A lot of us have been late for work. We’ve sped, cut corners, and tried to find every way humanly possible to get to work on time. Doesn’t always happen. It’s times like this we realize we should have woken up thirty minutes earlier.

Now, imagine you are heading to work and you’re trying to set a speed record to get over Transmoutain. Doesn’t work. To make matters worse, you get cut off and you find ways to anger the person in front of you.

What happens then? In this case, the car in front of you manages to get you onto the shoulder of the roadway. You get out of your car to confront the guy, and he pulls an AK-47 on you.

But you didn’t die.

This is not an exercise of imagination or creative writing; this is something that allegedly happened to an officer with the El Paso Police Department.

Our friend, Lt Frank Rodriguez, was late for work, and because he’s a cop, he believes he can drive above the speed limit and be like a bat out of hell. This is the mentality of this one officer.

“The way I heard it,” says one officer, “was that he [Rodriguez] was panicking on the radio as he made the call.”

Of course, all the officers we spoke to about this can’t attest to happening.

“He was all shaken up when he finally came in,” says another officer at the Northeast Reginal Command. “He looked like his whole miserable life flashed before his eyes.”

Detective Ivan Soberanis took the report.

“We were all talking about it,” says another officer, “and we just couldn’t believe it. Even the detective wasn’t sure it really happened.”

We have a problem, and this speaks to departmental integrity.

Rodriguez already has issues within the department. He’s not the most like officer there. Rodriguez brags about the amount of money he makes, and the seemingly criminal amount overtime he manages to perform and walks around like a New York City mafia boss.

“He really wishes he was someone in New York,” said another officer.

We have an officer who feels that he is allowed to break the law simply because he is a cop. Imagine he cuts you off, or you pull in front of him, and he road rages on you. What would it take for him to draw down on you, and ruin the rest of your life?

Mr. Rodriguez, we will refrain from calling him officer going forward, did something to cause another driver to pull him off the road. I don’t believe that someone would simply exit their vehicle with an AK-47, point it at your forehead, without being somehow provoked. What is Mr. Rodriguez not telling others about this case, if it happened at all?

If you recall, we posted a video of Mr. Rodriguez responding to a shooting at 8500 Dyer. The same shooting we’ve filed a FOIA request about.

Commanders within the El Paso Police Department cannot work off-duty overtime. The same should hold true for acting commanders. And, as any officer will tell you, Rodriguez’s acting commander was a poor acting job indeed.

At Southwest News Today we truly believe that because he valued overtime more than his actual job, a civilian was left to die.

What will happen if Mr. Rodriguez decides to road rage with you? You’re driving down the road, your children are in the car, and because he’s a cop, he’s better than you.

The El Paso Police Department needs to do better.

Here’s the video of Mr. Rodriguez taking his time to get to 8500 Dyer. Several officers have commented that he specifically waited until the scene was cleared and secured before he showed up. Not to mention that Crimes Against Persons dirtied the crime scene.

Here’s the audio of officers on the scene, under fire, and calling for Fire Medical Services to save a life.

If you would like to read that article, it is below.

Failures Abound, Dispatch Drops the Ball, People Die, We Don’t Care – Southwest News Today

We are all human and subject to mistakes. In October 2022, several calls for Fire Medical Services (FMS) after a hold was cleared by officers on the scene may have contributed to the death of a subject who was shot in the stomach.