Sheriff: Election opponent wouldn't mind killing a deputy

EDINBURG — The race for Hidalgo County’s top law enforcement position is heating up after Sheriff Lupe Treviño sent an internal memo to his officers saying his opponent, Geovani Hernandez, allegedly threatened a reserve deputy with an AK-47.

Armed with three of his political associates, Hernandez cried foul Tuesday morning when he brought the leaked memo to a Monitor reporter. The document appeared in his mailbox Feb. 21 with a note urging him to read it, he said.

“This is dirty politics,” Hernandez said of the officer safety alert that describes a Feb. 10 run-in he allegedly had with a reserve deputy at La Olla Restaurant in Edinburg — a common meeting ground for local politicians and law enforcement officers.

The alert is dated Feb. 21 and intended solely for personnel at the Sheriff’s Office. It features Hernandez’s picture, a description of his vehicle and warns officers to use “extreme caution” when coming in contact with him because of what he allegedly said to the unnamed, off-duty reserve deputy at the restaurant.

“If I ever find out that some deputy or anybody is pulling me over for political reasons, wait to see what I have in store for them. Come, let me show you,” the memo quotes Hernandez as saying.

It indicates Treviño’s opponent lured the reserve deputy to the passenger side of his dark blue Chevy Silverado Z-71, where he pointed to an AK-47 lodged between his passenger seat and center console.

Treviño described the weapon as a sawed-off assault rifle with a banana clip attached to it.

Hernandez, however, paints a different picture of what he said really happened.

He said he was eating breakfast with current and former employees of the Sheriff’s Office when he met the reserve deputy. The reserve deputy seemed interested in his campaign, so when they walked out of the business, Hernandez invited him to his truck to offer some propaganda.

“He followed us over there and I opened the door to my truck,” Hernandez said. “I’m a Texas licensed police officer and I’m a reserve officer with the city of Elsa. So I am authorized by the state of Texas to carry my badge, my identification, whatever a police officer carries.”

That includes the Colt .38-caliber Super Automatic he carried at the time, Hernandez said.

“So I opened my truck and started getting fliers,” he said. “Then right after that it blew right out of proportion, according to the memo. The next thing I know I was carrying an AK-47.

“The only AK-47 I have is in my house.”

Treviño said the agitated and concerned reserve deputy contacted his office after several days of debating whether to tell his superiors about it.

“When we were told about this, I said, ‘Look I don’t want to be the only recipient of the information. Obviously it’s got political overtones. I want other people in the room to listen to the complaint for the first time, firsthand besides me,’” he said. “So I brought in one commander and three captains and we sat down and I told the young man, ‘Tell us what happened.’ And the way it’s relayed in that memo is what (he said) happened.”

The sheriff and the officials who heard the reserve deputy’s account decided the threat should be taken seriously and released the alert. A hand-written note signed by the sheriff orders commanders to read it during all bureau briefings.

“Our reserve officer was really concerned about the threat,” the handwritten notation reads.

Former county detention Sgt. Elihu Villarreal is also mentioned in the document as being present at the time the threat was made. Treviño fired Villarreal and a second detention officer after an internal investigation revealed they tried to intimidate Donna policemen into not showing up for court for a DWI case involving one of their wives, the sheriff said.

Hernandez’ supporters, however, said the sheriff failed to mention a current employee who was also eating with Hernandez. It’s unclear, however, if the current employee was by the vehicle when the alleged threat was made.

‘PUT IN A HARD PLACE’

Authorities didn’t file a police report about the incident, Treviño said.

He spoke to Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra — who coincidentally happened to be eating at La Olla on the same day the alleged threat happened — and Guerra asked why the off-duty reserve deputy didn’t arrest Hernandez.

“He’s young,” Treviño said. “He’s inexperienced and he got so shaken that all he could think of was, ‘How am I going to get out of here?’ And that’s what he relayed to us.”

It is not custom to file a report when a threat is made to officers, he added.

“I get a lot of reports every day from the Joint Operation Intelligence Center and from the Border Operation Intelligence Center about threats to policemen,” he said. “We don’t write reports on them. We don’t. All we do is just send out advisories and say, ‘Be careful for this individual driving this vehicle because he might be a threat to you.’

“We do that every day,” Treviño said. “I’m just sorry to say and am very disappointed that a candidate for this office falls into that category.”

Hernandez admitted he spoke to the reserve deputy about traffic stops, but only after the reserve deputy told him the county’s interdiction vehicles tailed him.

“I put it in good terms,” he said. “If they want to stop me or do whatever they want to do — if they’re after me or whatever — it’s their ballgame. Let them do whatever they want. I’m ready and I’m going straight. I’m ready to win.”

Treviño denied having any political motivations behind the release of the memo.

“They’ve put me in a very tough position here. As sheriff … not only do I have the responsibility of protecting all the citizens of Hidalgo County, I also have the responsibility to do everything I can to protect my deputies, which is something I had to do,” he said. “This is the one time for sure that I am throwing away all politics aside and I’m doing everything I can to protect my deputies and I don’t see any other chief or any other sheriffs doing anything different.”

Hernandez, however, is not convinced.

“I am confused and concerned as to why they use their official capacity to exploit somebody’s image,” he said. “If they do that to somebody who is already in the public eye imagine what they can do to a regular citizen.”

‘MORE TO COME’

Hernandez predicted more campaign drama would develop before Election Day, which is set for May 29.

“This isn’t going to be the only incident,” Hernandez said. “There’s going to be more to come.”

Treviño sees Hernandez’s move as “a pre-emptive strike to defuse the situation before it hit the airwaves.”

“He took a calculated risk and said, ‘I’m going to bring this out just in case they bring it out and try to use it against me. I messed up and now I’ve got to spin it,’” he said about Hernandez. “This just shows the type of person that he is — that he wouldn’t mind obviously killing a deputy or killing a policeman if he thought it was a political move, which is horrendous.”

He expressed concern for his deputies.

“Let’s say he does run a red light … and a deputy sees and pulls him over. How does he know that it’s political or not political,” he said. “Is he going to come out shooting?”

Hernandez, on the other hand, said he contacted an attorney for possible legal action.

“Capt. Jerry Lopez is quoting me without knowing the facts,” he said of the memo’s author. “Quoting somebody is a serious thing.”

Treviño was not fazed by the threat of legal action.

“If he’s going to sue anybody he ought to sue himself,” he said.

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Naxiely Lopez covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at naxil@themonitor.com and (956)683-4434.

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