Mano a
Mano: Chief Cop v. Citizen
Part of
a series about fiscal corruption in city government -
San
Antonio – Awareness of the grave danger of one's position comes in
small ways that carry a huge impact.
John
Foddrill remembers a particular conversation with a San Antonio
police officer that led to a moment of mind-blowing clarity.
It
hadn't been long since he had discovered that, though he rode herd on
a $5 million budget as the telecommunications chief of the City of
San Antonio, “my operation never had any money.”
Five
million dollars? That's the wrath of God. People scratch, bite and
fight for that kind of loot. Every time. Without fail. Depend on it.
“A lot
of money passed through my budget, but it didn't stay there,” he
recalls. In fact, at about the same time, he had been nominated as
“employee of the month” to honor his ability to save the city
dads big money through various innovative practices. That was what
opened up the dialogue that eventually led to his future woes as a
whistleblower.
“My
budget was just a huge fund they used to raid for anything they
needed.” Loose accounting practices, he had discovered, kept his
department hamstrung.
Imagine
the chilling effect which this anecdote reveals suddenly taking hold
in the life of a middle-aged bureaucrat – not a gangster or a wise
guy – but a man with a family, a mortgage, and a long back trail of
good civic conduct.
“My
life has been in danger since I first began as the City of San
Antonio's Telecommunications Manager to expose the decades of fraud
and theft ...especially the millions of 911 communications dollars
that went missing, thus crippling the emergency system. I remember
speaking with an San Antonio police officer in the parking lot of my
office building when he asked me to stand up near the front door
instead of by my car. He said that it would be too easy for a unit
from the SAPD substation to come around the corner and take me
out in an innocent traffic accident. He said that he didn't want to
be collateral damage.”
Collateral
damage? You're talking war talk, now. Welcome to the NFL.
As
the manager who answered for the fact that a miserable performance of
the emergency call system for police and fire cases had, by his own
estimation, a 25 percent fail rate, he was only too aware of the kind
of tensions those budgetary vagaries caused among the ranks of the
men and women who rely on rapid communications to save not just the
lives of crime and fire victims, but their own. That's when calls
actually went through. Sometimes, the system dropped them altogether,
leaving cops, firemen, citizens with imperiled lives standing,
looking at a dead instrument, listening to a dial tone, and not
knowing why.
Police
reacted to multiple situations of waiting long, drawn-out periods for
backup officers to arrive because they hadn't gotten the message.
Firemen had horror stories to tell about calls in which lives and
property had been lost due to slow response times. Who knew? San
Antonio media of all types has long filled columns of print and made
air time blossom with horror stories of hours-long waits for criminal
histories of arrested suspects, response times of anywhere from 15
minutes to a half-hour in situations of dire emergency.
Property
owners, business operators, apartment and home dwellers alike were
beginning to question whether they were getting their money's worth.
The
truth? They were not, and Foddrill did not mind saying so. He wanted
to make some changes. He still does.
Long
after his career with the city ended, he continued to expose
corruption, and it took its toll on his emotional well-being. Picture
this.
Even
the happy fact that his son and his family live just around the
corner carries its emotional freight, and it has an evil eye trained
on not just he, but loved ones who are totally innocent.
“When
City Councilman Bernal's supporters began making terroristic threats
against me in the fall of 2011 in an effort to silence my reports of
corruption...A law enforcement officer warned me that my son and his
family should take precautions, as he lives just a few blocks
from me and is John E Foddrill, Jr . It was feared that the criminals
threatening me would mistake my son's home for mine and harm his
family...including my little granddaughter.”
What
criminals?
In
John Foddrill's world, the paradigm is upside down; the cops and
prosecutors are criminals because the DA and her staff ignore all
calls for help, and the police routinely close out complaints by
taking no action. In fact, for nearly four years, he wasn't able to
go to city hall to inquire about a water bill or take action on any
matter of household significance – by order of the Chief of Police,
William McManus. A federal judge recently lifted the ban.
But
that's not all. On a midnight in 2011, two uniformed police officers
arrived at his home to perform a “mental health check” on Mr. and
Mrs. Foddrill. In their slumber, they didn't hear the proverbial
knock at the door. That's when the mythical element of the gun
entered the life of the family Foddrill. The cops questioned a
terrified couple who lived next door about whether he had any guns.
Had they seen them? Were there any disturbances, threats involving
guns?
“On
the night of July 4, 2011
SAPD Chief McManus and SAPD sent two honest, ethical officers to my
home to perform a mental health check. When they got my family
and my neighbors out of bed, things could have gone much differently
if any other of McManus's boys had been dispatched. With no outside
witnesses it would have been very easy to Taser me, cuff me, and then
have me die in the back of the patrol car. Thank God the officers
stated that they wanted no part in the criminal cover-up and instead
apologized to us for the intrusion after speaking with us for over
two hours. Two hours in a bathrobe talking to the fuzz about
something that in fact never happened? The neighbors? Give me a
break.
“I
still fear that McManus and others will not hesitate to find
some excuse to arrest and jail me if I appear in a public forum. Once
in his custody...behind closed doors...I fear that I would never
come out alive...problem solved for McManus and criminals at the
city, county, state and federal levels.”
NEXT:
Documentation of the $5 million slush fund that passed for the Alamo
City's phone budget
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