Veteran Troup, TX Police Chief sentenced to 10 years

Troup, Texas:



60 year old Chester Kennedy, police chief of Troup, TX has been sentenced to 10 years prison time for stealing a gun and evidence tampering. Sgt. Samuel "Mark" Turner was sentenced to 3 years in prison for helping himself to seized marijuana in the evidence locker.
In an article running in the Seattle Times, the Smith County prosecutor states:
"In rural East Texas, methamphetamine labs can operate unnoticed. Misdemeanor drug charges in Smith County, about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, are as common as drunken-driving arrests, District Attorney Matt Bingham said. But in the past six years, the Troup police force sent just 11 drug cases to the district attorney's office."


According to the AP wire on the December 2006 conviction, the Troup police department "commonly accepted money and drugs as bribes." Troup has sent only 2 drug evidence samples to the Texas DPS crime lab since the year 2000!

Chester Kennedy had been acquitted in 1993 for indecency with a child charges in neighboring Wood County, while working as a Wood County Sheriff''s deputy, according to the Denton Record-Chronicle. The same article cites the time Chief Kennedy's son violated parole, went into hiding and was caught at Kennedy's home.



Footnote: the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department patrols the city of Troup.
Don't let the cover up continue by local media sound bites that CCSD "now" after the Kennedy conviction "now CCSD patrols the southern part of Troup." Chester Kennedy's jurisdiction included Cherokee County.

Smith and Rusk Counties have attempted to clean up their law enforcement, with the help of local media outlets actually willing to report the FACTS.
Rusk County's Sheriff Department personnel have had ongoing sexual harassment problems with its female staff. The latest has resulted in a federal lawsuit. It takes a Longview attorney to hold a press conference and "break the silence" of the
civil rights violations happening in the Rusk County jail. Similarly, the police chief of Tatum, TX was fired after 9 years of on the job, by a city council vote of no-confidence.


Cherokee County would have reacted to the previous situations with blatantly false media reports and press releases from the Sheriff's Department to distract attention away from the sexual harassment. Perhaps a fictitious character would emerge to praise a rapist cop or drug dealing constable---but when they're caught tell the media that they hadn't shown up for duty in over a year, a la' Larry Pugh and Randall Thompson. Great stuff ain't it?