Sheriff’s Department Veteran Officer Resigns
Promotion Denial Cited
Dallas Morning News
24 August 1977
Lt. Charles McCommas, a 20-year veteran of the Dallas County sheriff’s department and president of the sheriff’s association, announced his resignation Tuesday, saying promotions he’d been promised failed to materialize.
McCommas, who lives in Forney, wll resign effective Sept. 15 to take a job as a deputy with the Kaufman County sheriff’s office. It’ll mean a salary cut, but will provide “peach of mind” he hasn’t had in the Dallas department, McCommas said.
McCommas has served as president of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Association, an organization of sheriff’s employees, since it was formed in 1972.
McCommas has held three jobs since Sheriff Carl Thomas took office in January, and was moved from the criminal division to the county jail book-in section in a shake-up Thomas announced last week.
“I felt like I was just spinning my wheels,” McCommas said.
McCommas said he expected to be promoted to captain and placed in charge of the criminal division, but that job went in April to then night chief Capt. A.D. McCurley. After McCurley got the criminal division job, McCommas expected to succeed McCurley as night chief, but that promotion has also failed to come about, he said.
McCommas said his resignation is not related to the controversy that has erupted over last week’s personnel shuffle, although his complaints are similar to those of deputies protesting the re-organization, which included 18 demotions.
County commissioners refused Monday to approve the personnel changes, after one of the demoted deputies, Benny Barrett, claimed the demotions were politically motivated and asked commissioners to look into them.
McCommas was less critical of Thomas, but did say there has been a decline in morale in the sheriff’s office because “you don’t know from day to day what section you’ll be working out of… it’s creating a problem, and I don’t think he (Thomas) realizes it yet.”
Thomas contends that in making the changes, he’s following through on his campaign promise to make the sheriff’s office more efficient.
McCommas will remain as president of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Association until he leaves the department.
McCommas served as president of the association during some of the rockiest periods in the sheriff’s office, including the bail bond controversy and other hassles during the tumultuous tenure of former Sheriff Clarence Jones, whom Republican Thomas defeated last November.
Although the association backed Jones during 1974-1975 when some officials were calling for his resignation, a straw vote of the association during last year’s Democratic primary gave Jones only a narrow plurality over Democratic challengers.
The association didn’t take a vote in the Thomas-Jones race, but the association’s newsletter endorsed Jones.
