Recent troubles dig up police chief's past

By Jennifer Autrey
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

NORTH RICHLAND HILLS - He has been described as a stellar police chief. The most decorated officer in the city. A leader who mentors subordinates and insists upon integrity.

North Richland Hills Police Chief Tom Shockley has also survived incidents that might have ended the careers of other law officers. He was arrested and indicted in an assault case and was disciplined for randomly firing his service weapon across an open field.

Those events happened decades ago, when Shockley was a young patrol officer. The arrest was later removed from his record. But they have resurfaced amid recent controversies that raise questions about Shockley's judgment and his leadership of the third-largest police department in Tarrant County.

City officials are standing by the chief. But the public pressure isn't likely to abate soon: An officer who is about to be fired promises to raise a variety of issues at a hearing scheduled for tonight.

Many of the recent problems have involved Shockley's SWAT team, including two wrongful-death lawsuits over the 1999 shooting of drug suspect Troy Davis, a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by the lone female member and an allegation that a woman was forced to expose her breasts during a raid.

His officers responded to his home one night last year to find him heavily medicated and holding a loaded gun. He has authorized the surveillance of an attorney who was suing the department. And the officer attached to the Drug Enforcement Administration said Shockley asked him to investigate his pharmacist for shorting him a handful of pills.

Shockley's supporters say he's a victim of character assassination by plaintiffs' attorneys and officers who want his job. Shockley, 53, declined to be interviewed on the advice of his attorney but said city officials are well aware of his past.

"It hurts me that the wounds that healed long ago are being reopened," he said.

Many of the revelations have emerged through testimony in two lawsuits related to the Davis shooting. Police have said that officer Allen Hill shot Davis after Davis pulled a gun as the SWAT team burst into his house to search for marijuana.

City Manager Larry Cunningham, who promoted Shockley to chief in 1998, said the testimony solicited by the plaintiffs' attorneys paints an incomplete picture. He said he believes that Shockley will weather the adversity.

"I expect he's going to be here a number of years -- until he retires," Cunningham said. "I believe when we get through this, he'll be stronger."

• • •

Allen Shisler was 18 the day he crossed paths with Tom Shockley.

On April 12, 1975, Shisler was driving with his brother in North Richland Hills when a car forced him to stop and Shockley and another man jumped out. Shockley slammed his fist on the hood and fired twice at the car.

In a recent court deposition, Shockley said he had "a young man run over me and back up and try to run over me again and I shot his car." News reports from the time quote Shockley as saying he feared for his life.

Shisler said the men didn't identify themselves as police officers until he threw a punch at Shockley's partner, officer Howard Westmoreland. Shisler asked to see a uniformed officer.

Shockley showed his badge, said, "This is the only uniformed cop you're going to get," and hit Shisler with the badge case about 10 times, Shisler said.

Shockley acknowledged hitting Shisler, saying "I guess my anger got the best of me," according to Star-Telegram reports.

A grand jury declined to indict Shisler. North Richland Hills Police Chief Hamp Scruggs fired Shockley for firing his gun "without good cause." The city's civil service commission overruled the firing and suspended Shockley for 30 days.

Two months later, Shockley was indicted for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

It's unclear what happened next. Shockley recently told attorneys in the wrongful-death lawsuits that the arrest was expunged, a legal maneuver typically used after an indictment is dismissed and charges are dropped.

Randy Shiflet, a former North Richland Hills deputy city manager who was a patrol officer with Shockley, said the expungement means the indictment was a mistake.

"If you get charged with something and the state doesn't prove its case, you absolutely should have the right to not have that follow you around the rest of your life," Shiflet said.

Shockley resigned about a year after the arrest, citing a better-paying job. His next job was with the Grapevine Police Department.

Four years later, his gun got him in trouble again.

In 1979, Shockley was accused of driving his patrol car negligently while returning from an off-duty job, according to documents in his Grapevine personnel file. He stopped the car, jumped out and fired his gun across a field toward a house, the documents say.

He was disciplined for firing his gun without just cause, the documents say.

Shockley resigned less than a year later. His termination form describes him as an "unsatisfactory" employee and recommends that he not be rehired. Additional comments, signed by the personnel director, say Shockley "creates problems within the ranks."

• • •

After a brief stint as a civilian, Shockley returned to the North Richland Hills Police Department in 1982, and his career soared.

He rose to captain, left again for a civilian job, then returned to North Richland Hills. By 1993, he was an assistant chief.

His North Richland Hills file overflows with commendations. One memo recounts how he talked a man out of committing suicide. Another details how he single-handedly foiled a robbery at an ice cream shop.

"Having an employee like you makes my job so much easier," Chief Jerry McGlasson wrote in Shockley's 1983 evaluation.

McGlasson did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

The personnel documents released by North Richland Hills in response to a request under the Texas Public Information Act contained no reprimands over the course of Shockley's career.

Officers described Shockley as a polished chief. Several, including some who later left because they were unhappy, said they looked up to him.

Greg Stilley, who said he resigned last year because of low morale in the department, said he was impressed with Shockley when he was hired in 1992.

"Knowledgeable. Tough. Unwavering," Stilley said. "Knew right from wrong and knew how to get things done the legal way. And through his words and actions, he supported his officers."

In 1998, McGlasson retired after a spat with Cunningham. More than 50 people, including Shockley, applied for the job, which paid about $80,000.

Eight finalists were interviewed, four of whom had already been chief at other police departments, city records show. All but Shockley had a college degree, which the job description called for.

Cunningham said Shockley had served effectively at several levels of command and knew how to use technology to fight crime.

"The other thing that was significant was that he had a good knowledge of North Richland Hills," Cunningham said.

Most of the officers knew few specifics about Shockley's past troubles. But there were rumors.

"In my opinion, if any of the rumors were true, then perhaps that would make him a better chief, because he would relate to some of the issues his officers would face," said Hill, who left the department five months after the Davis shooting.

• • •

Shockley faced trouble almost from the moment he took command.

First, a sexual harassment investigation rocked the SWAT team.

Hill exposed himself during a group photograph at a SWAT training exercise at Fort Hood in November 1998, drawing a complaint from fellow officer Ann Shelton.

"If you guys come back with a picture of his penis and my face, you are never going to hear the end of it," she remembers telling her sergeant. "Enough is enough."

Five months later, Shelton was injured during a training exercise with Hill. Shelton said Hill's blows to her stomach, soon after she had undergone gynecological surgery, left her in agony. She sought emergency treatment, according to city records.

Shelton believed that Hill had been rough because of her complaints about his repeated off-color language so she confided in a captain.

Shockley ordered an internal investigation. Before it was over, Shelton said the rest of the SWAT team wouldn't speak to her. Hill was suspended for two weeks without pay for the photo. Shelton was also suspended, for walking through the men's shower area at Fort Hood.

Shelton said she felt betrayed by Shockley, particularly when he reinstated Hill to the SWAT team but removed her, telling her it was "for the good of the team." She quit in August 1999 and now works as a flight attendant.

By the end of that year, a much bigger problem faced the department. Troy Davis was shot Dec. 15, and questions quickly began to emerge.

The man who told the SWAT team that Davis was using marijuana turned out to be a relative who might have borne a grudge. Police found no marijuana in the house; three dying plants were in the back yard.

In a bizarre twist, the nameplate from Shelton's locker turned up at the scene. Evidence photos showed it in several places around the house, including next to a spent shell casing, raising the question of whether there had been tampering.

Shockley blew up when he found out about the nameplate, according to interviews with Hill, Stilley and another former SWAT officer, Greg Crane. He called a meeting of the SWAT team.

"He started the meeting with 'You sons of b------ got anything else I need to know?' " Crane said.

Shockley never ordered an investigation, and the nameplate was never explained. He did authorize surveillance of the attorney representing Troy Davis' estate, a move legal experts told the Star-Telegram might have violated the attorney's civil rights. Shockley has said police believed that the attorney was representing himself as a police officer.

Shockley also began to indicate that he wondered whether Hill had made a mistake, according to interviews with Hill and others.

A few days before Christmas, Hill said Shockley told him that he had just come from a closed City Council session, where he had listened to a tape of the raid. Shockley said those at the meeting had agreed that Hill did not give "that boy" enough time to put down his gun.

"Before this is done, it's probably going to cost me and you our careers," Hill recalls Shockley saying.

The department was facing other burdens. Shelton filed her federal sexual harassment lawsuit. Another woman sued, alleging that SWAT officers forced her to lift her shirt during a raid. The city recently settled both suits but acknowledged no wrongdoing.

Officers thought they detected signs that the stress was getting to Shockley. He lost weight. He visited the officers' end of police headquarters less often.

And then there were the two examples of unusual behavior.

One of them was about Shockley's request to have the DEA investigate his pharmacist, who had supposedly shorted him eight or 10 painkillers in the past year. Detective Tim Gilpin, an officer attached to the DEA, told the Davis attorneys that the agency wasn't interested.

Shockley testified that he doesn't recall requesting any investigation.

In the second incident, on March 26, 2002, Shockley told a 911 operator that an armed woman was on his porch, according to the dispatch log. Officers arrived to find Shockley outside, holding a loaded gun.

Shelton said some of the responding officers later told her that the chief believed she was the one outside his house that night.

Shockley said in his depositions that, although he was heavily medicated and hallucinating, he knew who was who.

"I mean, when I saw people, I knew who they were, so I don't think I was a threat to anybody," he testified.

Shiflet, who was among those at Shockley's house that night, said that the hospital had released Shockley too soon after neck surgery and that the chief had had a reaction to pain medication.

"It's my understanding and belief that at no time did he point the gun at anybody," Shiflet said. "It was absolutely an isolated incident. I've known him 30 years and nothing like that has happened before or since."

Shiflet and Cunningham dispute the contention that Shockley has not handled the stress well.

They said Shockley lost weight and missed several months of work last year because of the surgery and a bleeding ulcer that had gone undetected for years. He was certainly saddened about Davis' death, even if the shooting was justified, Cunningham said.

"I definitely think that many situations that have occurred in the last few years have weighed heavily on the chief," Cunningham said. "Contrary to what many people might think, he's a very caring and sensitive person."

Key moments in Tom Shockley's career

1972

Hired as a patrol officer in North Richland Hills.

1975 -- Indicted on a charge of aggravated assault after a confrontation with a teen-age motorist in North Richland Hills. Shockley's arrest record was later expunged.

1979 -- Placed on a year's probation by the Grapevine Police Department for firing his service weapon without cause.

November 1998 -- North Richland Hills SWAT team officer Allen Hill exposes himself during a group photograph at Fort Hood, drawing a complaint from the team's lone female officer, Ann Shelton.

December 1998 -- Promoted to chief of the North Richland Hills Police Department.

March 1999 -- Shelton is injured during a training exercise with Hill. She tells a captain, and Shockley orders an investigation. Hill is suspended for 80 hours without pay for the Fort Hood photograph.

August 1999 -- Shelton quits after Hill is returned to the SWAT team but she is removed.

December 1999 -- Hill fatally shoots Troy Davis during a drug raid at Davis' house.

2000 -- A wrongful-death lawsuit is filed in the Davis shooting.

2001 -- A second lawsuit is filed in the Davis shooting. Shelton files a sexual harassment lawsuit. Another woman sues, alleging that SWAT officers forced her to expose her breasts during another raid.

March 2002 -- Officers are called to Shockley's house after he reports seeing an armed woman on his porch. He later says a bad reaction to medication caused him to hallucinate.

Top