Documents the City of Odessa was forced to turn over by the Texas Attorney General’s Office last week revealed virtually all of the crime scene technicians within the Odessa Police Department’s crime scene unit were suspended for several hours back in March for harassing one of their colleagues.
According to the documents, Special Operations Bureau Captain John Sikes wrote this about the behavior:
“When reading this case and watching the digital files, I am highly upset by its content. This behavior is deplorable. There is no excuse for the past behavior and that behavior that is apparently continuing,” Sikes wrote. “As employers we cannot expect everyone to get along at all times. We can not expect all employees to like each other at all times. However, we can demand that they work together towards a common goal and provide each other with common human decency and respect. This case represents the antithesis of human decency and respect.”
The documents also revealed Sikes and Deputy Chief Robert Doporto recommended one of the techs, Cynthia Gomez, be terminated.
Doporto wrote Gomez “was a senior CSU tech at the time and should have known that her actions would influence the behavior of the two junior CSU employees in the conduct” she exhibited toward the other tech.
OPD Chief Mike Gerke wrote the following in Gomez’s disciplinary order:
“You and several other employees repeatedly treated a co-worker with disrespect and made such comments as ‘I’m going to kick someone’s ass’ that everyone present believed was aimed at the harassed employee. Once you were notified that an investigation was underway into your actions, you continued to act distrustfully towards the harassed employee, even throwing fingerprint powder on her Odessa Police Department-assigned car. You also discussed this investigation with others involved in the investigation after being ordered not to.”
Gerke, however, did not follow the recommendations made by Doporto or Sikes.
Instead, Gerke gave Gomez a 40-hour suspension, stating he is a “valuable member” of the department and he trusts the suspension will “be sufficient to ensure compliance with policy in the future.”
Sikes and Doporto also said they would’ve recommended Stacy Cannady be terminated if she hadn’t resigned while the investigation was underway. She is currently working as a death investigator with the Ector County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Cannady played a key role in clearing James Reyos in the 1983 murder of Father Patrick Ryan, a crime he served 20 years for before being paroled. During the same month her colleagues, Gomez, DeAndra Carson, Ebeny Fierro and JoAnna Rincon were suspended by Gerke, Cannady testified in Ector County District Court about finding long-lost fingerprint cards and identifying three dead men as the real killers of Ryan.
Ector County Judge Denn Whalen recommended just last week that Reyos’ conviction be set aside by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
The harassment allegations were launched in August 2022.
According to the documents obtained by the OA, the crime scene technician went to the city’s human resource department to complain she wasn’t treated with disrespect by Cannady, Gomez, Rincon and trainees Fierro and Carson and she was forced to do more work than the others.
The documents indicate the tech was referred to as an idiot and “1/16,” representing the belief she was only 1/16 of a crime tech. They also reveal that after she made the complaint, they all went out to lunch to discuss it despite being told not to discuss the allegations.
Moreover, the documents state Cannady went on Facebook following her resignation to make derogatory statements about the contents of OPD’s Facebook page and about the tech who complained.
“When IA calls me and says I’m not allowed to give coworkers nicknames…I really hope ‘1/16th MaGrinch’ is (expletive) happy now,” she was quoted as saying. Investigators also said Gomez, Fierro and Carson responded to the post with laughing emojis and comments.
The crime scene tech at the heart of the investigation also complained the unit’s supervisor, Stephanie Bothwell, allowed the ill treatment to continue and simply handed her a Bible passage from 23rd Psalms.
Bothwell denied knowing about the harassment, but said she gave the Bible passage to the woman because she thought she was sad and it might help, the documents stated.
Bothwell retired in January 2023, a decision officials said she made prior to HR turning the investigation over to OPD’s Professional Standards Unit and an investigation was launched.
Doporto and Sikes wrote in their report they would’ve recommended Bothwell be given a written reprimand.
Those involved with the investigation interviewed all of those involved and watched officers’ body cam footage.
During a telephone interview Sunday, Cannady said she took the job at the Medical Examiner’s Office because it was a better paying job and it was best for her and her family.
“As far as the investigation, I don’t want to go into a whole lot of details about it, but I will say there was some personality differences within the unit. I did go to my supervisors, including Sikes, on several occasions regarding (the tech who complained) during her probationary period and of course they were never taken seriously,” Cannady said.
While there were some allegations she had no direct knowledge of, Cannady said there were others she is not going to deny.
“But, when I was at work, I was there to work. I wasn’t sitting there name calling or anything like that at work. The 1/16 and things like that happened outside of business hours and my TikTok happened after the fact, after I was already gone so I just didn’t see how that was relevant,” Cannady said. “I was never hostile to her at work as the (documents) were saying and the text messages between me, Cynthia and Joanna were all outside work…I was always professional to (her). I was never disrespectful. I was never hateful to her.”
As for the other crime scene techs, Gerke followed the recommendations of Doporto and Sikes.
Fierro and Carson received a 16-hour suspension and Rincon received an eight-hour suspension.
In an interview last October, Bothwell said that when fully staffed, she has 10 employees working under her. In addition to six crime scene techs, she has three property technicians who are responsible for logging evidence in and out, she said.
The Odessa American learned of the investigation into the crime scene unit and filed a TPIA request on May 17. The City Attorney’s Office asked the AG for permission to withhold the documents citing a statute that allows information to be withheld if it’s highly intimate or embarrassing or not of legitimate concern to the public.
The city also argued the information should be withheld under common-law privacy laws and it constituted “a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
The AG’s Office disagreed on all counts.
On July 31, the AG’s Office ordered the city to release the documents to the OA and an unknown second requester in a letter, stating, “this office has concluded the public has a legitimate interest in formation that relates to public employees and their conduct in the workplace.”
The office also concluded that personnel file information does not “involve the most intimate aspects of human affairs.”
The City of Odessa did not immediately hand over the records as required but instead reached out again to the AG’s Office to confirm the contents of the letter referred to the OA and a second requester. The city released the documents Thursday.
