(unless it’s public information that shows a public servant terrorizing a child)
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Just after 1 a.m. on Nov. 26, 2023, according to an incident report obtained by this news outlet, four Vidor Police Department (VPD) units including that of Police Chief Rod Carroll and an Orange County Sheriff’s Office unit responded to a call from Kendra Ortego, the ex-wife of Pct. 4 Constable Matt Ortego, asserting that her child had called her in fear of the elected law enforcement officer. The caller reported that Constable Ortego pulled a gun and threatened to shoot his own child and other children at a home located on South Timberland at the intersection of Orange Street. Prior to police arrival, the frantic mother called again as noted in dispatcher comments: “caller is on scene and advise that they heard a loud bang.”
More than an hour later, at 2:11 a.m., an officer from the Vidor Police Department transported Ortego to St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont. No arrests were made. No further details were divulged.
In the midst of The Examiner’s quest to seek the release of public information related to the non-arrest of elected Pct. 4 Constable Ortego, the city of Vidor’s public information officer/ city secretary has quit her job and reported that she is concerned about the handling of public information requests. This will be the third time the city is searching for a city secretary within the last year.
Although the spirit of the Texas Public Information Act explicitly proclaims that it, “shall be liberally construed in favor of granting a request for information,” gatekeepers in Chief Carroll’s police department have elected instead to depend on loopholes to avoid an informed community. For reasons such as a suspect, who is also an elected public law enforcement official, not giving permission to have the police bodycam recording of his drunken display of armed terrorism shared with the media, the Vidor Police Department has spent man-hours coming up with an argument to keep the material private. Brushing right past the preamble of the Public Information Act, the Vidor Police Department rifled through dozens of additions to the Act, and eventually the Texas Occupations Code way down in Sec. 1701.661(f), to find this gem to keep information under wraps: “A law enforcement agency may not release any portion of a recording made in a private space, or of a recording involving the investigation of conduct that constitutes a misdemeanor punishable by fine only and does not result in arrest, without written authorization from the person who is the subject of that portion of the recording ...”
Under Carroll, Vidor Police Department Captain Rodney Johnson, now in charge of answering the department’s information requests since the city’s secretary quit her job, neglected to provide the words that come before the noted exception: “A law enforcement agency may… release information requested … after the agency redacts any information made confidential under Chapter 552, Government Code, or other law.”
Additionally, despite publicly admitting he was drunkenly terrorizing his own minor child, Ortego will not face charges of child endangerment like a non-elected citizen would. In the days after Christmas 2023, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office headed by John Kimbrough and heir apparent Krispen Walker announced a decision not to prosecute the criminal complaint filed by the Vidor Police Department. By protecting Ortego from facing prosecution from crime, the county also offers protection from public disclosure of information with yet another “exception” that Johnson can claim in writings to the Attorney General.
“At this time,” Johnson wrote to the Attorney General on Jan. 10 in yet another attempt to keep public information private, “it appears no charges will be filed in this case.”
A question then begs to be answered: If Ortego committed no crime, why was the ex-wife not charged with providing a false police complaint?
The Examiner is still – months later – trying to compel the release of public information needed for the community to make informed decision as to their representation. The Vidor Police Department is not precluded from answering public information requests that would let the population know what goes on when a man afforded civil servant status acts so erratically that police intervention is needed for the safety of the children he is overseeing – they just choose not to.