By Robert Maxwell
AUSTIN (KXAN) – Two Austin
police officers are off the job starting Wednesday for a total of 11 unpaid
days each after allowing a prisoner to escape last October.
The prisoner was being
transported from the emergency room at University Medical Center Brackenridge
on Oct. 13, 2013, to the Travis County Jail.
A disciplinary memo shows
Officer Leonard Wheeler and the driver, Officer Shawn Williams, failed to
seatbelt the handcuffed prisoner. Additionally, neither officer checked the latch
and lock on the transport van’s door handle, allowing the prisoner to escape.
Further more, neither officer
followed protocol when they did not immediately alert their chain of command of
the escape. The memo states that lapse in judgment put the public at risk.
Ofc. Wheeler only told his
sergeant what had happened after the prisoner had been recaptured.
This is not the first time
Wheeler has been reprimanded. Austin’s police chief suspended Wheeler for seven
days last October for failing to comply with APD policies on the care and
transport of prisoners. That time he failed to turn on his body camera while
transporting a prisoner, something he again failed to do after the prisoner
escape in October, the newest memo shows.
“In this incident,” Chief Art Acevedo
wrote, “Officer Wheeler has again failed to satisfactorily perform his duties.”
The chief also wrote the new
suspension memo may be taken into consideration when Wheeler comes up for
promotion.
This also is Williams’ second
recent suspension. The chief pulled him off the job Aug. 15 for six days for
neglect of duty after he failed to write up a two-car crash that involved a
minor who had been drinking alcohol, according to the disciplinary memo released
then.
In justifying the new 11-day
suspension, the chief noted October’s prisoner escape happened just two months
after Williams finished his first suspension. He, too, could be bypassed for
future promotion according the chief’s memo.
Each officer can appeal the new
suspensions within 10 days.
City of Austin employee records
show Ofc. Leonard Wheeler, 33, has been with APD since November 2005. Ofc. Shawn Williams, 30,
has been with APD since September 2006.