Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst calls Allen police to get relative out of jail

Good thing the sergeant didn't give in to this idiot politician.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/comm...-allen-police-to-get-relative-out-of-jail.ece

When a family member was arrested and accused of shoplifting in Allen earlier this month, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst decided to “jump into” action to get her out of jail.
The Allen Police Department released audio Wednesday of a call the longtime lieutenant governor made at 10:15 p.m. on Aug. 3 on behalf of Ellen Bevers. Dewhurst said during the call that Bevers inadvertently walked out of a Kroger with $57 in goods she didn’t pay for, along with $42 of items she did buy.
Formal charges haven’t been filed yet, but Allen police spokesman Jon Felty said they will be in the next week or two. Theft of between $50 and $500 is a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $2,000 fine and no more than 180 days in jail.
Opponents quickly accused the three-term lieutenant governor of abusing his power. A Dewhurst aide said the Republican was careful to tell police he wasn’t asking them to violate normal procedures.
Bevers, who Dewhurst said is a teacher, could not be reached for comment.
Dewhurst said Bevers — who he describes as a sister-in-law and a step-niece-in-law in different parts of the call — was “100 percent innocent.” He told the officer, Sgt. Jonathan Maness, that he wanted to know how he could “get her out of jail, post bond, whatever.”
“I intend to jump into this and see what can be done to prevent this very nice lady, through a miscarriage of justice, from spending the night in jail,” Dewhurst said at the end of the call. “Now, I may not be able to do anything, but it’s whatever the law says.”
Dewhurst mentioned several times that he is the lieutenant governor. He also offered to have Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw and DPS Lt. Brad Weatherford call Allen police to vouch for him.
“Sergeant, you don’t know me, but I am every year the No. 1 pick of all of the law enforcement agencies within Texas. The No. 1 pick,” Dewhurst said. “And I’m a supporter of you. You don’t know it, but I’m a supporter of you. I’m a supporter of everybody in law enforcement. And I want you to do whatever is the proper thing.”
Toward the end of the 12-minute call, Maness told Dewhurst that he would send a squad car to transfer Bevers from the city jail to Collin County jail, where she could post bond, even though it was a busy Saturday night.
Felty, the Allen police spokesman, said it is common for officers to help people expedite release of their relatives in custody. It’s unclear exactly how long Bevers was in custody. Records show she was booked into Collin County Jail on Aug. 3 and released the next day.
In an email, Dewhurst spokesman Travis Considine pointed out excerpts from the call when Dewhurst made clear that he wanted to stay within the law.
“David acted as a concerned family member in an attempt to acquire information on how to post bail for his niece while reiterating multiple times in the full conversation that law enforcement follow their normal protocols and procedures,” he said.
Rita Kirk, the Director of the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics & Public Responsibility at Southern Methodist University, said she understands why Dewhurst’s approach would cause concern. But, she said, “he walked pretty close to the line.”
“It was clear that he didn’t want her to spend the night in jail,” she said. “It was the kind of concern that any normal human would have.”
She also said Maness, who mostly remained quiet and declined to give out his supervisor’s cellphone number, was a role model for professionalism.
The call was made public as Dewhurst gears up to face several Republican primary challengers in his bid for a fourth term as the leader of the state Senate. Dewhurst lost a Republican primary runoff for a U.S. Senate seat last year.
Some of Dewhurst’s opponents took aim at him late Wednesday.
Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said the call was a “blatant abuse of power.” Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples tweeted that Maness “made all law enforcement proud” when he didn’t “bow to political pressure.”
Matt Angle, director of a Democratic effort called the Lone Star Project, said Dewhurst crossed the line by personally calling Allen officials.
“The lieutenant governor shouldn’t make that kind of call,” Angle said. “I know it’s his family, but in that kind of situation they should have had a lawyer make their case.”
Bruce Buchanan, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said Dewhurst’s call reminded him of a 2000 video of then-Lt. Gov. Rick Perry trying to finagle out of a speeding ticket. In a moment seized on by his political opponents, Perry famously told the officer “Why don’t you just let us get on down the road?”
“It’s not kosher necessarily, generally, to pull rank and call attention to your status as a subtle or unsubtle hint that would get you a special advantage,” Buchanan said.
But, Buchanan added, the public should cut Dewhurst some slack because he was just “trying to help a relative who made a mistake.”

 

It's pretty simple. If you want to bail someone out of jail, you call a bail bonds man. You don't call asking for the supervisor on duty and then asking for cell phone numbers to judges.

He was abusing his power and attempting to intimidate the officers with his name dropping.

SCUM.

 

A crime is a crime. And he could have helped her by calling a bail bonds company. Calling the police station and putting the officers in an awkward position isn't very cool either.