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    PHOTO BY TOM GORDON Deputies Cody Cheatham (left) and Donny Torres are part of the team that provides the first line of law enforcement in Hays County Precinct 3.

A day in the life of a Deputy Constable

The local constables are kind of like the first line of defense.

They’re the folks who keep the traffic flowing in the morning when it’s clogged during school drop off and pick up times.

They’re the folks who check on your house when you are on vacation.

They’re the folks who clear the way for the Fourth of July parade.

Basically, a constable is the same as any other peace officer in Texas. They make arrests, write tickets and file charges. They also execute civil laws — disputes between individuals and organizations — as opposed to criminal acts That’s where a constable differs from a sheriff’s deputy or a police officer who are concerned with criminal matters.

Donny Torres is a burly guy who looks even bigger with his armored vest and all his equipment. He has been in law enforcement since 2002 in Gonzales and in the West Lake Hills area near Austin. He became a deputy constable in Wimberley in 2016. He’s the guy who spends the day patrolling Wimberley looking for unsafe drivers and waiting for that emergency call to come in.

When he’s not stopping someone for speeding or making an unsafe turn, he could be a bailiff in court, serving court papers, overseeing evictions, removing children from unsafe conditions, or helping confiscate property to settle a judgment.

“I enjoy working in Wimberley,” Danny says. “Everyone knows everyone around here.”

Danny has a bachelor’s degree in Homeland Security and Criminal Justice and is working on his master’s degree.

45-mph speed limit

Donny parks his Ford F-150 pickup along FM 3237 and waits. The speed limit is 45 miles an hour. A radar gun mounted on the dashboard tracks the speed of each vehicle coming over the rise.

“I give them a buffer of up to 13 miles (an hour),” Donny explains. He issues an average of four to five tickets a day. Some days, however, he gives out as many as 10 tickets.

“The majority of times they (the drivers) know I got them. They know what’s coming. The locals are really good about it. Some of the out of towers, less so,” he says.

Just then a white Lexus SUV is clocked doing 62. “I can’t let that go,” he says, as he swings the pickup in the opposite direction and steps on it.

The driver pulls over. Donny punches the license plate number into a computer to try and get an idea of who he is dealing with. “When you run a plate and it’s a hit (for a criminal record), your computer will go nuts in seconds,” he explains.

He gathers up the driver’s license and insurance papers and walks back to his truck to write up a ticket. He has a smile on his face. It seems the driver was upset by the actions of another driver and “just gunned it.”

“It’s just the way he said it,” Donny says with a chuckle.

The driver gets a ticket and is resigned, he knows he deserves it. Donny won’t speculate on the amount of the fine. “I let the courts handle the fines,” he says. “If you give them the wrong fine it creates a big mess.”

All kinds of gear

Donny carries all his gear — Mace, handcuffs, knife, pens and paper, a body camera — in his armored vest. He feels the standard duty belt is too cumbersome and the weight is riding too low so he purchased his own vest. Donny says that belt probably weighs 20 pounds. “It gives me a backache. In fact, you’ll find most officers have bad lower back pain,” he says.

Donny figures he puts in 70-80 miles a day on patrol and devotes 3-4 hours to driving around. The area the Precinct 3 constables cover stretches from the outskirts of San Marcos to the Blanco County line and from the Comal County line to the Hays City Store.

Back on patrol, he stops on River Road to make sure everyone is obeying the 25-mile-an-hour speed limit. Most of the drivers are. “They are probably flashing their lights (to let other drivers know I am here). They do that,” he says.

Driving back through the Square he spots an 18-wheeler. There’s an approved truck route in Wimberley and that route does not include the Square. Basically, if the driver is making a delivery it’s OK to be there; otherwise they must go around.

Unhappy truck driver

The truck pulls over and the driver is not happy. His GPS has routed him through the Square and he missed the truck route signs. He gets a ticket which is actually a city-ordinance violation and not a traffic fine, which would go on his record. He also gets a map of the truck route for his next visit to Wimberley. By the end of the stop, the truck driver is chatty and friendly.

In his almost 20 years in law enforcement Donny has seen some changes. “The biggest change is the anti-law enforcement attitude. There’s just not as much respect for law enforcement anymore. A lot of it is based on politics and what’s in the news, I guess,” he says.

The most dangerous duties involve calls for child-custody disputes and evictions, situations packed with emotion and unpredictability.

The starting salary for a deputy constable is around $50,000 and tops out at $64,000. A deputy constable in Wimberley must have a Peace Officer’s license, 30 hours of college and seven years of experience. As they get more training, their salary increases. A constable runs for election every fours years and the deputies know if the current constable loses, they could all be replaced. “That’s just how it is,” says Donny. “The new guy deserves to have his own people.”

Back on the road, Donny sums up his job: “I’ll just patrol now and when something comes up, I’ll deal with it.”

Wimberley View

P.O. Box 49
Wimberley, TX 78676
Phone: 512-847-2202
Fax: 512-847-9054