Mertzon Mayor Mysteriously Fires New Police Chief

Mertzon’s new police chief was fired this week, after less than three months on the job and before the department even became official.

Mayor of Mertzon Carol Shaw confirmed the termination on Thursday, but was mum on the reasoning behind the decision.

“I wish I could, but I’m really not at liberty to talk about it,” Shaw said over the telephone. “We provided him with a no-fault separation in his introductory period, so there’s nothing that should reflect on his personnel record on anything about it. We can’t give you any more information.”

Ethan Farmer, the 27-year-old officer who had been hired for the position, said he felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath him when he learned of the news on March 2.

“My biggest concern is that I was given a letter of termination without any reason whatsoever that related to any kind of work performance,” Farmer said. “They have been trying to set up a police department for over five months and I had accomplished everything that I had control over in two weeks…”

Paperwork, policies and a budget were some of the items that needed to be completed and submitted to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE) before Mertzon would receive an agency number, and at the time of Farmer’s termination, the final piece to the puzzle was a dispatch agreement between the Irion County Sheriff’s Office and the city that had yet to be solidified.

Although he was hired on as the Mertzon Police Chief, Farmer has been acting solely as a city employee since he moved to town, preparing items necessary to found a police department and only permitted to enforce city codes.

“Overall, I just kind of feel like the rug’s just been ripped out from underneath me,” he said. “With all the money they’ve invested already into building a department, it just seems like a little crazy to just stop it right now when we’re a couple of weeks away from having it up and running.”

Asked what the city’s plans are for the future and whether they are currently seeking to fill the position, Mayor Shaw said, “We plan to regroup. I haven’t talked to the [city] council yet, so we’ll be working on a plan.”

On whether or not they even want to continue with plans to found a department, Shaw was ambiguous but said it would be discussed soon. 

“We haven’t made that decision yet,” she said. “I’ll need to talk to the council and find out what they want to do.”

Shaw said she had made the decision to terminate Farmer rather than the council, but noted that it would soon become a council matter, to be discussed at the March 16 meeting.

She remained silent on what influenced her decision, but intimated that something had happened to cause her to change her mind. Nonetheless, she stated there was nothing she was willing to say publicly about the grounds for his termination.

LIVE!: “It sounds like there was some dramatic event that nobody can talk about.”

SHAW: “Yeah, yeah, I’m afraid so. The council will meet in about two weeks.”

For his part, Farmer said Shaw recently confronted him before the city council, after he had returned from a weekend training with the National Guard.

“Another thing that concerns me is that I just got back from National Guard a couple of weeks ago and she confronted me in the city council meeting about why I had gone, which I had told her ahead of time…” Farmer said. “That came mainly from the public seeing the patrol car out where I was living out there. She brought it up and was just kind of berating me…”

Farmer says he has contacted the Enlisted Servicemen’s Reserve and Guard concerning what he feels like is retaliation against him for leaving town to go train with the National Guard.

He is also planning on appealing his termination from the city at the next council meeting. If he is unsuccessful, Farmer said he will likely have to move to another town and find another college if he wishes to stay in law enforcement.

Although he previously worked for the San Angelo Police Department, Farmer provided no comment on why he will not return to that department, stating only that he resigned.

“I am in the middle of a semester, so hopefully I can figure out what’s going on there,” he said of the future. “I’d like to finish this semester before I have to potentially find a job somewhere else. It takes 6-9 months to a year to get hired on with another police department and then I’d have to be sure that I can move and get accepted in another college. There’s a lot of different moving components that in all honesty is a shock and awe type of effect.”

Farmer was not the first Chief of Police hired and fired in Mertzon: within the past several months, another applicant was selected for the job and canned shortly afterwards.

In a first interview conducted in February, Shaw explained that it didn't work out with the woman initially hired for the job, who was fresh out of the academy. Farmer was the second of two applicants for the position.