Sued by the State: After AG Ken Paxton calls them ‘pro-crime’ extremists, Killeen elected leaders offer little response | Crime

However, Killeen officials appeared unwilling to respond until after hearing from the city attorney.

Killeen — already embroiled in a lawsuit with Bell County over the passing of Proposition A, which essentially decriminalizes marijuana possession for under 4 ounces — is now being sued by the state “for adopting amnesty and non-prosecution policies that violate Texas laws concerning marijuana possession and distribution,” according to a news release from Paxton’s office.

“I will not stand idly by as cities run by pro-crime extremists deliberately violate Texas law and promote the use of illicit drugs that harm our communities,” Paxton said in the release. “This unconstitutional action by municipalities demonstrates why Texas must have a law to ‘follow the law.’ It’s quite simple: the legislature passes every law after a full debate on the issues, and we don’t allow cities the ability to create anarchy by picking and choosing the laws they enforce.”

Named in Paxton’s lawsuit were the Killeen mayor, all seven City Council members, City Manager Kent Cagle and Killeen Police Chief Pete Lopez Jr.

Proponents of the marijuana law say the city has the right to “de-prioritize” Killeen police when it comes to marijuana possession. Opponents say the city law is a clear violation of state law, which is forbidden by the Texas Constitution.

The initial response from the city of Killeen officials was mostly muted.

“We can’t respond until we have had time to review the lawsuit,” Cagle said in an email Wednesday.

The Herald followed up Friday morning to see if Cagle was able to comment.

“No. Staff will have no comment until we have had the opportunity to discuss with Council in executive session,” he said.

That executive session is expected to happen Tuesday night.

Lopez, who was not Killeen’s police chief at the time the Proposition A law was passed by referendum in Killeen in 2022, said he could not comment on pending litigation.

The Herald sent several questions to the mayor and City Council, but only received three statements in reply. None of the elected leaders chose to answer the questions specifically, which asked for their views on if the city should fight the lawsuit or repeal the local law, and how Paxton’s lawsuit reflects on the city’s image.

“The council will be briefed on Tuesday by the city attorney concerning the lawsuit,” Mayor Debbie Nash-King said,

According to the City Council’s Tuesday workshop agenda, there will be a consultation from the city attorney about the lawsuit on the marijuana decriminalization law. It will likely be conducted in closed session.

It’s not clear whether or not Killeen officials will make a statement at that time.

“The City is reviewing the filing and will respond to the lawsuit,” Councilman Ramon Alvarez said in an email Thursday. “The City Attorney does not recommend commenting on pending cases.”

Alvarez was a signatory of the original Ground Game Texas petition which led to Proposition A.

Councilman Jose Segarra also said in an email Thursday they were waiting for consultation from the city attorney and have yet to receive any updates.’

“We will rely on their guidance and defer to their expertise until we have the necessary information from our staff,” he said.

No other city officials have replied to the Herald.

Bell County Commissioner Louie Minor, a Killeen resident who helped organize the effort to get the Killeen marijuana law passed, said in a phone call Friday that he welcomed the lawsuit from Paxton.

“That was something we mentioned multiple times that the Attorney General, even in Bell County’s lawsuit, asked the attorney general to come on and they declined,” Minor said. “The fact that now he’s trying to sue Killeen and the other cities I think he’s just trying to defer people away from the pending lawsuits that he has, which there are many.”

Paxton, a Republican, survived an impeachment attempt from the Texas Legislature last May and is currently being investigated for the firing of two aides, who reported him to the FBI for allegedly accepting bribes.

Minor had a pivotal role to play in the eventual adoption of Proposition A by the city of Killeen, having taken part in the initial meetings in Killeen organized by Ground Game Texas.

But he places the blame squarely on the State Legislature.

“This was caused by the State Legislature whenever they made hemp legal in the state of Texas,” Minor said. “This was a reaction to that because hemp and marijuana are indistinguishable only by THC concentration levels.”

Hemp doesn’t have the THC levels necessary to receive the “high” that certain types of cannabis would give.

Minor still remains an ardent supporter of marijuana decriminalization.

“Everyone that I’ve spoken with in the city of Killeen, they want the city to defend what the voters wanted, the wishes of the voters. And that’s what I expert the City Council will do,” Minor said.

Bell County Commissioner Bobby Whitson, who lives in the Harker Heights area and has followed the issue closely, emphasized in a phone call with the Herald that this wasn’t just a lawsuit against Killeen but all Texas cities that enacted similar ordinances.

“Cities don’t have the ability to make rules that conflict with state law. Unfortunately, many of these cities’ charters allow for petitions that don’t have to meet state law,” he said.

Whitson said Harker Heights is a prime example of the city rejecting the ordinance because, in his view, it is illegal.

“They had two petitions, both illegal,” he said. “The first one was immediately rescinded according with their charter. The second one is a vote for something that (Harker Heights) can’t even do.”

Whitson said even Killeen repealed part of Proposition A — the part that barred city police from conducting a search on a vehicle on the pretext of marijuana odor. In a 4-3 vote, the Killeen City Council amended the marijuana ordinance to remove the section that prevented Killeen police from using the odor of marijuana or hemp as probable cause for search or seizure.

Whitson said the law is “very clear” that no municipality has a right to prevent a police officer from enforcing state law. In Texas, possession of marijuana up to 4 ounces is still a misdemeanor; more than that amount is a felony.

Whitson also responded to the criticism from people like Minor and others that Paxton himself is facing lawsuits.

“He’s not been proven to be guilty,” he said. “Certainly there’s politics involved … But he’s not been indicted on any of that.”

“And even if he is guilty on those things, it doesn’t mean he’s wrong about this law,” Whitson continued. “I’m certainly not a perfect man but my job is to uphold the law in Bell County.”

Julie Oliver, executive director of Ground Game Texas which spearheaded ballot initiatives in some of the cities — including Killeen — that are being sued, responded later Wednesday to Paxton’s lawsuit. She said the lawsuit represented an “anti-democratic assault on the constitutional authority of Texas Home Rule cities to set local law enforcement priorities.”

“In each of the cities sued, a supermajority of voters adopted a policy to deprioritize marijuana enforcement in order to reduce racially-biased law enforcement outcomes and save scarce public resources for higher priority public safety needs,” Oliver said. “Furthermore, Paxton’s slander of so-called ‘pro crime’ organizations that support marijuana reform policies is profoundly ironic coming from a person who is under criminal indictment for securities fraud, under federal investigation for other financial crimes, and has admitted to violating the civil rights of whistleblowers within his own office,”

Oliver, an Austin attorney, came to Killeen and Harker Heights several times in 2022 to promote Prop A.

“This lawsuit is an obvious attempt to deflect from Paxton’s embarrassing legal jeopardy and diminishing political influence,” she said.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s office seemed to be more in agreement with pro-decriminalization, at least back in June 2022.

“Governor Abbott believes that prison and jail is a place for dangerous criminals who may harm others, and possession of a small amount of marijuana is not the type of violation that we want to stockpile jails with,” Abbott’s Press Secretary Renae Eze said in an email to the Herald.

Marijuana is classified federally as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, putting it in the same category as a hard drugs like heroin. But advocates have argued for decades that it doesn’t belong there.

In Paxton’s initial press release, it referenced marijuana as an “illicit substance that psychologists have increasingly linked to psychosis and other negative consequences.”

Nevertheless, marijuana decriminalization — and even legalization — has become a very popular and bi-partisan issue. According to a Gallup poll last November, nearly 70% of Americans supported legalization.

But despite states like New York and California legalizing marijuana, it remains in a gray area federally.

Ground Game Texas’ campaign to decriminalize marijuana in Texas cities began earnestly in 2021 and had successes in Killeen, Austin, San Marcos, Elgin, and Denton. The measure was also passed by voters in Harker Heights in 2022, but the Harker Heights City Council quickly repealed it, igniting a lawsuit against Heights filed by Ground Game last year.

But the real beginnings of the marijuana decriminalization issue in Killeen began on Dec. 31, 2021, when the Herald reported that proponents of what would come to be known as Proposition A gathered at an after-school facility in Killeen in order to garner up support for their cause.

Minor — who at that time was running for the Bell County Commissioner seat — was at that meeting along with former Killeen Councilwoman Shirley Fleming.

“We want to hear their input and we hope to bring a lot of young voters out with this event. We want to hear from everyone,” Fleming said in 2021. “Right now, we are creating a petition and going out and talking to people who are registered voters and seeing what their views are on marijuana decriminalization.”

From this jumping off point, Ground Game Texas successfully put the issue on the ballot in Killeen with the necessary number of signatures in 2022.

However, things became tricky when Bell County sued Killeen in April 2023, a few months after the law was passed.

There is a large disconnect between people — such as many City Council members — who said that by defending itself against the Bell County lawsuit it was upholding the will of the people. Others simply felt the city of Killeen was wasting its money and time defending a city ordinance that goes against state law.

“I believe there’s a lot of things at play here,” Minor said in August 2023, explaining that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the states of Texas and Louisiana — where they sued over the Biden administration’s immigration policy — showed that the county did not have standing in this case.

“I don’t believe the county or the state can show they have been harmed,” he said. “You have to have standing in the case. But that’s for the court to decide. But the interesting thing about this case is that I believe — and it’s in the court records — is that the county asked the attorney general’s office to join this lawsuit and they didn’t join the lawsuit.”

Now the Attorney General’s Office hasn’t joined the Bell County lawsuit, but rather filed its own separate lawsuit against Killeen and the other cities.

Currently, the city of Killeen has spent more than $71,000 on defending its lawsuit against Bell County. The lawyer fees are capped at $100,000.

Ironically, the state of Texas is currently locked into a spat with the federal government over border security, prompting a national conversation on whether Texas’ law trumps federal law. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld the supremacy clause, which says federal law supersedes state law.