23 March 2025, El Paso, Texas, Steven Zimmerman – On 23 March 2025, I spoke with Darcy Thomas, the mother of Martin Herrera-Garcés, whom I mentioned in an article entitled “Who Polices the Police?”
Martin Herrera-Garcés, 27, was shot and killed on Thursday evening, 11 April, in an officer-involved shooting after a shots-fired call triggered a SWAT situation at the 300 block of Skyview St. in West El Paso.
What the El Paso Police Department says occurred is that there were several calls to 911 reporting shots fired. Officers responded to the calls, and the suspect, Martin Herrera-Garcés, began firing at officers.
The official statement from the El Paso Police Department and video from body-worn cameras can be found below:
Today, after speaking with Martin Herrera-Garcés’ mother, Darcy Thomas, there is a side to this story that once again shows the El Paso Police Department could have avoided this deadly outcome the day before.
“I started calling the El Paso Police Department to go pick him up and take him for a mental health evaluation,” says Darcy Thomas, who said that she noticed something was off with her son mentally. “They went over there, and I’m not sure what happened the first time, but they gave me, gave him a clean bill of help. Okay, well, I didn’t go home that night because I knew that there was something wrong and that he needed help.”
When Ms. Thomas called the El Paso Police Department, patrol offers were eventually dispatched. Somewhere along the line, officers from the Critical Incident Team are either called to the scene by the patrol officers who first arrived, or dispatch may proactively send them out.
In the case of Ms. Thomas and her son, Martin, CIT did come out but failed to speak with Martin, who was undergoing some mental health crisis.
“The lady that was supposed to talk to him [CIT Officer] was too scared to get out of the car,” says Ms. Thomas, “and the other guy talked to him, and he was fine.”
CIT shows up at the scene and refuses to leave her car.
“This happens more often than Command wants to admit,” says a Lieutenant with the El Paso Police Department. “If I’m not mistaken, the CIT officer that responded to the Herrera-Garcés case is the same one that hid behind the car in another case, in the Northeast, while her partner hid behind a bush.”
What the Lieutenant is a case involving Patrol Sergeant Chris Camp. You can find more about that story at To Save a Life: An EPPD Officer Puts His Life on the Line and Who Polices the Police.
Let’s get back to Darcy Thomas and her conversation with the police.
“There were four of five of the standing in the Albertson’s parking lot,” says Ms. Thomas, “and I looked at every one of ’em, and I said, ‘you’re gonna go over there and murder my son, aren’t you?”
Ms. Thomas began to fear for the safety of her son.
“‘Oh no, we’re not going to do that,’ is what the officers told me,” says Ms. Thomas. “‘We’re not going to do that. No ma’am. Our job is to help people.'”
If the job of the El Paso Police Department and the Critical Incident Team is to help people, then why was that help not afforded to Martin Herrera-Garcés when EPPD made initial contact? Why are the officers assigned to CIT not required to possess either a Bachelor’s or Masters’s Degree in some aspect of mental health?
“The training these officers receive is woefully inadequate,” said the same Lieutenant with the El Paso Police Department I quoted earlier. “The training is less than basic and only seems to meet minimums. As a department, we should go above and beyond and require degrees for these officers.”
We received a Crisis Intervention Team Refresher course lesson plan from 18 May 2012, which was revised by Paul Pacillas, the brother of the Chief of Police, on 17 August 2017. Reading the lesson plan, one is struck by its simplicity.
“Even though this lesson plan and presentation sheet meets the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement guidelines for crisis management and intervention, it is simply not enough,” says the Lieutenant. “A formal degree in mental health is not a universal requirement, but needs to be. We must do better for the citizens who rely on us for help and support. What happened in the case of Herrera-Garcés should have been the catalyst for change, but our Chief [El Paso Police Department Chief of Police Peter Pacillas] does not have the stomach to admit we need change.”
You can read the lesson plan by clicking here.
“We should, at the very least, partner with the National Alliance on Mental Health and follow their guidelines for what CIT should possess as essential knowledge, absent an advanced degree in mental health,” said the Lieutenant from the El Paso Police Department.
NAMH has terrific resources, and you can see them by clicking here.
“I’m not CIT, but I have been through what the Alliance has, absorbing as much as I can,” says the Lieutenant. “This information has helped me better understand my role when interacting with people from the community, regardless of mental state. Yet, when you suggest this type of training be deployed department-wide or focused in CIT, you are met with criticism or a stony silence.”
Additional or better training would have helped the officers when they made contact with Ms. Thomas’s son.
For two days, Ms. Thomas repeatedly told police that her son had bipolar disorder and was off his medication. The only advice or guidance the officers could give her was to file for an EDO or Emergency Detention Order.
“The next morning, I called him at like nine or 10 o’clock and said, okay, so you’ve got the medical warrant, it’s all filed,” Ms. Thomas told the officer. “Go get my son.”
When officers showed up at Ms. Thomas’s home, they phoned her.
“They went over there, knocked on the door,” says Ms. Thomas, “and called me on the phone … and said, ma’am, he won’t open the door. Can you come over here and open up the door?”
Ms. Thomas also received a Text from Michelle Rodriguez, whom Ms. Thomas met to obtain the Emergency Detention Order, saying the same thing.
“I said, it’s dead-bolted on the inside,” said Ms. Thoms to the officers. “I guess you should have got him yesterday.”
Many people believe that if you obtain an EDO, the police can go in, even if it means kicking down a door, to help someone in the middle of a crisis. Sadly, that is not the case.
“It’s [an EDO], not a felony warrant,” said one patrol officer we spoke with at the El Paso Police Department. “Psychological or mental screening for crisis does not warrant kicking in a door to get an EDO person.”
In the case of Martin Herrera-Garcés, had they done just that, he would still be alive today. Or, if the officer from the Crisis Intervention Team had taken the time to step out of her car and speak to Martin, he may have been taken in for an evaluation.
Under Police Chief Allen, according to Special Order # C11-17 (outdated), dated 1 January 2012, Martin would have been taken in for a mental health evaluation. You can read that Special Order by clicking here.
An update concerning Emergency Detention Orders was posted on 4 December 2012 and can be viewed by clicking here.
On 11 April 2024, calls were made to 911 concerning shots fired. The address? The home of Darcy Thomas, and Martin Herrera-Garcés.
“I have no idea what the police did after they went to my apartment until 6:30 at night when he started shooting the gun,” said Ms. Thomas. “They said they didn’t know about nothing.”
An hours-long SWAT standoff ensued that ended in the death of Martin Herrera-Garcés.
“I went over there and I seen, it was my apartment,” said Ms. Thomas. “They had the SWAT team out there, the Texas Rangers, the El Paso Police Department, and everything was blocked off.”
Ms. Thomas said that she attempted to reach her son during the standoff but was stopped.
“There was a police officer right there. He goes, what are you doing? Why’d you go in there? I says, that’s my son. You got up there. And they go, did he shoot at you? I said, he shot at the car and they put, they grabbed me before they, they searched me, got in my car, searched my car, told me to leave my car there, threw me in a, in a police car, took me to the police station. And then just kept drilling,” says Ms. Thomas.
She was asked if her son had ever been arrested and other questions that the police should have known would have known if they actually listened to Ms. Thomas the night before.
They then asked her to make a recording and asked her son to come out so they could play for him in hopes of getting him to give up and walk out of the apartment.
“I don’t even think that they gave the recordings or let my son listen to them because right after that, they told me that he was on the way to the hospital,” says Ms. Thomas.
The apartment, after the shots were fired after the Department unloaded on a man who should have been taken in for an evaluation the day before, looked like something out of a war zone.
GUNS
The El Paso Police Department and even members of SWAT have stated that Martin Herrera-Garcés utilized an AR-15 to shoot at officers. However, according to his mother, Ms. Thomas, Martin owned no rifle.
“When I was in the police department, they said my son opened up the door, and he had a rifle on him,” says Ms. Thomas, “I said, you’re a liar. Number one, my son didn’t have any rifles. Okay. Number two, I know every handgun that was in that house. And okay, if he opened up the door and he had guns in his hands or one gun in his hand or whatever, how did he get shot in the back of the head?”
Martin was shot twenty-seven times. Twenty-seven. SWAT was on this call, and Martin was shot twenty-seven times. One of those was a gunshot to the back of the head.
According to the autopsy report, one of these was a gunshot to the back of the head.
You can read the autopsy report by clicking here.
“I remember one of the SWAT officers was telling me that they had him [Martin] on a gurney, and SWAT and FMS were working on him, trying to save him,” says an officer with the El Paso Police Department. “Then they turned him and noticed the gunshot to the head.”
What is concerning is that, after being shot twenty-seven times, officers placed on his stomach turned Martin Herrera-Garcés cuffed, and no one noticed the gunshot wound to the head at that time.
“That’s what I wanna know. And guess what, if you look at the police body cam, it looks like they had him handcuffed on the ground, and they shot him in the back of the head when he was on the ground ground,” says Ms. Thomas. “That’s what it looks like to me.”
“It’s just too cute,” says another officer. “I mean, how is it that you have someone cuffed and don’t notice the guy is shot in the head? And then I think about when they were working on him. Was that just for show, to make others think they were trying to save him? It’s too cute.”
I asked Ms. Thomas what she would like to see a change in the way the El Paso Police Department responds to people in mental health crises.
“I think professional people need to go out there and address the situation. And I think if a family member says that they’re not right in their head and they get ’em out … of the apartment or get him out of the house, they need to immediately get ahold of that person and take him in for a medical evaluation to avoid all this insanity,” said Ms. Thomas. “But you know what, that’s just common sense. You know, I don’t have a medical degree, but if, if some[one’s] mother was calling and saying that their kid was out of his mind for two days and I was the cop and I had a chance when this guy’s outside of the apartment complex standing in front of me and I had a chance to grab him and take him in for a medical evaluation, you bet I would’ve done it if I was a cop.”
That’s the problem: either the system, the law, or just fear of being sued is keeping well-meaning officers from doing the job they signed up for, to protect and serve. The other side of that coin is maybe those officers who responded, including the CIT officer, just don’t care about anyone other than themselves, and they want their otherwise cushy position or assignment to stay calm.
“Departmental problems are rather self-evident,” says the Lieutenant we spoke with. “To not see them, to refuse to acknowledge them, is going to cause this department to implode, eroding our trust with the people we serve.”
“They have been responsible for dereliction and costing people’s lives all because they are inexperienced, not educated and lazy,” says an officer, speaking of CIT. “It’s a Micky Mouse of a unit led by the king of prats – Chief Goofy.”
I asked Ms. Thomas what she would say to them if she had the ear of Chief Peter Pacillas or City Manager Dionne Mack.
“How dare they, how dare they have people that are uneducated to be going over there in a mental health crisis and trying to talk to somebody with, with no experience. No common sense,” said Ms. Thomas.
She has a point: Officers who interact with people suffering from crises need to be better educated. Education, willingness to put themselves out there, and the stomach to do what is right would go a long way toward saving lives.