Former Cherokee County Director of Adult Supervision sentenced to 50 years for continuous sex assault of child

Criminal Docket Case 21242 :
CONTINUOUS SEX ABUSE OF CHILD - VICTIM UNDER 14

THE STATE OF TEXAS vs PHILLIPS, CARL
Filed 08/23/2019 - Disposition: 12/12/2019 Conviction-guilty plea
369th District Court, District Clerk, Cherokee County, Texas
Plaintiff: THE STATE OF TEXAS
Defendant: PHILLIPS, CARL- DOB: 10/03/1950  

The continuous sex assault of a child only gets a 3 sentence paragraph in all but one East Texas newspaper and no mention the perp was head of the Probation Department. Why? Because the Cherokee County Sheriff Department and District Attorney's office have worked side by side with child molesters for decades. They work in the courthouse, in law enforcement, and serve on juries. That's what Cherokee County tax dollars are paying for. The man in charge of supervising the probation of county sex offenders for over 30 years is a convicted pedophile.

Cherokee County's longest serving employee and top Criminal Justice official is a convicted child molester.

Children living in Cherokee County, TX and neighboring areas have always been in great danger because the media down there only reports what they want you to know. They don't dig very deep when the story involves their own next of kin. They publish cookie cutter garbage fed to them by corrupt parasites and perverts. They don't want the public to know exactly what's going on at the schools and daycare. On cue they scramble to the press room to give themselves fake awards after their accomplices are caught raping children.

The head of the Cherokee County Probation Department for 30+ years is a child molester. This is another reason why Cherokee County District Attorney Elmer Beckworth and the district courts have placed hundreds of local child sex offenders on probation, despite mandatory sentencing for sex crimes. Registered sex offenders are confidential informants and do what they are told when impaneled on juries.

Former Adult Probation Director Carl Phillips, 69 Jacksonville, was arrested in July 2019 for sexual contact / indecency with a child, quickly indicted and sentenced in record time. Before the ink could dry on the District Attorney's press release, Phillips pleaded guilty to the sex abuse of a minor, had his almost completed probation revoked, and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. (Source: CBS 19) Apparently he violated his own Deferred Adjudication for stealing county credit cards back in the day while he was receiving county awards. During this time, Phillips also worked as a Teacher's Aide in a neighboring Smith County Jr. High School. The reported child molestation occurred over an 18 month period. (Source: KETK)

Former East Texas corrections director molested child for more than 18 months

RUSK, Texas (KETK) – A former top employee for Cherokee County will spend the rest of his life in prison after pleading guilty to sexually abusing a child over an 18 month period.

Carl Phillips was the former director of the Cherokee County Supervision and Corrections Department and had previously pleaded guilty to spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on personal purchases.

Phillps [sic] was sentenced to 50 years in prison with no chance of parole for the child sexual assault. According to the indictment, the molestation took place between January 2018 and June 2019. Court records indicated the child was younger than 14. (Source: KETK - Former East Texas corrections director molested child for more than 18 months)

Not one county "news" outlet reported Phillips was the head of the Cherokee County Probation and Community Services Department for three decades. They refer to him "a man from Jacksonville," not a former Criminal Justice Department head. The truth is too unsavory.

A 70-year old man having sex with children while drawing a county pension doesn't get much attention in incestuous backwoods East Texas. County officials aren't upset that Cal Phillips was stealing probation money and molesting children, they're pissed that a news outlet in Tyler, Texas informs the public.



Director of Corrections Carl Phillips receiving his 35-year Cherokee County service accommodation from County Judge Chris Davis circa 2009 (Courtesy: Jacksonville Progress) 

Rusk, TX:

Corrections Director Carl Phillips, 69, began working in Cherokee County government in 1974 and was awarded his 35-year service pin in January 2009. After he retired later that year, he was charged with 2 counts of Felony Theft by a Public Servant and Tampering with Evidence. His initial charge was dismissed in July 2009; a year later he was offered 10 years deferred probation.  He embezzled over $60,000 on county credit cards. Phillips is the longest serving Cherokee County employee on record, working in the Probation Department and ironically heading the Juvenile and Sex Offender Bootcamps. (Source: Jacksonville Progress) Even more ironic, he was chosen to represent Cherokee County as a member of Congressman Charlie Wilson's "Crime Task Force, " a bible-based morality crime legislation panel in the 1990's, i.e. the perfect cover for a homegrown pedophile. 

 

As head of the Cherokee County Corrections Department, was Carl Phillips ever asked to recuse himself from jury duty while he was stealing probation money and molesting children?

Christmastime in Cherokee County circa 1997 (Courtesy Cherokeean Herald)

Criminal Docket Case 17638 : THEFT OF PROPERTY BY A PUBLIC SERVANT
THE STATE OF TEXAS vs PHILLIPS, CARL Filed 11/23/2009 - Disposition: 07/29/2010 Dismissed-insufficient evidence
2nd District Court, District Clerk, Cherokee County, Texas

Criminal Docket Case 17845 : THEFT OF PROPERTY BY A PUBLIC SERVANT
THE STATE OF TEXAS vs PHILLIPS, CARL Filed 07/26/2010 - Disposition: 10/28/2010 Conviction-guilty plea
369th District Court, District Clerk, Cherokee County, Texas  

Credit card abuse by a county employee gets a higher word count in the local newspapers than the rape and murder of local children.  Sex crimes committed by officials are buried in the advertisement section.

DA’s office announces conviction -Jacksonville Daily Progress Oct 30, 2010

Carl Phillips, former director of the Cherokee County Supervision and Corrections Department, was sentenced to 10 years deferred adjudication community supervision for theft and 10 years confinement in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Institutional Division for misapplication by a fiduciary Thursday.

The alleged theft and misapplication of property by Phillips took place between January 1999 and June 2009. His actions came to light after his June 2009 retirement, when an employee of his former office alerted his successor to the theft. Phillips was accused of using a state-issued credit card for personal expenses totaling more than $20,000 but less than $100,000.

Credit card charges made by Phillips included food, oil, gasoline, tires, household utilities, dental services, cell phone services, musical instruments, lodging, concert tickets, sporting event tickets and other services, according to the indictment. Phillips then shredded, secreted or otherwise destroyed credit card receipts, according to the December 2009 indictment.

Phillips had been employed by Cherokee County for about 35 years Phillips will file a motion for “shock probation” after serving 60 days in TDCJ, according to a statement from the Cherokee County District Attorney’s office. The sentencing was part of a plea agreement between Phillips and the State of Texas, in which the Court approved. (Source: Jacksonville Progress)

Local pedophiles serve on juries as insurance to keep district court cases from being overturned. For decades 369th District Judge Bascom Bentley acted as if he were district judge of the 2nd Judicial District Court, and vice versa. He even allowed his signature to be forged on sex offender orders.

 

Fast-forward to 2019 and the Cherokee County newspapers refuse to identify a convicted serial child molester as the former head of the Probation Department. Carl Phillips was part of the county budget decision making for over 30 years according to their own articles. What they don't report has been going on in plain sight for decades. For example why District Judge Bascom Bentley's signature was forged and rubber-stamped for the early release of sex offenders.  And why registered sex offenders are called for jury duty. They hide Phillips' identity to cloak their ongoing involvement. Phillips is currently incarcerated in the Gurney Unit in Palestine, TX.

Stolen: $190,000 from Azleway Boy's Ranch

Don't be fooled. Charities and faith based non-profits are cookie jars for Cherokee County and neighboring locals. No one cares where the money goes because of the fraudulent tax write-offs.

 

Troup, TX:
Azleway Boy's Ranch QC Administrator Toni Rambo, 54, has been charged with stealing nearly $190,000 over a 5 year period. Rambo lives in Troup, TX located in northeastern Cherokee County bordering Smith County. The 50-acre child services facility housed at-risk boys ranging in ages 6 to 17 years-old and has operated for the last 40 years in the Tyler area. According to Smith County investigators, Rambo altered charity allowance records and pocketed the children's funds beginning in 2015. (Source: KLTV)

Azleway, Inc. operates as a tax-exempt 501c3 nonprofit charity. The IRS allows donors to take a tax deduction for contributions of goods, cash and other assets. Cash pledges donated to the children living at the ranch were to be disbursed weekly based on good behavior. Cash receipts were provided to donating businesses and entities for tax purposes, while Rambo oversaw the agency bookkeeping.

One example given was a sheet showing a resident earned $7. Rambo then added $75 for an amount totaling $82 and kept the $75. (Source: Longview News Journal)

Forensic documents allege that Rambo misappropriated $48,049 in 2015, $53,546 in 2016, $42,969 in 2017, and $26,437 in 2018 (Source: KETX)

Rambo admitted to the scheme during an interview with administrators and attorneys. (Source: Tyler Paper) She is charged with 1st Degree Felony Theft and on out on a $300,000 bond.

Toni Marie Rambo, Troup TX, pleaded guilty to the theft of the nearly $200,000 on February 21, 2020 in Smith County's 114 District Court. (Source: KETK)


Toni Marie Rambo

On March 12, 2020 Rambo was sentenced to 40 years prison for embezzling nearly $200,000 according to KLTV (Source: Troup woman gets 40 years in prison for embezzling nearly $200,000 from Azleway)

Azleway Boy's Ranch has been under legal scrutiny after allegations of abuse and inappropriate relationships between the staff and children were reported to State Protective Services.  (Source: CBS 19) HHSC conducted 103 investigations between December 2016 and 2018 as the money poured in.

Among the documents are several allegations where residents were reported to have "sexually act out", including an incident on November 12, 2018 where, “a child in care at the ranch was accused of raping another child.” There's also several claims of boys being left unsupervised, resulting in injuries to some of the residents.

In one case, less than a month ago, "a child in care was able to gain access of a butcher knife in order to make threats of bodily harm." Also among the claims investigated by HHSC are allegations into inappropriate behavior by caregivers at the ranch.

Caregivers are accused of exposing the boys to drugs like marijuana and to pornographic materials. In addition to that, several reports allege inappropriate punishment, threats of physical harm, and verbal abuse by the caregivers towards the residents. (Source: CBS 19)

Executive Director Gary Duke is leaving his post in January 2019. Azleway has since transitioned to a foster care facility and changed it name to Azleway Valley View. (Source: CBS 19)

Repeat Jacksonville, TX sex offender pleads guilty to sex assault of a child circa 1989; gets 4 years time served

Local pedophiles serve on juries as insurance to keep district court cases from being overturned.

 

When law enforcement, prosecutors, and investigators conduct themselves in an unlawful manner, violent criminals can get away with murder. Cherokee County sex offenders and drug addicts are paid to be the "source" of information obtained illegally by the Sheriff Department and district attorney's office.

Being a wanted sex offender puts them at the top of the Grand Jury Pool and tax dollar handouts. Tommy Stricklen of Jacksonville fell into the good graces of his Cherokee County in-laws who used his handicapped daughter to solicit donations in the local newspapers. His name was also found routinely on the District Court Clerk's revolving grand jury list, despite being a registered sex offender.

Rape and murder have no statute of limitations. While authorities in Ector County, TX continued to pursue justice for over 30 years, Stricklen was paraded around the Cherokee County courthouse as a model citizen.

   
Thomas Ward Stricklen, Jr. (Courtesy: DPS) Stricklen has been called to jury duty more than the District Judges combined.

After molesting his underage handicapped cousin in 1989, Tommy Stricklen, Jr. moved from Ector County to Jacksonville, TX as a registered sex offender. Stricklen had remained the number one suspect in the cold case murder of a 15-year old girl in Ector County during this time period.

In 2015 Odessa authorities were finally able to match semen samples taken from the girl's dead body to Stricklen's DNA taken as part of his sex offender registration. Stricklen was arrested in Jacksonville and transported back to Ector County where he faced a murder trial and hung jury in 2018.

Thompson Ward Stricklen Jr., 55, [was ] accused of fatally cutting open the throat of 15-year-old Wendy Burdette in 1989.

He was indicted in 2015 on the charge of murder after semen found inside of Burdette matched his DNA, but that wasn’t enough to convince the entire [Ector County, TX ] jury.

The jury deliberated for more than seven hours until District 358 Judge W. Stacy Trotter declared a mistrial. (Source: Odessa American, July 19, 2018)

 
Ector County murder trial 2018

A second murder trial was slated for the summer of 2019 while Stricklen remained incarcerated on felony bond when murder charges were dropped by Ector County prosecutors. Stricklen was offered 4 years credited jail time when Odessa Police misconduct during the investigation was raised by court appointed attorneys. The Odessa American reports:

A 56-year-old man pled guilty to sexual assault of a child from a case dating back to 1989.

Thompson Stricklen Jr. was sentenced to four years in prison after he pled guilty. Stricklen was previously tried in July 2018 for the 1989 murder of 15-year-old Wendy Burdette, an Ector County District Attorney’s affidavit detailed.

That case resulted in a mistrial with hung jury. Stricklen’s charges of murder and a second sexual assault were dismissed due to the termination of the lead investigator for the Odessa Police Department for dishonesty and violating department policy, court records show.

Stricklen was credited with 1,458 days of jail time, court records show. (Source: Odessa American, July 19, 2019)

Which means Tommy Stricklen was given time served (1458 days = 3.99 years).  He is now under sex offender supervision in Gregg County, TX.

Rape and murder of 10-year old girl in Cherokee County gets national coverage, short shrift from locals

From Breitbart News Texas Aug 27, 2019:

A previously deported illegal alien has pleaded guilty to strangling and drowning his ten-year-old cousin in Cherokee County, TX after sexually assaulting her. He had been arrested TWICE before in Smith County for ASSAULT OF A FAMILY MEMBER.

 

Gustavo Zavala-Garcia, an illegal alien from Mexico living in Cherokee County, pleaded guilty on Aug. 22, 2019 to murdering his cousin Kayla Gomez-Orozco in 2016, after the 10-year old girl went missing, CBS Austin reports.

Kayla’s body was found Nov. 5, 2016 four days after her abduction, in a well on the property where Zavala-Garcia lived in the 22100 block of Farm-to-Market Road 2493 (Old Jacksonville Highway) in Bullard, TX. He had been living there and working in the area for 2 years after being deported on domestic violence abuse charges.

As reported in the region, Cherokee County, TX law enforcement assisted in the search for Kayla Gomez-Orozco and released multiple statements upon discovering her body. However after the indictment of Gustavo Zavala-Garcia and details of his immigration status and the sex assault were revealed, local media buried the story.





"We've caught this guy twice before."

The Cherokee County Sheriff's Department was placed front and center during the FBI search, then dropped after the sex assault and cause of death became public. Even though the abduction, Amber Alert, and homicide all occurred in Cherokee County, TX, the case was handled in neighboring Smith County. Why? Because Zavala-Garcia returned to his Cherokee County employer after his deportation orders even though he had been charged with multiple violent crimes 20 minutes away in Tyler, TX. He had a house, a job, and transportation waiting for him in Cherokee County, supplied by a local farmer everyone knows and everyone is related to. (Source: Jacksonville Progress)

A timeline was constructed based on witness accounts, evidence located at Zavala-Garcia's place and his cell phone records.

Investigators believe he took Gomez-Orozco in his vehicle as he left the church Nov. 1, and sometime between the time he arrived home and the time when his wife told law enforcement agents he entered their residence “is when (the) suspected party concealed the victim in the well,” the affidavit states.

Cell phone records also revealed that Zavala-Garcia contacted his employer by cell phone that evening, “requesting to borrow one of the business vehicles to assist with the search” for the girl after his wife told him she was missing from the church, the affidavit added.

Although the employer did not answer the call, he text messaged Zavala-Garcia the next morning, Nov. 2, “asking what was needed,” according to the affidavit, which added that his employer was not aware if a company vehicle was used.

However, footage from a local convenience store surveillance camera shows Zavala-Garcia and his wife on Nov. 1 at the gas pump in one of the company trucks and places them inside the store between 8:12 p.m. and 8:18 p.m., the affidavit noted. (Warrant Affidavit reaveals timeline of child's death, Nov 12, 2016 Jacksonville Progress)

The illegal alien's name was widely reported as his alias "Gustavo Gonzalez," the name he used working in Cherokee County, TX. His previous assault arrests and charges have been conveniently ignored. Cherokee County hires the cheapest ranch hands in East Texas, no questions asked.

 

Court records released after the murder reveal gruesome details where Zavala-Garcia kidnapped Gomez-Orozco from a church service and attempted to sexually assault her. According to Smith County prosecutors, the illegal alien struck the girl in the head with a blunt object, then strangled and drowned her. Gomez-Orozco’s body was found days later in a water well at the home where Zavala-Garcia had been living.

 

As Breitbart News reported in 2016, Zavala-Garcia crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally sometime after 2014, when he was first deported for violent crime charges, having been arrested TWICE for domestic abuse/ assault of a family member that year.

 
Gustavo Zavala-Garcia arrested in June 2014 for Assault Bodily Injury to a Family (Courtesy Smith County)

 
Gustavo Zavala-Garcia arrested in October 2014 for Assault Bodily Injury to a Family (Courtesy Smith County)

Zavala-Garcia will serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murder. (Courtesy Breitbart News and CBS 19)

Jacksonville, TX sex offender faces murder retrial in Odessa cold case

Local papers used their news platforms for donation requests to financially help a convicted sex offender now on trial for murder.

How does a child molester get called for jury duty? First, the Sheriff Department uses drugs and taxpayer money to recruit the unemployable convicted pedophile (and family members) into the county drug informant ring. The stoolpigeons supply the dirt on their neighbors in exchange for grubby little handouts from narcotics officers. Annual sex offender registrations are ignored, while the Good Ol’ Boys and Gals promote the child rapist in local newspapers. Typically, the child molester or family member is cast as the victim of some extraordinary circumstance to make the story palatable and sympathetic; forgotten sex offender registration is buried and never mentioned in the articles.

In Cherokee County, registered sex offenders have their mailing address published in the newspapers to solicit donations. Their names are deliberately misspelled on juror forms in order to be called for jury duty and law enforcement officials can deny working hand-in-hand with them. They could be disqualified on a petit jury, but on a grand jury they get a free ride to the courthouse and a free meal courtesy of District Attorney investigators.

 

Local pedophiles serve on juries as insurance to keep district court cases from being overturned.

 

Also, in Cherokee County, the sex offender/informant is paraded around the schools during athletic and holiday events to keep them in constant contact with hand-picked jury pools. The district attorney enlists the district clerk to keep child predators on the revolving door jury summons. They know the Attorney General’s office would never go back decades to verify falsified jury selection questionnaires and contaminated juries. Who knows what they would unravel? 500 miles away the City of Odessa Police Department found matching DNA of a murder suspect who was also a paroled child sex offender living the high life in Jacksonville, TX courtesy of Cherokee County taxpayers. (East Texas man arrested for 1989 slaying of West Texas teen, CBS 19 TV)

  

Tommy Stricklen, Jr. registered sex offender circa 2011 (CBS 19)

Jacksonville, TX: 
26 years later, the 1989 cold case murder of Wendy Burdette of Odessa, TX led to a DNA match and the 2015 arrest of 58-year old Jacksonville resident Tommy Stricklen, Jr. (Source: Washington Times ) The Texas Department of Public Safety reportedly matched semen with DNA samples taken from Stricklen's long overdue sex offender registration in Cherokee County. Stricklen and his family are well-known in local newspapers as charity cases via his handicapped daughter who attended Jacksonville ISD. With the help of local media, the Stricklen family set up donation pages for his daughter's wheelchairs. Back in Ector County circa 1989, the underage victim Wendy Burdette was 15-years old when Stricklen admitted to having sex with her; he was 27 at the time. He was charged during the same time period for the molestation of his handicapped 11-year old relative.

 
Stricklen in court courtesty Odessa-American

Tommy Stricklen moved to Jacksonville, TX in 1998; his sex offender registry had not been updated since 2011. In 2015, the Odessa Police Department requested DNA results from semen samples taken in 1989 from Wendy Burdette's body. Stricklen had remained the number one suspect after Burdette's body was found. She was stabbed multiple times, her throat cut and body dumped according to investigators. (Source: Odessa-American)

Stricklen was charged by Odessa Police in July 2015 with underage sex assault and murder and transported back to Odessa where was indicted in October of that year. Three years later, he faced an Ector County trial jury in June 2018 resulting in a mistrial after 7 hours of deliberation. Stricklen had told police he remembered Burdette as a prostitute and sought her out for for an unpaid drug deal; he has denied killing her.


 
Wendy Burdette

Ector County prosecutors announced a retrial of the 1989 murder of Wendy Burdette to go forward in the 358th District Court later in 2019, 30 years later after the homicide. (Source: Odessa-American) East Texas media has dropped the story after a decade and half of lauding Tommy Stricklen and family with stories of delightful high school spirit and freebies for his wheelchair-bound daughter. When setting up donation pages for the Stricklen family, they did not include his lifetime sex offender status and parole from the molestation of a disabled 11-year old female relative back in 1989. Instead, he was encouraged to work around Cherokee County children and volunteer at schools while ignoring his sex offender restrictions.

Stricklen remains in Ector County custody on $650,000 in bonds.

16-year Veteran Cherokee County Deputy indicted on 5 felony counts of Indecency with a Minor

(Courtesy KETK)

You can tell it’s going to be a Pretend Slow News week when local media refuses to cover what’s under their and their cousins’ noses.
Then again the news is worse than the fiction.


Cherokee County Deputy Sergeant Jonathan Bryan Shobert, 47 of Jacksonville, TX is out on his original $50,000 bond after being formally indicted on 5 separate felony counts of Indecency with a Minor, stemming from alleged incidents occuring in the Fall and Winter of 2018 (not in early January this year as previously reported). Deputy Shobert has been ordered to stay away from the victim, his wife, and nearby schools. Deputy Shobert has been in Cherokee County law enforcement since 2002. In fact he remained employed after being arrested by the Texas Rangers in Febuary 2019.

Cuney, Texas police chief charged with falsifying police cadet form

 
Cuney, TX is a town located in northwest Cherokee County, Texas.

Cuney, TX operates the 6th worst offending speed trap in Texas, generating an annual average of $319,117, or $2,279 per town resident, from speeding citations issued along a small stretch of U.S. Highway 175. Cuney was the only "wet" town in Cherokee County from the mid-1980s until 2009, when voters in Rusk came out in favor of beer/wine sales. After that result, voters in Jacksonville and Frankston have since voted in favor of beer/wine sales, and Rusk voters returned to the polls to vote in favor of liquor sales. As of 2017, there is only one liquor store remaining in Cuney. (Courtesy: Wikipedia)

 Police Chief Gregory Sinkfield, booked courtesy Gregg County Jail

Cuney, TX Police Chief Gregory Sinkfield, an 18-year law enforcement veteran, has been released without bond from the Gregg County jail on tampering with a government record allegations. The charges stem from a female cadet's admission form he falsely certified to the East Texas Police Academy, in which he claimed she had been working for the Cuney Police Department. (Source: KLTV) The Pay to Play case is being handled by TECLOE and Criminal Justice Information Services, a division of the FBI. (Source: Longview News-Journal) The East Texas Police Academy is located in Kilgore, TX.

 The City of Cuney made national news in 2016 when its entire police force quit over disagreements with the new mayor over police policy they deemed "harrassing." (Source: KLTV, Cuney police force resigns, May 31, 2016 )

 
Cherokee County, TX deputies speak with outgoing Cuney, TX mayor after entire police force resigns. (Courtesy: Daily Progress)

The Cherokee County Sheriff's Department took over patrol duties until June 2016, when Chief Gregory Sinkfield was hired along with three other parttime reserve officers to watch the town with a population of 140 on a busy day.

---

[Reprinted from Daily Progress] Cuney: Small town hires new police chief ( Jun 23, 2016 )

Gregory Sinkfield Sr., a 16-year law enforcement veteran, is now the top cop in Cuney. Sinkfield, a 44-year-old native of Atlanta, Georgia, was sworn into office Monday as the new Cuney Police Chief after being hired June 16 to succeed Michael Trawick, who stepped down from the position on May 31. The new chief said he's looking forward to serving as the city's top officer, having recently served as a lieutenant on the Coffee City police force.

“My police chief pulled me aside and said he thought this would be a good opportunity,” and so he applied, he said. Sinkfield's career includes stints with the Morris Brown College police department in Atlanta and the City of Pine Lake, Georgia, before moving to Texas in 2005. Here, he served as a police sergeant in Lone Oak, as well as a field training officer and investigator with the Dallas Community College District in El Centro and Richland, before returning to Georgia in 2007 as deputy police chief with Atlanta College.

Sinkfield held that position for more than two years before becoming supervisor over the criminal investigation division at Clark Atlanta University, he said. Having earned a doctorate in divinity, Sinkfield began pastoring full-time in 2011 at Empowering Life Christian Church in Atlanta, until his family's return to Texas in 2013, where he subsequently joined the police force in Coffee City. Additionally, the chief is a certified training instructor for firearms as well as a law enforcement educator. Sinkfield and his wife, a first-grade teacher for Mesquite ISD, have five children.

They will continue to live in the Metroplex, where Sinkfield is a pastor at Empowering Life Church in Mesquite. “I'm looking for a home here, where I'll be staying during the week,” he said, adding that he doesn't think the arrangement will pose a challenge. “I plan to hold a town hall meeting, where I can listen to the concerns of the citizens,” he said. “From there, we can be a more community-oriented police department, who is more (attuned) to the community's needs.”

Along with the meeting, future plans including a back-to-school initiative featuring a backpack drive for students, participating in National Night Out and helping to ensure the safety of local children through participation in different programs. His background as parent, pastor and police officer spurs him to focus on youths. “It's a combination of them all, of being a concerned parent, of being a pastor and (being married to an educator). I feel the community can benefit from that,” Sinkfield said. He oversees a force of 11 officers, who primarily are reserves.

Sinkfield is the only full-time officer, while his second in command, Sergeant Allan Richardson – a five-year Coffee City police veteran who was hired Monday – is a part-time city employee. Other part-time employees on the force include Investigator Lamont Hughes of the Van Zandt County Sheriff's Office and Kelan Logan, who graduates from the Cedar Valley College Law Enforcement Academy on Thursday. Until Sinkfield's hire, the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office provided service in Cuney after the city's force quit in late May, leaving the town of 140 without police protection.  (Source: Daily Progress, June 26, 2016)

16-year Veteran Cherokee County Deputy arrested for Indecency with a Child

Indecency with a Child: under Texas Law, the intentional exposure of genitals to a child or having a child expose themself for sexual purposes, including touching or simulated intercourse- Texas Penal Code Section 21.11 

Cherokee County Deputy Sergeant Jonathan Bryan Shobert, 46, of Jacksonville, Texas was arrested by the Texas Rangers on February 13, 2019 on indecency with a minor charges. (Source: KETK )

A long-time resident of Jacksonville, Texas, Deputy Jon Shobert formally introduced himself to the community in 2002 when he began working as a reserve dispatch officer with the Jacksonville Police Department. In 2005, Shobert became a full-time Patrol Officer with the JPD and in 2012 received a 10-year service award from the Jacksonville City Council (Source: Jacksonville Progress, Cop's Corner Oct. 24, 2006) He later transferred to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department where he is still employed according to sparse reporting.

Deputy Shobert has worked in Cherokee County, TX law enforcement since November of 2002, his exploits reported on and written about since the early 2000's; even had his engagement and wedding announcements running for months in the local papers, yet no further information is available on this particular incident. IF he were an unknown caught doing something like this, then the victim's age and relationship would be published accordingly. Cherokee County is a haven for this kind of deviant criminal behavior because there is rarely any legal consequences for those in the Sheriff Department's or District Attorney's circle of friends. Then again as the political season heats up towards the March primaries, false sexual accusations are traded like Pez candy by the Good Ol' Boys and Gals of Cherokee County.

   
Patrolman Jon Shobert 10-year service award circa 2012 (Source: Jacksonville Progress; Nov. 15, 2012)

Deputy Jon Shobert was released on $50,000 bond. The incident he is accused of allegedly occurred in late January 2019. Indecency with a child by contact is a second degree Felony punishable by a fine up to $10,000, between 2 and 20 years in prison, or both. If convicted, Deputy Shobert will have to register as a sex offender for life and scratch out a living in Cherokee County, Texas with the other child molesters and pedophiles on the Sheriff Department's dole.