Police Chief Chronicles I: Pinched in the Buttocks

OPINION — I have been around as a journalist in San Angelo since Chief Tim Vasquez allegedly pinched the buttocks of a confidential informant woman at the Oasis Night Club on Beauregard. I count four elections, including the one this month. I have seen very nasty competitions and some years with no election at all. Chief Frank Carter was effectively appointed to a second term in an uncontested race in the year 2020 because no one would run against him.

The San Angelo police chief election campaigns get nasty because police officers are competing against one another, and they’re all alpha males. I recall sitting for hours with candidate Jeff Davis in 2008, recording every detail of his grievances against then-Chief Tim Vasquez. Everything Vasquez did was “under investigation by the Texas Rangers,” and everything else Vasquez did was a felony. I didn’t write much about Davis’ complaints because he had no evidence or the matter was somewhat adjudicated four years prior.

For example, Town & Country (now Stripes) executive and Vasquez campaign finance chairman Devin Bates wrote a letter on company letterhead and maybe used corporate postage to send to colleagues and employees, urging them to participate in an upcoming fundraiser and donate to the Vasquez campaign in 2008. Corporations are forbidden from contributing to Texas campaigns, even in-kind, by the Texas Ethics Commission. Davis was still complaining it was a third-degree felony in 2016. The matter was settled in 2008 with a slap on Mr. Bates’ wrist.

The complaint was made by infamous San Angelo bar owner Blaine Martin of Blaine’s Pub. He didn’t care too much for Vasquez. After all, he owned a bar, and under Vasquez, SAPD afforded him the requisite DWIs that come with owning a bar. There’s more. Martin thought Vasquez was over-patrolling his by-then-canceled Blaine’s Picnics at the River Stage downtown.

Vasquez took a lie detector test to prove he didn’t pinch that girl’s buttocks. The complaint, he said, was shepherded through SAPD internal affairs by his opponent Davis, who was also said to be the CI’s handler. The incident earned a Texas Rangers investigation, and rumors were that it sparked the ire of U.S. Attorney Jeff Haag in Lubbock, who was angry Vasquez had “outed” the identity of the CI. She was whisked away somewhere, and no one has heard from her since. A grand jury no-billed the charges made by the Texas Rangers. More on Haag later.

When I met Vasquez in 2007 for a piece I wrote titled “Police Chief Under Fire” for the print version of San Angelo LIVE!, I didn’t recognize him as a crook, though I wondered if he did pinch that girl’s buttocks. He was young and full of energy that would lend someone to believe it could be true. I met him at an Easter egg hunt put on by TLC Church near San Angelo Stadium. My conclusion, which Vasquez hated to read, was that if the police chief spent more time at church functions where I met him, not bars, maybe he wouldn’t leave himself open to accusations of pinching the buttocks of females. Vasquez didn’t talk to me for four years after that article ran during the heat of the 2008 election. He won the five-way race handily anyway. In reality, the whole saga was ridiculous, but in San Angelo police chief election contests, even ridiculous episodes turn legend, and at least one contest turned into hard time in federal prison.