Volunteer firefighter arrested for arson in his own protection district.
- Thread starter ozzyy1
- Start date
CodeMan
Member
MESDA6
Member
This story was also on our local TV news. The newscast indicated that he had only been a member of the department for 2 months. There are comments on some websites indicating he's done this in the past. Makes you wonder if anyone did a background check.
HILO
Member
In Dallas, there is a tiny square mile town called Cockrell Hill. They have a paid PD, and a VFD. The town contracts with Dallas Fire and Rescue for Ambulance service. Back in the late 90's/early 2000's, the majority of the VFD members were a bunch of early 20's power trippers. They would respond to city of Dallas freeway wrecks 3 miles away, in their POV's calling it mutual aid. During that time, the Chief was doing drugs and stealing money from the town. His son (a VFF) was lighting dumpsters and and vacant houses on fire so they would get a call out. On the Dallas side,during the weekends, we started getting a high number of phantom major accident calls on the nearby highways, smoke in the area calls on the border, and heavy rescue wreck calls on nearby surface streets. DFD started to notice that these Cockrell Hill VFF's were always showing up lights and siren to the area. One of the Lt's from the station closest to the CHVFD mentioned it to me one night. One of my traffic Officers and I started posting up in the area the following weekend. Sure enough, the calls would come out almost hourly. And these POV's would come screaming up the the call location. We back tracked the 911 reports, and it was always pay phones. The next night, we had communications send the traffic Officer all addresses that 911 calls of this nature were originating from. We had deployment (plain clothes) run to the address the 911 calls came from, while we went to the calls. We never caught any of them leaving the call originating area, but it was taking 1-2 minutes from the call being taken, to being dispatched. We think the VFFs got wise to me and my traffic Officer showing up at all of these calls, even the ones from the FD side, two nights in a row, because the calls stopped two hours into Saturday night. We were never able to prove they were making the false calls. Because all of the calls were primary FD call outs, Dallas FD went and told CHVFD to stop running their POV's to Dallas calls. The patrol division was then instructed to stop any unmarked vehicle running lights and sirens, traveling away from Cockrell Hill city limits. Once the Chief and his son were both locked up on felonies, all that foolishness stopped.