Lopez’s first training phase was with Senior Corporal David Kattner, badge No. 5885. The two got along well, working the overnight first watch out of Central Division, which covers almost 14 square miles of urban area downtown, Uptown, and in East Dallas. Kattner, a husky guy in his late 30s, had a wry sense of humor, a sharp mind, and he wasn’t afraid to mix it up on the streets. He expected Lopez to do half the work from day one and treated her like a full partner instead of an apprentice. She took copious notes on everything he taught her. He was the first experienced officer with whom she’d spent any time. So as far as she knew, what he did was the Way It Was Done.
It was not unusual for the pair to get calls from male officers needing assistance in searching a female suspect. They sometimes took three or four calls a night to assist three of Kattner’s buddies—Stecker, Nelson, and Senior Corporal Al Schoelen, badge No. 4142. The three were “old heads,” or veterans. Nelson was an intense former military man with a mean streak and experience in interrogations. Stecker, on the other hand, laughed easily and seemed grounded. Schoelen was mercurial and spoke with a nasally voice. Schoelen almost always rode alone.
Schoelen, Stecker, Nelson, and Kattner often dealt with people whom Lopez came to know as the usual suspects—mostly street people, prostitutes, and hustlers. The old heads knew them on a first-name basis. One night early in Lopez’s training phase, in a parking lot at a 7-Eleven on Fitzhugh Avenue, Nelson put a prostitute in the back of his patrol car. Lopez sat in front. As Kattner stood inside the store sipping his Monster energy drink, Nelson proceeded with what he called “64 questions.” It was really a series of insults to demoralize the woman.
“Give me the four reasons why you hate to f--- *******.” “Give me the four reasons you hate to f--- spics.” “What are the three things you like to do every day?” And so on.
After releasing the woman, Nelson told Lopez, “They know the routine. They do what we tell them. You break them down like that, and they’ll do anything you want. They’ll come when you snap your fingers.”...
...Today, Lopez thinks she has it figured out. That night at Herrera’s, without even meaning to, she’d snitched on Kattner for using the AIS to write illegal tickets and pad his activity reports. In hindsight, if she’d realized what was going on, she admits she would have simply kept her mouth shut. Maybe that wouldn’t have been fair to the street people Kattner was writing tickets for, but cops don’t snitch on other cops.
Lopez thinks that after that dinner, Burch took the information to Branton—not because he was a snitch himself, but because he was following the rules. Branton, who is good friends with Kattner, and another sergeant who watches out for the old heads, Sergeant Walter Clifton, badge No. 4016, decided Lopez had to be run out. And so they did it. Nice and neat. They even tried to goad her into signing a resignation with the promise that nothing negative would be reflected on her Texas peace officer’s license. But dismissed during probation? Even if she wanted to apply for a job in another city’s police department, no one would hire her.
That’s what Lopez believes. If it were just her word, it wouldn’t amount to much. After all, she is a disgruntled former employee, and her official dismissal indicates she couldn’t hack it. Kattner, Stecker, Schoelen, Nelson, Branton, Rodriguez, and Clifton would all probably say the same thing, if they hadn’t refused to talk to D Magazine for this story.
But it’s not just Lopez’s word. There are records, lots of them. Arrest and citation records show a pattern of activity consistent with Lopez’s allegations. And other cops have come forward to talk about the Central Division cabal of old heads, their phony ticket scheme, abuse of suspects, falsification of evidence, and misuse of federal resources to make bogus arrests.
