UPDATED: FW officer involved in Rainbow Lounge raid arrested for assault in '06

The Dallas Morning News reports this morning that the newspaper has obtained disciplinary records for five of the seven Fort Worth police officers involved in the raid of the Rainbow Lounge on June 28. The city reportedly told the newspaper that it accidentally left out the records for the other two officers and will provide them soon.
Anyhow, the big news from these records is that one of the officers involved in the raid, 32-year-old Jason R. Ricks, was arrested on an assault charge in 2006 for allegedly punching a bus driver in the face in New Braunfels while off duty. The charges were eventually dropped, and Ricks ended up receiving a 16-day suspension, but one of Ricks’ supervisors at the time, Capt. W.A. Read, wrote that Ricks had “shown a history of poor decisions and bad judgment.”

“I have to ask myself, when will this officer mature to the level that is required of him and can we afford to allow him to keep making bad decisions that can affect the department and the community,” Read wrote. He added that a lieutenant “has put forth a valid argument that Officer Ricks does not show the maturity level that is required of a Fort Worth police officer.”

UPDATE: Just got a chance to take a look at The Star-Telegram’s report today, which provides additional details on Ricks’ arrest for public intoxication and assault causing bodily injury in 2006. Apparently the incident occurred while Ricks was on a tubing trip on the Comal River. Ricks, who’d been drinking, got into a verbal altercation with a woman who’d cut into the bus line. When the driver intervened, Ricks clocked him. The S-T suggests it’s unlikely Ricks was involved in misconduct at the Rainbow Lounge because he was guarding suspects in a police van while other officers went into the bar, but I disagree. First, the whole raid itself appears to have been one big example of misconduct, so all of the officers are responsible to some degree. Also, in case you hadn’t heard, one of the “suspects” sustained a serious brain injury at some point, and we still don’t know when that happened. The S-T notes that Ricks had been suspended earlier in 2006 for failing to call a supervisor after using a Taser on three suspects. And speaking of Tasers, Fort Worth Weekly has an interesting story this week which sure seems to suggest we may be witnessing a pattern here involving excessive force, minorities and FW police. Go figure.реклама гугл адвордс

12 Comments

Marlin Bynum on July 22, 2009 at 1:53 pm

I was at the Police Forum about three weeks ago, and it was interesting that between two and three African American people stood up about different situations in which police had either been dismissive of their complaints, or overly abusive (in some cases of bystanders).
If this is an ongoing problem, I hope that these recent events will help the FWPD to see the error of its ways and bring justice for those who have suffered, and better policy and practice for the future.

Eaglefan on July 22, 2009 at 2:42 pm

UNT journalism students have been investigating Taser use by Texas police departments for some time now. Here’s a link to a news release from February 2007: https://web3.unt.edu/news/story.cfm?story=10224

Mark G on July 22, 2009 at 4:57 pm

>>>accidentally left out the records for the other two officers
And people wonder why some gays simply don’t trust the Fort Worth Police to do their own investigation?
I think they were leaving out information hoping that things would calm down and that everything would be forgotten before they “found” this information.

Lil' Carl on July 23, 2009 at 7:05 am

Obviously “The Fort Worth Way” that Mayor Moncrief speaks of is “The Way of Racism and Discrimination”. Everyone at the City Council meeting saw how the only African-American on the dias, Kathleen Hicks, was humiliated by fellow coucil members and we’ve heard statements about the abuse of power by the FWPD. It was also nice to hear the Mayor Moncrief say, near the close of the meeting, the he and his wife “are comfortable in our presence”. It’s almost a nice way for him to say “we tolerate you people sometimes”. It is obvious the ignorance starts at the top when the Mayor can’t even say the words: gay, lesbian, bisexual, homosexual. Ignorance has once again proven to be dangerous.

Lil' Carl on July 23, 2009 at 7:07 am

Mark…They were probably “accidentally” leaving out records so they could be scrubbed. That practice is not uncommon.

Kevin C on July 23, 2009 at 1:43 pm

FYI – There is a new website defending the Fort Worth Police officers involved in the Rainbow Lounge Raid.
Here is a link to the website:
https://www.restoring-reason.blogspot.com/
As you can guess, it’s really busy as it was reported by TV news.

Steve Friday on July 23, 2009 at 1:53 pm

@Lil’ Carl- Maybe dial it down some Carl.
Kathleen Hicks wasn’t humiliated. She stood on principle and accepted the results graciously.
The “Fort Worth Way” means fairness and progressiveness, I live here, I’m gay, take it easy when you speak about my hometown and my neighbors.
Also, Mayor Moncrief used the term “LGBT” which refutes your irrational claim that, “… the Mayor can’t even say the words: gay, lesbian, bisexual, homosexual.”
Regarding the presence of an Officer who was charged but never prosecuted for assault and who was not in the Rainbow Lounge we should keep our eyes on the prize. It isn’t particularly relevent.
@Marline- Kudos again for keeping a level head in your public remarks. It gives me confidence that the community is able to use these kinds of events as both prod AND teaching tool. Keeping it rational is the beginning of those efforts!

Steve Friday on July 23, 2009 at 2:33 pm

Apologies! “@Marline” should of course read @Marlin!

Marlin Bynum on July 23, 2009 at 7:43 pm

Thanks for the name change Steve. Feared I might be transgendered and not even know it LOL.
It is my hope that out of this will come even a greater movement within the metroplex to handle GLBT issues. Diversity training would be useful in many places, school districts, city governments, county governments. It would be nice if all the cities in the DFW metroplex would realize that gay people live among them and they do so many things inadvertantly without knowledge.

Steve Friday on July 24, 2009 at 10:32 am

@Marlin- see what becoming spell-check dependent has done to me!
Amen, to your remarks. I’ve been posting comments recently because I think we should all be involved in the conversation, pragmatic about our wishes and desires for our community, and astute at interpreting the shifting realities of political activism.
I, too, hope we take these kinds of opportunities when community interest is high and use them to our benefit. We have thus far achieved what we can on the issue of the Rainbow Lounge incident. (Barring some discovery made after the investigations and US Attorney’s overview are complete.) We need to be focused on assuring diversity training of city employees proceeds and is comprehensive, supporting the new liaison and getting pay to go with those extra duties, and participating as an open community in solving the greater communities problems, too!
I believe it’s time to adjust our approach to the fact that we are at the table. We are not victims but a constituency within a larger political body. Able, to use some hard won lessons to intelligently compete in that larger sphere.

Richard on July 24, 2009 at 3:36 pm

@ Steve (and all blog users)
This is something I have used for about a year with great satisfaction. Being a poor typist and somewhat dyslexic, this little gem has saved me lots of embarraassment.
===============================================================
https://iespell.com
ieSpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage. It should come in particularly handy for users who do a lot of web-based text entry (e.g. web mails, forums, blogs, diaries). Even if your web application already includes spell checking functionality, you might still want to install this utility because it is definitely much faster than a server-side solution. Plus you get to store and use your personal word list across all your applications, instead of maintaining separate ones on each application.
The program installs as a new button in the IE toolbar (as well as a new menu item under “Tools”) – after filling in a form, just hit the ieSpell button and it pops up a dialog, similar to the MS Word spell check. ieSpell also works (right-click menu only) on other IE based browsers such as SlimBrowser, CrazyBrowser, MSN, MyIE, etc.
ieSpell is not spyware or adware. It’s free for personal use only. All other use requires a commercial license. See Licensing for more information.

Richard on July 24, 2009 at 3:40 pm

(DANG – I ran the spell chcecker and then edited …. and didn’t re-check !!
>> embarrassment <<

Marlin Bynum on July 22, 2009 at 1:53 pm

I was at the Police Forum about three weeks ago, and it was interesting that between two and three African American people stood up about different situations in which police had either been dismissive of their complaints, or overly abusive (in some cases of bystanders).
If this is an ongoing problem, I hope that these recent events will help the FWPD to see the error of its ways and bring justice for those who have suffered, and better policy and practice for the future.
Eaglefan on July 22, 2009 at 2:42 pm

UNT journalism students have been investigating Taser use by Texas police departments for some time now. Here’s a link to a news release from February 2007: https://web3.unt.edu/news/story.cfm?story=10224
Mark G on July 22, 2009 at 4:57 pm

>>>accidentally left out the records for the other two officers
And people wonder why some gays simply don’t trust the Fort Worth Police to do their own investigation?
I think they were leaving out information hoping that things would calm down and that everything would be forgotten before they “found” this information.
Lil' Carl on July 23, 2009 at 7:05 am

Obviously “The Fort Worth Way” that Mayor Moncrief speaks of is “The Way of Racism and Discrimination”. Everyone at the City Council meeting saw how the only African-American on the dias, Kathleen Hicks, was humiliated by fellow coucil members and we’ve heard statements about the abuse of power by the FWPD. It was also nice to hear the Mayor Moncrief say, near the close of the meeting, the he and his wife “are comfortable in our presence”. It’s almost a nice way for him to say “we tolerate you people sometimes”. It is obvious the ignorance starts at the top when the Mayor can’t even say the words: gay, lesbian, bisexual, homosexual. Ignorance has once again proven to be dangerous.
Lil' Carl on July 23, 2009 at 7:07 am

Mark…They were probably “accidentally” leaving out records so they could be scrubbed. That practice is not uncommon.
Kevin C on July 23, 2009 at 1:43 pm

FYI – There is a new website defending the Fort Worth Police officers involved in the Rainbow Lounge Raid.
Here is a link to the website:
https://www.restoring-reason.blogspot.com/
As you can guess, it’s really busy as it was reported by TV news.
Steve Friday on July 23, 2009 at 1:53 pm

@Lil’ Carl- Maybe dial it down some Carl.
Kathleen Hicks wasn’t humiliated. She stood on principle and accepted the results graciously.
The “Fort Worth Way” means fairness and progressiveness, I live here, I’m gay, take it easy when you speak about my hometown and my neighbors.
Also, Mayor Moncrief used the term “LGBT” which refutes your irrational claim that, “… the Mayor can’t even say the words: gay, lesbian, bisexual, homosexual.”
Regarding the presence of an Officer who was charged but never prosecuted for assault and who was not in the Rainbow Lounge we should keep our eyes on the prize. It isn’t particularly relevent.
@Marline- Kudos again for keeping a level head in your public remarks. It gives me confidence that the community is able to use these kinds of events as both prod AND teaching tool. Keeping it rational is the beginning of those efforts!
Steve Friday on July 23, 2009 at 2:33 pm

Apologies! “@Marline” should of course read @Marlin!
Marlin Bynum on July 23, 2009 at 7:43 pm

Thanks for the name change Steve. Feared I might be transgendered and not even know it LOL.
It is my hope that out of this will come even a greater movement within the metroplex to handle GLBT issues. Diversity training would be useful in many places, school districts, city governments, county governments. It would be nice if all the cities in the DFW metroplex would realize that gay people live among them and they do so many things inadvertantly without knowledge.
Steve Friday on July 24, 2009 at 10:32 am

@Marlin- see what becoming spell-check dependent has done to me!
Amen, to your remarks. I’ve been posting comments recently because I think we should all be involved in the conversation, pragmatic about our wishes and desires for our community, and astute at interpreting the shifting realities of political activism.
I, too, hope we take these kinds of opportunities when community interest is high and use them to our benefit. We have thus far achieved what we can on the issue of the Rainbow Lounge incident. (Barring some discovery made after the investigations and US Attorney’s overview are complete.) We need to be focused on assuring diversity training of city employees proceeds and is comprehensive, supporting the new liaison and getting pay to go with those extra duties, and participating as an open community in solving the greater communities problems, too!
I believe it’s time to adjust our approach to the fact that we are at the table. We are not victims but a constituency within a larger political body. Able, to use some hard won lessons to intelligently compete in that larger sphere.
Richard on July 24, 2009 at 3:36 pm

@ Steve (and all blog users)
This is something I have used for about a year with great satisfaction. Being a poor typist and somewhat dyslexic, this little gem has saved me lots of embarraassment.
===============================================================
https://iespell.com
ieSpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage. It should come in particularly handy for users who do a lot of web-based text entry (e.g. web mails, forums, blogs, diaries). Even if your web application already includes spell checking functionality, you might still want to install this utility because it is definitely much faster than a server-side solution. Plus you get to store and use your personal word list across all your applications, instead of maintaining separate ones on each application.
The program installs as a new button in the IE toolbar (as well as a new menu item under “Tools”) – after filling in a form, just hit the ieSpell button and it pops up a dialog, similar to the MS Word spell check. ieSpell also works (right-click menu only) on other IE based browsers such as SlimBrowser, CrazyBrowser, MSN, MyIE, etc.
ieSpell is not spyware or adware. It’s free for personal use only. All other use requires a commercial license. See Licensing for more information.
Richard on July 24, 2009 at 3:40 pm

(DANG – I ran the spell chcecker and then edited …. and didn’t re-check !!
>> embarrassment <<