TRI In The News

Columnist Calls Lufkin 'Shame of America'; City Leaders Beg to Differ

August 04, 2011

8/4/2011

TRI IN THE NEWS: COLUMNIST CALLS LUFKIN 'SHAME OF AMERICA'; CITY LEADERS BEG TO DIFFER

From The Lufkin Daily News

In light of a Fort Worth newspaper columnist labeling Lufkin as "the shame of America," Mayor Jack Gorden stood up for his city Wednesday.

In Sunday's edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and available online, columnist Bud Kennedy wrote that Lufkin was now the shame of America after a Lufkin man originally from Honduras was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in jail in July for resisting arrest in his home during a 2009 incident in which police mistook him for a burglar.

Gorden said it was unfortunate that because of an isolated incident, some people outside of the community have come down on the city without understanding what was going on.

"The police chief in this department has as much public confidence as any community in Texas based on their professionalism, training and their involvement in the community. In the last 10 years, the Lufkin Police Department has built themselves into a high-integrity unit," Gorden said. "We have this whole litany of things other people are saying that Lufkin is a great place to live. Outdoor Life Magazine picked Lufkin as one of the top 100 places in the country to live. People outside of Lufkin have chosen this community as being a good place to live, work, move a business and raise a family."

Gorden also said Lufkin is the No. 1 micropolitan community in Texas and a hub for a population base approaching 400,000 in the nine-county region, leading in jobs, retail sales and health care services.

Jerry Huffman, president of the Lufkin/Angelina County Chamber of Commerce, said Lufkin is a generous and giving community.

"This is an incredible, outstanding community. There's an innate ability of this community to do what they say they are going to do," Huffman said. "I’ve seen them so many times decide they want to do a project whether it's the County Exposition Center of the Ellen Trout Zoo or whatever, and within a matter of months, the money is raised and the project takes off. That's what this community is all about."

According to the Lufkin Convention and Visitors Bureau, the city was named the No. 5 fastest-growing retail city in the state and is the largest per-capita giving city in the state with United Way. Generous individuals and businesses in Lufkin and the rest of Angelina County last year contributed more than $660,000 to United Way, easily surpassing the $540,000 goal.

According to reports, Lufkin Police, responding to a neighbor's burglary call, used pepper spray and shot Marco Sauceda with a pepper ball gun to subdue him. Sauceda, who suffered a gash to the top of his head that required medical attention, later told a Spanish-speaking investigator he was afraid he would be deported.

"But what happened next was the worst mistake," Kennedy wrote in his column. "Instead of acknowledging the confusion, dropping the charges and offering thanks that nobody was more seriously hurt, police and Angelina County prosecutors jailed Sauceda anyway and used public time, money and resources to put him on trial."

Kennedy also cited John W. Whitehead, president and founder of the The Rutherford Institute, a Virginia-based civil liberties organization that, according to its website, provides free legal services to people whose constitutional and human rights have been threatened or violated.

"Anyone with an ounce of sense would recognize that there's something wrong when an innocent man with the mental acuity of a child is not only subjected to a warrantless invasion of his home by police officers but is physically brutalized by those same government agents and then forced to serve time for resisting arrest," Whitehead wrote.

As far as whether it's a national shame, Kennedy this week told The Lufkin Daily News that he had the impression Whitehead also felt that way.

"He wrote that this is a throwback to America the way we were before the Revolution and the Constitution protected us," Kennedy said.

Lufkin City Manager Paul Parker said the police, whose lives were at risk, acted professionally and appropriately.

"They responded to a house assuming that a burglary was in progress, not knowing whether the individual was armed. In hindsight, you learn all the additional facts and it paints a whole different perspective," Parker said. "In the heat of the situation, I think the police department acted totally appropriately. It would be a whole different story if he had come out with a gun shooting. Everyone would have had a whole different perspective. They didn't know until after the fact that he wasn't armed."

There was no doubt that Sauceda resisted arrest, Parker said.

"All he had to do was mention that it was his house and come out — anything that a normal individual would do," he said. "It could have been certainly avoided by the individual."

Sauceda is a free man today, given credit for time served. Authorities did not place an immigration hold on him.

Sauceda's Lufkin lawyer, Ryan Deaton, filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city in January, according to court records.