his calling, but circumstances in his life prolonged his readiness to submit an application.

“I actually had a brother that was murdered,” Rios said. “It affected me and my family—till this day it still affects us. We still think about him. It’s part of my life that’s never going to leave. It’s not healed, but I have to deal with it. There’s a void in my heart from my brother not being there. I want to be a part of other families that might have to endure the same thing, that I can be there and hopefully prevent those things. That was one of the reasons I joined the police department.”

The murder of his brother took place in 1983 and was a double homicide in which his cousin was also killed, Rios said. His other brother, injured in the incident, was left for dead.

“…instead of being a complainer I thought I would be a doer,” he said. “I joined the police department hoping I could help other people not have to go through the same tragedy I had to go through.”

The murder was solved, Rios said, and the tragedy has become a motivator for him while on the job. “That’s my driving force. Every time that I see somebody else that loses family I can understand what they’re feeling.”

Since Rios started at the police department in ’92, he and Montez have worked closely with one another, sharing intel, camaraderie and contacts that have flourished over the years into a tight-knit partnership. Neither said they believed as kids they’d one day be working the streets together in their old neighborhood, and surprisingly, they can’t remember having played ‘cops and robbers’ growing up.

Nonetheless, through years of close calls, technological changes and countless hours spent patrolling city streets, the two have formed a bond that aids them in fulfilling their duties both on a work and personal level.

“That kind of helps us, too, that we know each other,” Rios said. “We have the same background, the same upbringing and being that we’re working our neighborhood, it’s our neighborhood. It’s still our neighborhood.”

“It’s almost like old family, you know,” Montez agrees.

Clever Thieves

For the past five years, Rios and Montez have been assigned Sector 2, which covers everything east of San Angelo and south of Houston Harte.  While on patrol recently, Montez cruised by B&K Storage in the 200 block of Bell St. and noticed something out of the ordinary.

“Early that morning, I…discovered the flat screen TV sitting outside by the back gate, Montez said. “That was an indicator that they had been hit again that night. After some investigation, sure enough, they had like six units hit.”

For approximately the previous month, spanning from mid-August through mid-September, a rash of storage unit burglaries had hit facilities all over town. B&K had been burglarized thrice in a one-week span, and other victims included a San Angelo police officer’s personal vehicle and a Goodfellow law enforcement officer who had a unit at a different facility.

“He (the officer at Goodfellow) had been burglarized the night before. On his way to work, he drove by there to check on his unit again and caught the guy in the unit next to his,” Montez explained. “What brought a red flag to him was that the locking mechanism was all messed up and this guy had the door partly closed and was inside rummaging.”

After pausing to speak with the man in the storage unit, the officer called the SAPD with a description, vehicle make and model and a license plate number. To compound the evidence, suspect Miguel Infante had been caught on surveillance videos from other storage units, and when the B&K owners began to review their own, his face and vehicle again surfaced.

As Montez and Rios both began investigating the six burgled units at B&K that had been hit the night before, as well as others renters had discovered had been hit throughout the week, one of the owners returned with surprising news.

“The owner of B&K…spotted the truck and said, ‘Hey, that pickup you just gave me, it’s right there!’” Montez said. “As it turned out, the guy’s pickup is sitting right across the street. Once [detectives] get to looking at the [surveillance] footage, of course it shows two guys doing all the burglaries. They go out the front gate and there’s a camera pointing at the front gate and it’s just in line with the house across the street where one of the suspects lives. It just shows them parking right in their front driveway and that’s where we found them.”

Crossing over to the house located in the 1500 block of Bryan St., police identified and apprehended 23-year-old Daniel Lara and 18-year-old Miguel Infante, both of which had been present on various surveillance videos around town. In the driveway sat the red Ford Ranger the pair had used to transport the stolen goods, and environmental evidence suggested the burglars had been recently active.

“You could tell that things were out of place because it had rained, it was muddy, and the stuff that was sitting outside the house was clean,” Rios said. “Then we had other officers that assisted us that located some of the property in the trash cans. They had appeared out of place because all the surrounding trash cans from all the other houses in the area were empty except these trash cans.”

An estimated trailer load’s worth of stolen property was found in- and outside the house, the majority of which amounted to tools and electronics. A bulletproof vest and handcuffs were also found, and some of the items had already been set up inside the house and were being used.

“It’s a feeling of accomplishment,” Montez said. “It’s not every day that you get to catch somebody either in the act or shortly after the act like that.”

For their police work in investigating the storage facility burglaries, Willie Montez and Alfred Rios have been nominated as dual officers of the month by the SAPD command staff. Although the cases have now been handed off to detectives, at least 12 burglaries were reported after Montez noticed the television set outside B&K, and the burglars have been linked to several more around town.

Helping Without a Gun

Having both served over 20 years, officers Montez and Rios say they are both starting to think about retirement. Neither has set a definitive date to take off their badges yet, however the two do have similar plans for life off the job.

“I’m hoping that I’ve served long enough that I can live on my retirement and support my family,” Montez said. “I’ve really felt myself called to more ministry. I’m really feeling called to maybe start up a men’s ministry in our church.”

Hunting, fishing, travel and welding are also on his retirement agenda, Montez said, and he credits God with bringing him home safe all these years .

“In all honesty the reason I think I’ve been able to do this as long as I have and I’ve been blessed doing it…was that I always put God first, family second and third is my job,” he said. “I really think that’s real important that we get our priorities in that order.”

Agreeing with his friend of over 20 years, Rios said the one thing he’d like to impart on younger officers is that God comes first and without his grace he wouldn’t have been able to the job for so long. Rios, too, looks forward to picking up hobbies in retirement, but also feels himself drawn to more ministry.

“I frame houses on the side,” he said. “I’ve been doing that since I’ve been here…and I want to devote more time to my business and also Knights of Columbus. That’s my ministry…doing charity and unity and being with my fellow brothers and helping where I can. That’s rewarding to me, to be able to do that without having to wear a gun and help people that need helping.”