Houston Blue: The Story of the Houston Police Department

21. Buffalo Hunters and a New Union

247 21 Buffalo Hunters and a New Union P appy Bond had a plan in late 1974. The new captain in Narcotics had taken over a division troubled by unsafe arrest practices and accusations of brutality, wiretapping and other questionable activities that often turned the tide in the criminals’ favor. Bond attacked the growing drug problem in the Bayou City through a special inter-departmental recruitment technique. He perused the lists of arrests from Patrol and wrote down the names of the arresting officers most often appearing. On his yellow notepad, he scribbled the names of the top three from Central Patrol, Northeast, Shepherd and Park Place. He interviewed each of them, flattered their egos by citing their aggressiveness, and appealed to their purposeful demeanor as being just what HPD needed to take on drug dealers. He sought and signed up the people who later nicknamed themselves the “Buffalo Hunters” on the day shift. The night shift became known as “Ripley’s Raiders” after Narcotics Lieutenant Billy Ripley. These hunters and raiders were younger officers unafraid to plunge head-on into the more challenging and dangerous police situations and live to write detailed reports. One of them was Bob Thomas, who endured his share of meanness and violence as a patrolman in Third Ward and with the Park Place Rangers, known in the 1970s as HPD’s toughest patrol division. In his three years on the force, Thomas had heard more shots fired and saw more blood than hundreds of officers with far more years on any beat.1 The Buffalo Hunters met for the first time in early 1975, each finding himself in a roomful of strangers, a condition that quickly changed. Thomas threw in with Officer Doyle Green of Central Patrol. The modus operandi meant working in groups on shifts. Thomas’ group worked days and also included Rick Ashwood, Kenny Williamson and Joe Otis. The narcs worked undercover , using tips from street people and informants to make buys of heroin 248 Houston Blue and large amounts of marijuana. They grew long hair and beards and dressed the part. They put in long hours together and frequently socialized off-duty. Thomas grew up in Oak Forest on Houston’s Northside, an ideal backdrop for conscientious young men and women of the early sixties. Many graduates of Waltrip High School, Thomas’ alma mater, became Houston police officers. An especially poignant fact in history is that three Waltrip graduates were police officers killed in the line of duty: John Bamsch, shot to death by a robbery suspect in 1975; Timothy L. Hearn, killed by a pistol-wielding drug suspect in 1978; and John Anthony Salvaggio, killed by a hit-and-run driver in 1990. The twenty-one-year-old Thomas realized that Waltrip’s HPD tradition, his three years as a UH business major and sixteen weeks in the police academy prepared him for the Houston streets—but only to a degree. He got the same on-the-job experience as thousands of his predecessors. He graduated high enough in his academy class to pick his poison. Choosing nights in Central Patrol, he quickly became intimate with the Third Ward culture despite the fact he had never been able to vote or buy weapons or ammunition, had never gotten drunk and always locked his patrol car doors. Many officers learned before decade’s end that Thomas knew the meaning of perseverance. He persevered through the bloodshed and the tough initiaBob Thomas was the leader of the founders of the Houston Police Patrolmen’s Union (HPPU) on October 22, 1979. Thomas was one of four officers who suffered serious injuries when they attempted to serve a drug arrest warrant one December night in 1975. Their subsequent on-duty treatment was a decisive factor in the formation of the Houston Police Patrolmen’s Union. HPPU advocated better legal representation and insurance benefits than the rival Houston Police Officers Association. (Bob Thomas) Buffalo Hunters and a New Union 249 tion dished out by the department. He even was recruited by the Park Place Rangers, the only way a young officer could join the rugged, no-nonsense patrol known for taking no prisoners. Instead of worrying about the lack of legal representation for officers involved in shootings or fretting over insurance co-pays that added up too quickly on pay day, Thomas built a solid reputation for the savvy needed to make cases...