Lewisville PD disciplines 11 officers over alleged misconduct in prostitution investigation - CBS News

[Caroline Vandergriff, Steven Rosenbaum]

LEWISVILLE – The Lewisville Police Department released details of a wide-ranging internal affairs investigation Friday, which resulted in 11 law enforcement officers facing discipline stemming from a covert prostitution investigation.

Lewisville Police Chief Brock Rollins said that in October 2022, the former street crimes unit was assigned to uncover alleged prostitution at nine massage parlors in the city, as well as one in neighboring Flower Mound. The operation lasted until June 2024, resulting in 32 criminal charges against 28 suspects.

However, the Denton County District Attorney's Office told Rollins they wouldn't be able to prosecute any of the 23 cases because undercover officers had engaged in "inappropriate physical contact" with suspected prostitutes.

Lewisville PD launched an internal affairs investigation based on the DA's findings, which confirmed the alleged inappropriate contact, as well as alleged violations of "department directives and protocols."

"As the investigation revealed, nobody appears to have believed they were engaging in misconduct," Chief Rollins said. "I think the officers were acting with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, the intentions were not what the original training sets out to teach and also what the guidelines that we put in place for how these investigations should be conducted should happen."

Lewisville PD did not go into specifics about the alleged contact but said there was no evidence the officers had sex with the alleged prostitutes.

Legally, there only needs to be an agreement of payment for sexual contact to establish probable cause.

"Anything beyond the establishment of probable cause that involves physical touching or inappropriate physical touching is not necessary and can lead to misconduct," Rollins said. "I think that's what the DA was concerned about. It's certainly what was concerning to us."

In total, seven members of covert operations and six members of the operations bureau violated protocol, according to the department.

Eleven of those were disciplined: two sergeants and one officer were fired; one captain was demoted; and five officers and two sergeants were suspended without pay.

"Some employees were disciplined for the inappropriate physical touching," the chief said. "Some employees were disciplined for what I would characterize as ineffective supervision, some for communication issues and some in different places of each. So I wouldn't want to paint all of the 11 employees into a specific corner, but it just tended to vary based on the allegation."

Two other officers were also given "counseling entries," which Lewisville PD said are not considered a form of discipline. Several officers were also reassigned within the department.

"This is not us," Rollins said. "This is not the Lewisville Police Department. This is not normal activity for us. This is a very small subgroup of employees that ended up in an area of misconduct and we've remedied and rectified that."

The chief says officers began to slowly deviate from training and guidelines over the course of the investigation and it went unnoticed as new supervisors transitioned into the unit. He does not believe it is a systemic issue within the department.

"So as we look to continue our covert operations presence in Lewisville, it will be important to have a clear mission, have clear and understood training and guidelines, make sure that we have attentive supervision, that we're communicating effectively all the things that we've exposed or we've identified, just to make sure that we don't replicate a problem that happened once before," he said.

Criminologist and policing expert Dr. Alex Del Carmen, who works at Tarleton State University, said the chief's decisive action is key to winning back public trust and moving forward within the department.

"Hopefully others that may be inclined to do something similar like a violation of policy, they're going to take heed of this warning the chief is sending down the line, which is he's not going to tolerate it," said Dr. Del Carmen.

The department sent the findings to the Texas DPS and Texas Rangers for a criminal investigation, Rollins said, but no charges have been filed yet against the officers.

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Caroline Vandergriff





Caroline Vandergriff joined the CBS 11 News team in September 2019. She grew up in Arlington (go Lamar Vikings!), and is thrilled to be back home in North Texas.

 

[DSL luver]

This is what always happens. Its hard for cops who arrest real criminals doing real crimes, hurting people and messing up their lives, to arrest prostitutes, who hurt no one and in fact make their clients very happy.