Law Enforcement–Perpetrated Homicides. Tom Barker

to August 10,1935—the establishment of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Prior to that date, Mexican nationals in the occupied lands were subjected to extralegal violence—lynchings, murders of men and boys, and rape of the women and girls (Romero, 2001).

      Mexican immigrants that came looking for work, starting with the influx of Mexican workers during the 1849 California Gold rush, were subjected to extralegal violence and murder. Mexicans were discriminated against by an established system of Juan Crow laws enforced by violent police actions up until the 1950s in Texas. Mexicans were segregated from Anglos in schools, churches, and restaurants (Martinez, 2018). They were discouraged from voting or serving on juries. Mexicans—legal and illegal ­immigrants—were and still are treated by some as impoverished brown-skinned ­criminals—the dangerous classes, and a threat to the “American way of life” (Gonzales, 2000).

      Although the Texas Rangers, an investigative branch of the Texas Department of Public Safety, is a well-respected law enforcement agency today, this was not always true. In the early nineteenth century, the Texas Rangers were an instrument of racial oppression and terror. Some historians view the early Texas Rangers in the same light as the earlier colonial slave patrols—the first Western vigilante group to be invested with enforcement powers (Martinez, 2018). The fledgling Texas Rangers performed slave patrols objectives after Texas independence in 1836 (Prassel, 1972). Rangers brutally policed the African slaves and prevented slaves from escaping into Mexico. Rangers, at times, crossed into Mexico to bring back runaway slaves.

      The Texas Ranger’s Dark History—Anti-Mexican Homicides

      The Texas Ranger’s “dark history” reveals their murderous efforts at ethnic cleansing in the early settlement of Texas. From August 1915 to June 1920, an unknown number of Mexicans—estimates run from several hundred to several thousand—were killed by the Texas Rangers and vigilante groups during a race war between Anglos and Mexicans—the dangerous class (Carrigan & Webb, 2013; Onion, May 5, 2016; Martinez, 2018). A 1919 report of the Texas legislature investigation into the actions of the Texas Rangers that was sealed until 2000 has the following passage: “During the course of these events [1910 to 1919], the regular Texas Rangers along with hundreds of special rangers appointed by Texas governors killed an estimated 5,000 Hispanics along the border between 1914 and 1919” (http://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/taro/tslac/50062/tsl-50062.html). The actions of the Rangers and their collusion with vigilante groups was an ethnic cleansing effort to remove all Mexicans from Texas—Mexican American citizens and Mexican nationals (Martinez, 2018). The Texas Rangers during that period used homicide as racially motivated violence.

      

      Knowlton (1970) gives the example of a Mexican American from Texas whose grandfather was hung by the Texas Rangers as his family watched. Anglo-American ranchers drove branded cattle on his land and accused him of stealing them. The Anglos got his grandfather’s property after the hanging. Between 1848 and 1929 there were 597 documented lynchings of Mexicans in the United States—Texas (282), California (188), Arizona (59), and New Mexico (49) (Carrigan & Webb, 2003). Based on the relative size of the population, the risk of lynching was nearly as high or greater for Mexicans in the southwest as it was for blacks in the South (Carrigan & West, 2003: 414). One of the largest lynchings in U.S. history occurred in Nueces County, Texas. Forty Mexicans were randomly lynched for the murder of a white man in 1877 (Carrigan & West, 2003). The Texas Rangers were directly or indirectly involved in many of these lynching’s.

      In 1881, Texas Rangers crossed into Mexico to bring back a wanted Mexican national. The Rangers illegally extradited the wanted man, and once back in Texas, they turned him over to a mob that lynched him (Carrigan & Webb, 2003). Following a train robbery in Texas in 1915, Texas Rangers killed two Mexican train passengers suspected of aiding the robbers. The Rangers then took eight Mexican suspects to the banks of the Rio Grande River and executed them (Carrigan & Webb, 2003). The bodies were left on the border river as an example of Texas Ranger swift justice. The 1919 Porvenir Massacre is a tragic example of the brutal tactics of the Texas Rangers as they engaged in the removal of Mexicans from Texas.

      Porvenir Massacre

      Porvenir, Texas, is in a rural, rugged, isolated area of mountains, desert and the Rio Grande River just across the Texas-Mexico border and the city of Chihuahua, Mexico. In 1918, Anglo ranchers in the area complained that Mexican bandits were raiding their property. It was rumored that the Mexican residents in Porvenir were providing safe passage and support for the Marauders (Harris & Sadler, 2004; Martinez, 2018). The ranchers claimed that men from Porvenir joined the gangs on raids. At the time, only one Anglo—a schoolteacher—lived in the small community. The area was under the jurisdiction of Texas Ranger Company B at Marfa, Texas commanded by Captain J. M. Fox. Captain Fox was ordered by the commander of the Big Bend District to “clean out the nest” of bandits in Porvenir. He did that with a vengeance.

      Captain Fox and Company B composed of eight rangers, four local ranchers accompanied by members of the U.S. Eighth Calvary who had been ordered to assist the Texas Rangers in searching for weapons rode into Porvenir at 2:00 a.m. The soldiers woke the residents and had them stand outside their residences. The soldiers who regularly patrolled the area were known and trusted by the residents. The soldiers assured the frightened residents that the hated and feared Texas Rangers would not harm them. Captain Fox dismissed the soldiers, and the Texas Rangers took control of the terrified residents and moved them to a nearby bluff.

      According to later eyewitness testimony, the Rangers tied all the men and boys together and began shooting them (Harris & Sadler, 2004; Martinez, 2018). Soldiers heard the shots and the screaming women and rushed to the massacre scene. The soldiers found fifteen bodies, each with multiple wounds and a coup de grace headshot. One of the soldiers said the massacre scene reminded him of a slaughterhouse (Martinez, 2018: 123). He added, “A hospital corpsman who was with us went over to the bodies, but not a breath was left in a single one. The professionals had done their work well.” The resulting investigation concluded that the fifteen Mexicans killed by the Rangers and the ranchers had been disarmed and were helpless prisoners when they were executed (Harris & Sadler, 2004: 354).

      The Texas Governor was told that the men and boys killed were innocent farmers and not bandits. No one was ever prosecuted for the massacre, but Texas Governor Hobby disbanded Texas Ranger Company B, fired all the Rangers involved, and forced Captain Fox to resign. Within the last two years, Texas has finally acknowledged that the Porvenir Massacre and the other atrocities of the Texas Rangers occurred (Casares, February 3, 2018; Martinez, 2018).

      Police Violence against Individuals and Groups in Early American History

      Police violence and homicides against individuals and groups have a long history in the United States in addition to the multiple homicides committed against the dangerous classes during protests, demonstrations, and dissent outlined previously. In their history, New York police have used their official position to commit and cover up crimes from burglary to election fraud and murder (Sherman, 1978). The same could be said for most U.S. urban police departments. The best narrative of the early 1900s police violence in New York City is contained in the 1931 autobiography of NYPD Captain Cornelius W. Williams (Williams, 1931, see also Reppetto, 1978). His descriptions of police violence events are too numerous to present here. Police-perpetrated homicide was a common outcome of police-citizen interactions, regardless of race or ethnicity. The first-known U.S. LEO to be convicted and executed for a murder committed on duty was NYPD Lt. Charles Becker in 1912. Then, and now, police officers worked hand and glove with local criminal gangs, including acting as “muscle” for criminal gangs (see Haller (1976) for the working relationship between the Chicago police and criminals 1890–1925). Seven years earlier—1905—an NYPD Patrolman had been convicted of murdering a black night watchman (Johnson, 2003: 81). The NYPD officer claimed he shot in self-defense. That did not convince the jury because the black man was shot in the back and several witnesses testified that the officer had fired several additional shots as the man lay helpless on his back. In 1926 another NYPD officer was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death after murdering a shopkeeper who identified him in a line-up in a police station house as an attempted extortionist (Johnson,