COMMAND Newsletter — September 2026

Officer Stephen Abbott responded to an assault call at Centro Studio Homes on Camino La Costa, where Gregory Lane, 36, had punched and pistol-whipped a man in his car. Lane ducked behind a vehicle and fired at Abbott, who returned fire; Lane then ran into an apartment and barricaded. Negotiators and SWAT held the perimeter for roughly 90 minutes until Lane surrendered at a window with hands raised at 9:45 a.m.; no one was struck. He is charged with attempted capital murder of a peace officer and aggravated assault, and APD released body and dash camera video on Aug. 14.

A woman contacted HPD victim services saying her boyfriend, who had an open felony warrant for family-violence assault by strangulation, was holding her against her will at gunpoint in an apartment near W. Crosstimbers and Fulton. Officers got the victim and the suspect's mother out, then SWAT broke a window and flew a drone into the unit, finding the suspect asleep. He came out combative and was tased into custody; the mother was charged with hindering apprehension. HPD announced a gradual expansion of its drone program on Aug. 26 with a stated goal of preventing officer-involved shootings.

Wichita Falls officers responded around 8:15 p.m. to a high-priority welfare check on a suicidal man with a firearm in the 4100 block of Faith Road and found him armed outside his apartment, where police say he challenged officers with the gun. SWAT set a perimeter and crisis negotiators established contact, during which the subject said he would force officers to shoot him. An officer perceived a deadly-force threat and fired; Daniel Eduardo Arias was pronounced dead at the scene. No officers were injured and WFPD is investigating.

Officers arrived about 2:30 p.m. to serve an aggravated robbery warrant on a 32-year-old man at his grandmother's home near Blanco Road and W. Magnolia Avenue. The grandmother came out, but the suspect refused repeated surrender calls. After roughly four hours SWAT deployed gas and made entry, finding him trying to escape through the attic; he was taken into custody with a cut to the head and no shots fired.

A neighbor's report of a foul odor and an open garage on the 6800 block of Villa Hermosa led officers to a body wrapped in plastic; hearing a voice inside, EPPD called SWAT and the Crisis Management Team. A 28-year-old woman exited voluntarily and John Michael De Coste, 29, later surrendered. Per the affidavit he had beaten his father, retired detective David Edward De Coste, to death between Aug. 4 and 7 and moved the body to the garage; he is charged with murder, corpse tampering and continuous family violence.

About 8:40 p.m., officers found Rudy Jaramillo, 44, shot dead inside his vehicle on the 5600 block of Talons Crest Circle in northwest Fort Worth. Surveillance video showed a bicyclist ride up behind the car, fire several rounds and return to a nearby house, where the suspect barricaded overnight. SWAT, crisis negotiators and the Crisis Intervention Team held the scene until Jose Alfonso Escamilla, 23, was taken into custody without incident the next morning; he is charged with murder, and the affidavit ties the dispute to security cameras.

Two back-to-back month-long Gulf Coast Violent Offender Fugitive Task Force operations ran under the FBI's nationwide "Summer Heat 2.0" initiative. Coastal Blitz (July 1-31, Bee County to Brooks County, 18 agencies including Corpus Christi PD, Nueces County SO, DPS, FBI, DEA, ATF and CBP) produced 270 felony arrests, 472 warrants closed and 93 firearms seized. Texas Tide (July 29-Aug. 28, 16 agencies including FBI, DEA and DPS) produced 465 arrests, 595 warrants cleared, 23 firearms and more than 300 kilograms of narcotics.

Lubbock police responded around 9:43 a.m. to reports of a man firing a gun near Canyon Lakes and located James Mayer, 20, driving on MLK Jr. Blvd. When officers tried to contact him on a felony warrant he refused to show his hands, fired one round from the vehicle and fled. After multiple stop attempts, officers forcibly stopped the car in a store lot on Parkway Drive, where Mayer stepped out holding the firearm and was shot by an officer. He died at UMC; the officer was not hurt and was placed on administrative leave.

Deputies were called to the 2500 block of Timmermann Road after a mother reported that Victor Rodriguez, 22, of Luling had pointed a firearm at her pregnant 18-year-old daughter and threatened to kill her; the daughter had fled. The sheriff's office deployed SWAT and its Crisis Negotiation Unit, which worked him by phone for an extended period until he answered, cooperated and walked out unarmed. He is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Bexar County Sheriff's Office SWAT served a search warrant for wanted-person apprehensions at about 11:48 a.m. at a home in the 500 block of Acme Road. After a knock went unanswered, deputies forced entry and deployed less-lethal irritants in two separate rooms where occupants refused to comply, then forced those doors to detain a total of five people. Three were arrested on outstanding warrants and two were released; nearby homes were evacuated for the operation and reopened afterward.

On July 30 a woman reported her ex-husband at a home on the 2400 block of Monarch Drive in violation of a protective order; officers found him armed with a rifle and he barricaded, and the standoff ended about 7:20 p.m. with no arrest. She called again about 10 a.m. July 31 reporting the same violation. He was again barricaded with a rifle, and SWAT and patrol took him into custody on a warrant issued from the prior day without incident.

Police were called to the Motel 6 on Paramount Boulevard about 7:45 a.m. for shots fired inside a room and found a possibly armed man barricaded. The Violent Crimes Unit obtained a deadly conduct warrant while SWAT and negotiators made contact. The man exited the room and was in custody just before 10:45 a.m., then transported to a hospital with serious injuries.

IMPD detectives and SWAT were serving a narcotics search warrant in the 300 block of N. Fleming Street about 2:30 p.m. when the suspect opened fire as officers exited the armored vehicle, striking two SWAT officers. The suspect kept firing for several minutes, retreated into the house and resumed firing before crisis negotiators talked him out around 3:15 p.m.; a 37-year-old man was arrested on a preliminary attempted-murder charge. One officer was released the same evening with a superficial wound; the other was hospitalized in stable condition with a limb wound and is expected to recover.

About 12:29 a.m., a woman called 911 from the 4500 block of Pigeon Point Court reporting her boyfriend was trying to burn her with a blowtorch and was shooting. Officers entered the residence, and as they approached a closed interior door the suspect fired through it, striking Officer Zaira Venegas-Hernandez, 36; officers returned fire and withdrew, a barricade was declared, and SWAT and crisis negotiators responded while the suspect tried to set the house on fire. When SWAT and negotiators entered, the suspect and a female juvenile were found dead of gunshot wounds; the coroner ruled the suspect's death a suicide. The officer was in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries.

Officers responded near Glendale and 75th avenues for a violation of an order of protection after a woman saw her father inside her home on surveillance cameras. Jeffery Peters, 59, refused to come out; SWAT arrived by 2 p.m., a search warrant was signed about 3 p.m., and when SWAT made contact Peters fired a rifle at officers repeatedly for roughly two hours, hitting multiple police vehicles and damaging two drones while officers returned fire. Gunfire stopped about 6 p.m.; police flew a drone into the home and found Peters dead of a gunshot wound, and police did not say whether it was self-inflicted or from police fire. One officer had minor injuries.

Deputies were called to S. Rocky Bluff Lane after Erik Gordon Shunn, 53, fired about 20 rounds at a tree-trimming crew near his property; investigators later put his total for the day at more than 200 rounds, including sustained fire at a Clackamas County Sheriff's Office drone that was tracking him. Shunn used a tractor to fell trees as a barricade; when he climbed onto the tractor and left his rifle behind, SWAT rushed in and pinned the tractor against the house with their armored vehicle, taking him into custody about 3:45 p.m. No workers, deputies or the suspect's mother, who was inside the home, were hurt; he faces attempted-murder and related charges.

Sean Omara, 39, a Marine Corps veteran, called 911 repeatedly starting about 1:30 a.m. at the Odyssey Apartments on Cibola Loop NW with delusional break-in complaints and declined mental-health resources; by late morning neighbors reported gunfire from his unit and residents were trapped in adjacent apartments. APD requested crisis intervention, deployed SWAT and a negotiator, and used a robot and chemical munitions to try to force him out. Shortly after 6 p.m. Omara stepped onto his balcony with a rifle and a ballistic vest and two SWAT officers shot and killed him; more than 100 fired cartridge cases and three firearms were recovered from the apartment.

After a man threatened a gas-station clerk with a sword and left, air support located his vehicle on Cheshire Drive, where officers found a 26-year-old woman being held inside against her will. Patrol officers negotiated for more than an hour; when Jason William Sexton, 54, refused to drop the sword SWAT was called to build an apprehension plan, and SWAT Officer Joshua Baney, a 12-year MNPD veteran directed to help block the vehicle with his truck, fired three rounds from behind a patrol car as Sexton stood with the sword. Sexton died at the hospital; the woman was unharmed. Chief John Drake decommissioned Baney while the TBI investigates for the district attorney, and MNPD released body-camera footage within two days.

Trooper Daniel Shown, 66, succumbed to complications from a gunshot wound to the forehead he received in December 1988 while backing up McLennan County deputies on a domestic call in Lincoln City, where a man was threatening his daughter and infant granddaughter with a shotgun. The wound cost him his right eye and part of his brain and left him paralyzed on his left side; the shooter was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 20 years. Trooper Shown had served with the Texas Department of Public Safety for over eight years and is survived by three sisters, a brother, nieces and nephews.

Investigators used a geofence warrant to have Google identify every device near a Virginia bank robbery over a two-hour window, and the Fourth Circuit had upheld the conviction. In a 6-3 opinion by Justice Kagan (No. 25-112), the Court held that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records of a phone's location, so demanding that data is a search even for a short window and even though a third party holds it. The judgment was vacated and remanded; the Court did not rule on whether this warrant met particularity and probable-cause requirements or whether good faith saves the evidence, so location-history pulls used to build a target package now unambiguously require a warrant whose particularity will be litigated next.

Harris County constable deputies responded to a 911 call reporting two men yelling outside a home and a caller with a gun; the canine handler warned a prone but noncompliant suspect twice, then deployed the dog, which held a bite for 43 seconds while he handcuffed the man. Two deputies who arrived minutes later and watched were denied qualified immunity by the district court on a bystander-liability theory. A per curiam panel (Judges King, Smith and Ramirez; No. 25-20590; published) reversed and rendered judgment for the two bystander deputies, holding that no precedent clearly established a duty to intervene in an active canine apprehension of this length where the officers neither participated nor overtly acquiesced. The court decided only the clearly-established prong, expressly did not hold that officers never have a duty to intervene in a dog bite, and the handler's own liability was not before it.

A Medina County deputy arrested a 17-year-old in a reported stolen vehicle tied to an aggravated robbery, secured him handcuffed and seat-belted in the patrol car, and, after the teen kicked the doors and refused to sit properly during a roughly 50-minute vehicle search, discharged a high-velocity pepper-spray device into his face from about 3.6 feet against a manufacturer minimum of 7 feet, allegedly blinding his left eye. Judge Southwick (with Judges Clement and Engelhardt; No. 25-50596; published) affirmed the denial of the deputy's motion to dismiss: as pleaded, the force was excessive against a restrained, surrounded suspect posing no immediate threat, and Ramirez v. Martinez (5th Cir. 2013) clearly established the rule. This is a pleading-stage ruling with no finding of liability yet, but it is binding Texas authority that a less-lethal device's manufacturer stand-off distance is evidence a court will use, and that the restrained-suspect rule reaches OC devices, not just TASERs.