6 September 28–OctOber 4, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Officers with the Dallas Police Depart- ment and the Dallas County Sheriff’s De- partment arrived after this occurred. Cox is then captured on body camera footage from the officers standing over Vess as he lies on the ground and the officers discuss what to do next. Vess starts to sit up. That’s when Cox plants another kick right to Vess’ face. Vess stands up to approach Cox and appears to get punched twice before a DPD officer uses their Taser on him, causing him to fall to the ground. Vess continued to be combat- ive as police and DFR personnel took him into custody. Cox would remain with DFR until video of the incident surfaced some two years later. Cox was first put on leave after the Ob- server released video of the incident and then the Dallas Morning News followed up with article raising further questions. He was later fired from the department. Last week, however, Cox appeared before a judge with the city’s civil service board in an at- tempt to get his job back. If he failed, his last course of action would have been to take up the matter with the district court. But he prevailed after a two day hearing last week. He has claimed the whole time that he was merely defending himself when he kicked Vess all those times. According to Jim McDade, president of the Dallas Fire Fighers Association, he and about 40 or 50 other firefighters turned out to support Cox during his hearing. The hearing looked at the facts of the case to de- termine if a rule violation occurred and, if so, was the right punishment dished out for the violation. McDade said the judge did de- termine that Cox violated a rule, disregard- ing the public’s trust, but termination wasn’t the right punishment. Instead, the judge de- termined that Cox should be demoted and not receive back pay for the time he wasn’t with DFR. Cox was demoted from a driver- engineer, one of the department’s promoted ranks, to a fire rescue officer. McDade said all the firefighters at the hearing were pleased with the outcome. “But the reality is we’re disappointed that we even had to get to this point,” McDade said. “I’ve stated all along that he never should’ve been terminated. We’ve taken an incident and basically broken it down to ba- sically a photograph and a couple seconds of a video instead of properly looking at it. You have to look at the totality of the incident.” He said Cox was defending himself and his crew, as well as protecting Vess from run- ning into traffic. “It turned into a political and a PR mess for the city and their easy way out was to terminate Brad and to make Brad look bad,” McDade said. “In reality, we should have been discussing what sort of award or medal that Brad should have re- ceived and not terminated him.” Vess’ family has been advised by their at- torney not to comment on the case. McDade said plenty of firefighters and paramedics have been faced with situations where they’ve had to defend themselves, and that this situation has made them question whether they can. Cox’s firing wasn’t the first disciplinary action he faced. According to The Dallas Morning News, Cox was reprimanded three other times af- ter he was hired in 2002. He was repri- manded for refusing to provide medical treatment to patients. In one incident, it was determined that he failed to assess and transport a patient in 2008. According to the News, Cox was suspended without pay for one shift over this. Three years later, Cox would receive a letter of counseling for “un- acceptable conduct” after he failed to ride with a patient in the back of an ambulance in a rush to the hospital. Then there was his run in with a home- less man named Hirschell Fletcher in 2016. Fletcher, who was previously diagnosed with schizophrenia, was assaulted and robbed outside a soup kitchen in Dallas. He was assaulted again when someone punched him in the head, causing him to fall and hit his head on a wall. People who saw Fletcher alerted a nearby police officer named George Morales. He called two other officers and two DFR paramedics to the scene. One of them was Cox. According to court documents, Fletcher told the officers and paramedics that he needed medical at- tention for his head injuries. It was apparent Fletcher was hurt as blood and contusions were “patently visible,” according to court documents. The officers assumed Fletcher was drunk and arrested him for public in- toxication. They then took him to the Dallas Marshal’s Office and City Detention Center. Fletcher was found unresponsive in his cell the next morning. He was rushed to the hospital but died shortly after due to bleed- ing caused by his head injuries. Cox and the other paramedic allegedly stated falsely in their report of the incident that they had no contact with Fletcher. They were later in- dicted in Dallas County for falsifying their report, which stated that Fletcher had been taken from the scene before they arrived. Cox was still on probation for falsifying a government document when the incident with Vess unfolded. Though he’s been reinstated, Cox still faces two federal lawsuits: one over the Vess case and one over the Fletcher case. In Vess’ suit, the family alleges that Cox used excessive force and should have been fired from the department a long time ago. In the other case, the family argues that Cox vio- lated Fletcher’s Fourteenth Amendment rights when the paramedics failed to treat him. ▼ DOWNTOWN THE END IS NEAR THE DOWNTOWN DALLAS YMCA IS BEING SOLD. BY KELLY DEARMORE T he T. Boone Pickens YMCA in Down- town Dallas is now under contract to be sold and will close in late Novem- ber, according to a statement provided by lo- cal Y leadership. The recent announcement is the latest development in a feud that has intensified over the past several months be- tween longtime members of the Akard Street facility and the board of the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas. “While the decision to sell the building was not an easy one to make, it is one that al- lows the Y to invest in serving the commu- nity, rather than in costly repairs,” Curt Hazelbaker, president and CEO of the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas explained in part of the statement. The cost of repairs Hazelbaker refers to, he explained to the Observer in August, add up to more than $8 million. Instead of put- ting that much money into repairing the 40-year-old facility, leadership began ex- ploring a sale in 2019 and again in 2021. But the 2023 sale process was different from previous attempts. Unlike before, this time Hazelbaker would not guarantee to downtown members that the Metro board would move forward with a sale only after a new downtown spot had been found for the facility to move to. As of now, without a new location for the downtown YMCA, this sale could very well signal an unceremonious end to a tradition that has rolled on for more than a century. In an email sent Sept. 15 to employees of the downtown branch, Hazelbaker said, “The T. Boone Pickens YMCA will no longer operate out of the current facility after No- vember 25, 2023.” The email promised that jobs will be made available at other Dallas- area Y locations for all current employees who will no longer report to 601 N. Akard St. With only a couple of locations of the Y within a few miles of downtown, it’s reason- able to think that many current employees of the T. Boone Pickens facility will soon have some difficult decisions to make about where they’ll work next. According to an email provided to the Observer by a group fitness instructor, there’s no guarantee that part-time instructors will be able to teach the same number of classes in a new loca- tion as they have been teaching downtown. The sale means that, for the time being, Dallas will be one of the very few major American cities to not have a YMCA gym fa- cility in its downtown district. Paul Hoff- meyer, a longtime member of the Y, and one of the people featured on the Observer cover when we ran our August feature on the fu- ture of the downtown location, has been sensing this day was coming. Unfair Park from p4 >> p8 Nathan Hunsinger T. Boone Pickens YMCA is under contract.
