Houston Blue: The Story of the Houston Police Department

14. Secret Leaders and 1269m

152 14 Secret Leaders and 1269m B reckenridge Porter Sr. was the only Houston police lieutenant in history to be thrown out of the Texas Rangers and charged with murder within a relatively short period of time. The storied details of Porter’s life were retold around police headquarters throughout the 20th century, always in modest, down-to-earth segments, using the honest-to-goodness modus operandi of the biographic subject. Just as Ranger Porter got the hang of a job that included earning a $2 bounty for each illegal immigrant he captured in the Valley, the issue of his age cropped up.1 The Rangers’ age requirement was twenty-one; he was barely twenty. Before the state found out, Porter and a partner were assigned to Galveston, where violence frequently broke out in union picket lines at the port. During one near-riot, shots were fired and Porter was left standing with a smoking shotgun in his hands; one man was dead.2 The scene investigation revealed that the fatal shot came from Porter’s gun or that of his partner. The young Ranger thought long and hard and asked the district attorney to get a grand jury to true bill him so he could have a trial. Standing square, he went on trial for murder and was promptly found not guilty, the state having no evidence to present since there was no ballistics analysis from a shotgun or anything else. Porter’s notoriety amounted to little more than a few paragraphs in the Galveston paper that cleared his record. But enough information surfaced to inform headquarters that the successful defendant was too young to hold the job he performed so well. So he dropped out of the Texas Rangers and joined the police department of River Oaks, an incorporated city with its own small, underpaid police force. Porter drove his own car on patrol and soon met with Mayor Oscar Holcombe while wearing his ROPD uniform. Holcombe hired him on the spot and instructed him to report for work the following evening, saying, “Just Secret Leaders and 1269m 153 wear the uniform you’re wearing now.”3 The next day Porter became the first Houstonian to work for two police departments on the same day. The officer took pride in his work and looked forward to a long HPD career until 1937, when a new mayor, R. H. Fonville, fired the young officer without warning. Porter was living “a hand-to-mouth existence” and later told younger officers that the sudden dismissal scared the hell out of him.4 The River Oaks department easily accepted him back, his old captain telling him, “Okay, come back here and report for duty tomorrow and wear your Houston uniform.”5 Many of Porter’s colleagues went back to driving buses, This picture, taken in 1947, symbolizes the creation of Article 1269m, the state civil service law that provided unprecedented job protection for Houston’s police officers and firefighters. Texas Gov. Buford Jester (seated) is signing “1269m” into law. Prior to this bill becoming law, the mayor of Houston appointed and fired any officer or firefighter at will, often basing the decision on whether or not these individuals supported him on Election Day. The primary backer of the effort was the Houston Police Officers Association, formed in 1945. The Association had many strong leaders, especially Breck Porter, standing over Jester’s left shoulder. Other HPOA leaders present for the historic signing were, left to right, T. C. Christian, John Irwin and (at the far right) Red Squyers. (Houston Police Officers Union) 154 Houston Blue managing grocery stores or repairing automobiles. Later, numerous fellow Homicide officers would testify that this experience inspired Breck Porter to be a leader in establishing state civil service protection for police officers. The strident Porter later told his HPD colleagues, “The new guy (mayor) who came in didn’t give a shit about my wife and kids. He was interested in getting his people into the right positions. He fired us without even knowing us.”6 Porter wanted to form the Houston Police Officers Association, a key step needed to campaign for a state civil service law that protected officers from this kind of shabby treatment. He became a leader among a unique “secret society” whose influence over the Houston Police Department lasted well into the 21st century. Another leader proved to be Earl Maughmer, a...