Hey, all of you in the Northeast who serve with pride and take your oath to heart, stand up and walk out the next time Lt Frank walks in. I’ll buy you all a beer if you do it.

You guys on the Westside, I’m going to have a Mass said for you all. God go with you.

12 May 2024, El Paso, TX, Steven Zimmerman—Today, we will discuss why I continue to write about Rodreguez and his shockingly criminal amount of overtime. Excessive overtime is a danger to the officers, you, and me. 

In 2018, Chief Allen said, “We don’t write a blanket policy because of the one-time or three-time event and all of a sudden try to change the dynamics of how the department works.” This was what he left reporters with after every media outlet was writing about the massive amount of overtime officers were doing and the accidents and deaths lack of sleep caused.

Chief Allen and I hate to speak ill of the dead, but that one statement created the overtime problems that Lt. Rodreguez is the poster boy of.

Lt. Frank Rodreguez regularly reviews his allowed twenty-five hours per week of overtime on TxDot.

“It’s not so much a big secret,” says an officer with the El Paso Police Deparmtnet, “that Frak will take these power naps while he is on duty, becuse of his overitme.”

Another officer shared that Rodreguez will leave the Northeast early for his TxDot assignment, “He abandons his post, gives up on his duty. He also blocked his widow in his office, so we don’t see him sleeping. God willing, he has to do police work; he won’t be there.”

Now, we are going to mention an officer who is directly responsible for the deaths of two construction workers. However, before we do, something of interest to note in the PID (Preliminary Investigation Document) is that Amparan was permitted to leave TxDot early to avoid violating the twenty-five-hour rule.

However, when it comes to selectively applying the rule, Rodreguez seems to have achieved some legendary God status when it comes to overtime, and the Department does not care about its own rules. Of course, you all read the quote from Chief Allen at the start of the article, right?

So Rodreguez is allowed to nap on duty, leave the Northeast while on duty in order to arrive at TxDot – double dip on pay – change his schedule at will, bully everyone around him, file hostile work environment charges against another officer because what, he can’t stand the heat? Rodreguez is a disgrace to the Department.

Frank, who loves to show off his money, had items like DC Comic Collections and other collector’s items from Etsy and eBay delivered to the Northeast Sub Station until Cmdr. Julia Inciriaga told him to stop.

“He was abusing the police station as if it were his own personal address,” said an officer with EPPD.

“Frank there is starting to feel the heat,” says another officer. “He knows whe don’t like him so he’s going to bail to the Westside.”

Now, let’s look at David Amparan. Amparan, through overtime, managed to take a $71,000 salary to $130,000 in 2017 by doing 1,100 hours of overtime. 

Let’s go back to 2014 when Officer David Amparan fell asleep while working TxDot on I-10. Amparan currently works in traffic for the El Paso Police Department.

In 2014, while Amparan was sleeping, on overtime, a drunk driver named Jan Michael Nieves Delgado drove through barricades and killed two highway workers. 

Around that time, there were about 16 other internal affairs investigations in Amparan. These ranged from speeding to playing what he considered to be pranks on fellow officers.

It’s important to know that three of the IA investigations were for actions Amparan undertook while on overtime.

The following file concerns Amparan and the incident that involved two deaths.

Another officer, Michelle Gonzalez, who works for FUSION, got 3,300 overtime hours from 2011 to 2016. But wait, that’s not all. In October 2016, Gonzalez crashed her unit into the safety wires dividing I-10.

Another officer, Michelle Gonzalez, crashed her unit into the safety wires on I-10 in October 2016 while Gonzalez was working overtime.

Gonzalez was unable to see the wires, she said. 

From 2011 to 2016, Gonzalez had worked 3,300 overtime hours, earning an extra $165,000. 

Let’s now move to Mr. Transparency himself, Sgt. Robert Gomez, who, between 2011 and 2016, managed to work 3,500 hours of overtime, earning about $199,000

Or former Detective Andres Sanchez, who was working overtime on an FBI surveillance operation in February 2017 when he turned into oncoming traffic and crashed his unmarked police car.

All these incidents were caused by officers doing excessive amounts of overtime. I hate to say this, but in some of these cases, like Amparan, who fell asleep and others died, he should not be on the force, period. 

Command has blood on their hands. And Sgt. Michael Garcia, who will likely say he only uses a handful of officers he can depend on, needs to get his head out of his ass and maybe start asking other officers to do overtime. I can’t even begin to tell you, Garcia, the number of officers who have contacted me complaining that you don’t listen to them. 

Here’s what I see happening: as life is cyclical, another sleep-deprived officer is going to do something that endangers fellow officers or the public, as their love of money is greater than upholding the oath they took when they became police officers. 

Sadly, as Command seems to have zero desire to apply policy and procedure evenly across the board, they will engage, as they did with the officers we mentioned above, in epic-level cover-your-own-ass defense rather than admit they are wrong and work to correct the Department’s problems.

I’m disgusted.

Keep in mind, there are about two-thirds of this Department that will bust their ass to keep you and me safe. We can count on them. For the others, someone needs to show them the unemployment line.

Hey, all of you in the Northeast who serve with pride and take your oath to heart, stand up and walk out the next time Lt Frank walks in. I’ll buy you all a beer if you do it.