COMMAND Newsletter — September 2026

On the night of Sept. 25, SAPD officers responding to a man-with-a-gun call in the 500 block of Ruiz Street found the suspect nearby in the Kozy Korner bar parking lot carrying a duffel bag with a visible long gun. When he moved between vehicles and ignored surrender commands, officers deployed less-lethal beanbag rounds; police say he then racked a shotgun and pointed it at officers, and nine officers and a sergeant fired. SAPD identified him as Michael Angel Roque, 29; he is hospitalized and expected to survive, a shotgun was recovered next to him, and he is charged with two counts of aggravated assault against a peace officer.

Deputies responded to a 911 hang-up in the 1500 block of Barons Den near Loop 1604, where two juveniles reported a woman inside was being threatened with a knife by Corey Leonard King, 44. The woman got out before entry; BCSO SWAT and the negotiation team set a perimeter, then sent a compact drone through the house and located King hiding in the attic. Deputies entered and took him into custody without further incident on charges including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, two counts of terroristic threat, a protective-order violation and burglary of a habitation.

The Bexar County District Attorney's Office dropped the aggravated assault on a peace officer charges against Roman Xavier Pena, 35, from the June 16 SWAT arrest-and-search warrant service on Jones Maltsberger Road, where four SWAT officers approached Pena's parked vehicle, saw a handgun and exchanged fire; Officer Adel Mokrane was hit in the leg and Pena in the hand and shoulder. The DA cited a finding that an officer fired first from an unmarked vehicle without properly identifying as law enforcement. Pena remains indicted on burglary of a habitation and prohibited-weapons charges, which court records tie to building Molotov cocktails, and the San Antonio Police Officers' Association says there was no time for the officer to identify himself and called the dismissal a dangerous message.

About 9:30 p.m. Sept. 28, HPD officers tried to serve an indecency-with-a-child warrant on a man at his workplace, a pet boarding business on Yupondale in Spring Branch, and located him with a drone after he jumped a back fence and shut himself in a dark room. Negotiation failed; when officers entered, he refused to drop a weapon, which ABC13 reports was a large knife, and when officers sent in a K-9 he went after the dog and two officers fired, killing him. No officers and no K-9 were hurt, and HPD expects to release body-camera video within 30 days.

Police were called at 5:47 p.m. to the 400 block of Nordstrom in the Upper Valley, where a 14-year-old had been stabbed multiple times in the neck, arm and torso; the teen and a brother barricaded in a locked room and called 911, and three other juveniles were recovered unharmed. Janie Ann King, 44, the teen's mother, barricaded in the garage for more than four hours while officers communicated over a PA system. EPPD SWAT used a drill to open the garage door, entered about 10:20 p.m. and physically removed her; she is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and her bond was later lowered from $100,000 to $60,000 with a psychiatric evaluation and no contact with her son as conditions.

Shortly before 11 p.m. Sept. 4, APD responded to the 5700 block of Sunset Ridge on a report that Joseph Chandler Harris, 41, was armed and threatening family members who could not safely leave. Officers set a perimeter, made phone contact and called SWAT and hostage negotiators, and the family got out during the standoff. After officers heard a loud bang believed to be a gunshot, SWAT sent a drone inside and then made entry, finding Harris with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound; he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Late on the night of Sept. 23 into Sept. 24, the FBI Houston Safe Streets Task Force, with HPD, Texas DPS, the U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Violent Offender Fugitive Task Force and ATF, arrested more than 15 alleged members and associates of the self-described gang YNS on federal and state charges. Investigators say the group posted 'drill' videos on YouTube and social media discussing crimes committed or planned, recruiting younger members and taunting rivals, and link them to multiple violent crimes in Houston over the past year. Federal charges include conspiracy to commit robbery, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, and using or brandishing a firearm in a drug-trafficking crime, with machine-gun possession counts against two defendants.

On Sept. 9, the U.S. Marshals Lone Star Fugitive Task Force and the APD SWAT Team located and arrested Santana Gonzales, 21, on Skycrest Drive in south Austin on a first-degree murder warrant issued Sept. 1. Gonzales is charged in the Aug. 30 shooting death of 17-year-old Edwin Pulgar, who was shot while driving past Gonzales in the 1900 block of Woodland Avenue. APD says Gonzales has gang affiliations, is a suspect in other shootings over the previous month and was serving a five-year deferred adjudication sentence for a 2023 aggravated robbery; the arrest was made without incident.

Around 11 p.m., Richardson officers tried to stop Clayton Stotts, 45, who was wanted in a narcotics investigation; he led a brief pursuit, abandoned the vehicle, ran into a residential backyard in the 100 block of West Shore Place and barricaded inside a shed. More than a dozen units responded and officers searched nearby creeks before SWAT took him into custody around 1 a.m. Narcotics were found on him and in the vehicle, and he is charged with manufacturing or delivery of a controlled substance and felony evading.

Shortly after 8 p.m., deputies responded to a shooting in the 300 block of FM 147 and found one person with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds, who was taken to a hospital. The shooter, Joseph Blackwell, stayed inside the residence and refused to come out; negotiators and deputies worked through the night until he surrendered without further incident. The sheriff's office credited its Unmanned Aircraft Unit with scanning the scene and helping locate the firearm, with a Texas Parks and Wildlife game warden and a K9 team assisting.

A 52-year-old on an electric bike ran a red light and was stopped by a Precinct 1 deputy near Antoine Drive and W. Mount Houston Road; he resisted identification, two Taser deployments were ineffective, and he fled on foot into a neighborhood and climbed onto the roof of a home on Downwood Forest Drive that he did not own. HCSO SWAT and negotiators responded for an hours-long standoff. Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said the man, worried about additional charges, eventually came down voluntarily and faces evading charges.

On the evening of Sept. 14, the U.S. Marshals-led Lone Star Fugitive Task Force, with APD and the APD Air Support Unit, arrested Kovantae Markail Williams, 32, at an apartment complex in the 1500 block of Howard Lane in northeast Austin on a first-degree murder warrant obtained Sept. 3. Williams is charged in the May 6 shooting at Down South CaJJun Eats in northern Travis County that killed 27-year-old Mykal Jones and wounded four others; he had told investigators he fired in self-defense, which police say surveillance and witnesses contradict. During the arrest, Deandre Markeith Stiles, 29, was also taken into custody on a Harris County felon-in-possession warrant.

Detectives found Christopher Walker, 44, wanted in a Sept. 26 gas-station killing, at a Dianne Drive home about 6:45 p.m. Sept. 28, where he barricaded with three children; he released two to negotiators but kept his 14-year-old son. JPD SWAT breached about 7 a.m. Sept. 29 and rescued the teen, and Walker jumped from a window, ran, and was stopped with a Taser. He is charged with murder, auto theft and being a felon in possession.

Officers responding to a Labor Day well-being check in the 3400 block of West Wrightwood in Logan Square found a man who displayed a rifle at them and barricaded inside after an altercation with a 75-year-old neighbor. Over roughly 17 hours, from 11:43 a.m. Monday to about 4:57 a.m. Tuesday, the suspect fired multiple times; two officers were struck by buckshot fragments with minor injuries and gunfire hit a ballistic shield. SWAT took Patrick McDonald, 54, into custody and recovered multiple weapons; he is charged with attempted first-degree murder of a peace officer, aggravated discharge at police, home invasion and robbery, and was ordered detained.

After a multi-day spree that included stealing firearms, ramming a deputy's patrol car, firing at a sheriff's helicopter, setting fires and killing 76-year-old Cheryl Macy in her home, 44-year-old Derek Spencer was cornered in a wooded canyon near Iowa Hill. Around 2:30 a.m. Monday, Placer County Sheriff's Office Special Enforcement Team members, guided by a CHP aircraft using infrared, moved on the suspect's position; Spencer opened fire, starting a roughly two-hour exchange in dense timber that ended with Spencer dead around 4 a.m. No officers were reported injured, and Cal Fire crews handled the fires the suspect set during the standoff.

Otter Tail County deputies answered a disturbance call on Twin Lakes Road near Battle Lake about 5:50 p.m. Sept. 25, where Christopher Olson, 39, came to the door with a shotgun, assaulted a family member and barricaded inside. Otter Tail, Douglas County and Red River Valley SWAT teams responded, and during the standoff Olson fired at Red River Valley's armored Rook vehicle. Fergus Falls Officer Matthew Cederberg shot him in a doorway about 3 a.m. Sept. 26 and he died at the scene; no officers were hurt, and the Minnesota BCA is investigating.

At about 6 a.m. on Sept. 22, officers of the U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force serving a murder warrant in the 100 block of Ruby Drive in Pine Hill, Alabama, came under fire from Ernest Christopher Nathan, 47, who was wanted out of Harris County for a fatal September 2022 shooting outside a Houston food truck and had been added to the Texas 10 Most Wanted list after bonding out and failing to appear. A task force officer was wounded and is expected to make a full recovery; officers returned fire and Nathan died at the scene. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency's State Bureau of Investigation is investigating, with Houston PD involved in the underlying case.

A woman called 911 about 8:45 p.m. Sept. 28 to report an assault and weapons placed throughout a home on NW Wildcat Lake Road outside Bremerton, and after a warrant was obtained SWAT was activated. The 38-year-old man, who had violated a protection order, fired several rounds that narrowly missed officers, SWAT returned fire, and he kept firing from inside. A Pierce County Sheriff's drone later found him dead with a firearm in his hand from an apparent self-inflicted wound; no officers were hurt, and Washington's Office of Independent Investigations is reviewing.

Officers answering a domestic dispute at the Reserve at Stone Creek apartments around 11:23 p.m. Thursday came under fire from a suspect inside; one officer was injured and was treated and released. DeKalb County Police SWAT and the bomb squad surrounded the unit and the complex was locked down for hours before officers extracted 23-year-old Samuel Norris early Friday. Norris is charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, with domestic charges pending.

A 46-year-old domestic-violence suspect who forced his way into an ex-girlfriend's Puyallup apartment and assaulted her was tracked to a residence near Sumner, where officers surrounded the property and negotiated at length, using drone surveillance, pepper balls and a K-9. As officers closed to take him into custody, the suspect detonated an explosive device, killing himself. Four Puyallup officers and K-9 Dexter were taken to the hospital with no major injuries and are expected to make a full recovery.

Officers were called before 4:30 p.m. Sunday to the 500 block of Dunbarton Circle in the Campus Commons neighborhood for a knife assault; the adult male victim was hospitalized with a non-life-threatening stab wound. The suspect barricaded inside and, after a multi-hour standoff with SWAT and crisis negotiators, officers breached the residence with the ROOK, a Level IV armored tracked vehicle built on a compact track loader chassis, and deployed CS gas before taking the suspect into custody without injury.

Sergeant Alan Works, 37, died December 24, 2025, from the effects of toxin exposure after road flares accidentally ignited inside the patrol vehicle he was driving at DFW Airport on January 13, 2025. The exposure led to a diagnosis of acute asthma and ongoing breathing treatments; a Pepperball exposure during training on December 12, 2025, aggravated the condition, and after two days of traffic control supporting a military exodus detail on December 19 and 20, he suffered respiratory distress on duty and died four days later at Texas Health HEB Hospital. Sergeant Works had served with the DFW Airport Police Department for over five years and previously with the Tarrant County College Police Department and the Denton County Sheriff's Office. He is survived by his mother, father, brother, two stepbrothers and four stepsisters.

After Taylor Rogers fled a school-zone traffic stop through a crowded parking lot (she later pleaded guilty to felony evading), Santa Fe ISD Chief Espinoza rammed her car and pulled her out, and City of Santa Fe Officer Carranza used a leg-leverage hold while she screamed and thrashed; she then reported fire ants and suffered hundreds of bites before officers moved her. The district court denied both officers summary judgment, citing disputed facts including continued leverage after the ants were known. A per curiam panel (Judges Southwick, Graves and Wilson; No. 25-40367; unpublished) reversed and rendered: body-camera video discredited her account of a restrained, defenseless woman under Scott v. Harris; her bystander-liability claim against Espinoza failed because every case she cited involved direct force rather than an officer's inaction; and the cases against Carranza involved passive resistance or far more force, so this was not the rare obvious case. The court decided only the clearly-established prong and expressly did not decide whether any constitutional violation occurred.

Two Alexandria, Louisiana officers stopped an out-of-state Mustang, ordered the driver out, learned he had a gun in a bag in the back seat, frisked him, later had him empty his pockets, questioned both occupants about drugs for roughly 21 minutes, refused to let either retrieve a phone to record, and wrote citations that were all later dismissed. A per curiam panel (Judges King, Smith and Ramirez; No. 25-30650; unpublished) affirmed the denial of judgment on the pleadings on every Fourth Amendment claim: on the pleaded facts the stop lacked reasonable suspicion, prolonging it for the searches was unlawful even if the stop had been valid, a lawfully carried firearm disclosed on request did not by itself justify a frisk, and asking him to empty his pockets after a frisk found no weapon violated Minnesota v. Dickerson. It reversed on the First Amendment claim: Turner v. Driver establishes a general right to record police, but no case clearly establishes that a person detained during a traffic stop may record it. This is a pleading-stage ruling and the officers' version of events was not before the court.

Wichita Falls police found a two-year-old dead in James Staley's home, obtained a warrant for the computers and cellphone in the house, and recovered abuse videos and file-deletion evidence; a Tarrant County jury convicted him of capital murder. The Second Court of Appeals reversed, holding the affidavit lacked a probable-cause nexus to the devices under State v. Baldwin and applying the constitutional-error harm standard. On the State's petition, the Court of Criminal Appeals (Judge Parker writing; No. PD-0202-25; published) assumed error but held that because the trial court found the officers relied on the warrant in good faith, the Fourth Amendment itself required no exclusion under Leon; any exclusion could come only from Texas's narrower statutory rule in Article 38.23, so the non-constitutional harm standard governed, and under it the error was harmless given the remaining forensic and DNA evidence. The court expressly did not decide whether the affidavit established probable cause, and Judge Yeary's concurrence signals the court may be ready to revisit Baldwin's device-nexus rule.

Starr County Deputies arrested Alberto Pena for criminal mischief while he was visibly intoxicated; he struck his head on the patrol-car interior three times and may have briefly lost consciousness, and the arrest complaint told the jail he was under the influence but said nothing about the head strikes. In the detox cell he hit his head 14 times in one burst, was pepper-sprayed and placed in a WRAP restraint, and hours later was found foaming at the mouth and died. Judge Douglas (joined by Judges Stewart and Engelhardt; No. 25-40481; published) affirmed summary judgment for every defendant: even assuming a jury could find deliberate indifference by two day-shift Jailers, Dyer v. Houston and Thompson v. Upshur County did not give fair warning that this mix of symptoms, some consistent with routine intoxication, required medical care, and the Monell claim failed for lack of a pattern. The court did not hold the conduct constitutional; it resolved every individual claim on the clearly-established prong, and the custody hand-off remains the exposure point for transporting officers.