Cop Out

---

North Richland Hills had to cope with a lot of growth in the '90s, and that meant revamping its police department. Shockley came on board in 1997, shortly after the SWAT team was put into place. The department had about 100 officers--small enough that officers knew everyone's name, and big enough that they felt like they were part of something more than just a podunk outfit. There was still a code of silence, however, that some contend prevented officers from reporting bad behavior by their peers. That included SWAT officers' prevailing obsession with photographing their own genitals.

In a city where the SWAT team gets called out maybe three times a year, the occasional dick joke seems harmless enough. But even in a quiet town like North Richland Hills, lives are at stake when an armed police force breaks down the front door. Residents want to believe that their uniformed protectors are focused solely on the task at hand. But there were moments at North Richland Hills that were anything but focused.

Before anyone at North Richland Hills had even heard of Barbara or Troy Davis, there was Ann Shelton. Tall, redheaded Shelton was the only female on the SWAT team. The guys called her "Biscuit," and if they cussed and told rude jokes, she did too. SWAT may have been a boys' club, but Shelton wasn't intimidated. Shelton was annoyed by Hill's constant joking references to his penis; after all, he was "Peenie." But that was just his thing. Until, that is, his thing was exposed in a photo with Shelton during training at Fort Hood. It was one of three alleged incidents that would lead to an internal affairs investigation of Hill and discipline against both him and Shelton.

The North Richland Hills SWAT team trained incessantly. Officers attended seminars, shooting sessions and forums on the use of SWAT, intent on being the best-trained, if not the most often used, team in the area.

In November 1998, the team was taking a group photo for the scrapbook when several members of the team started laughing. Shelton leaned forward to look down the line of fellow officers and saw Hill shield his crotch with his hand as he turned away from her. "Peenie" in action. She never actually saw Hill's exposed member that day or in the resulting photos. Turns out, she didn't even have to.

Detective Kevin Brown, who would later leave the department after being disciplined for turning over police documents to Davis' attorneys, developed the scrapbook roll and ended up with two shots of Hill's penis. After he showed them to Shockley, they went straight into the shredder. A few days later, the negatives followed. Hill was verbally reprimanded for the stunt by Wallace and later by Shockley. When Shelton got the remaining negatives to reproduce a set of her own, she noticed the missing frames and the truth came out.

She also alleged that during other training camps where the team had to share living quarters--always with a separate space for her to sleep and shower--Hill would walk around in front of her in his underwear. Then, says Shelton, Hill was unnecessarily rough with her in a self-defense training seminar. After being on SWAT since December 1995, Shelton finally complained about Hill's behavior in April 1999. She said "it had just become too much hearing about how big Officer Allen Hill's penis is and what all he can do with it."

In the course of the investigation, however, it came out that Shelton had, on occasion, wandered into the guys' bunk while they were clad in towels or underwear. Her fellow SWAT officers felt it was a double standard. Shelton received a 16 hour suspension without pay. Hill ended up receiving 80 hours unpaid suspension for his gag. But Hill wasn't the only officer who thought playing candid camera with his own genitalia was funny.

On the same trip to Fort Hood, Hill couldn't find one of the four disposable cameras they'd packed. Obsessed with military paraphernalia, Hill would take endless shots of tanks and equipment. He bought more cameras, returning home with seven. One still had several shots left, and Linda finished out the roll with photos of their children, but when she walked out of Eckerd and flipped through the photos, she got a surprise.

"I'm coming across pictures of guys' penises and guys' asses," she says, still incredulous. "And then pictures of my kids."

She was even able to identify one of the offenders by the black wristwatch in the photo. It was Wallace, who'd given her husband the verbal reprimand after the group picture incident. Incensed, she called her husband and told him what she knew. Later, Wallace telephoned to apologize. He told her it was just a friendly joke on Hill.

With this in her mind, she attended Hill's civil service hearing in the Shelton harassment investigation months later and was disgusted. None of the other officers said anything about pulling similar pranks or admitted that penises were such a frequent facet of North Richland Hills humor.

In a Davis-related deposition from 2002, Wallace denies taking any photographs of his penis on Allen Hill's camera and has no explanation for Linda Hill's story. Instead, Wallace recalls a different incident, in Arkansas, when he and raid videographer Greg Stilley did steal a fellow officer's camera and take nude photos. He later admits that on the same Fort Hood trip, he'd rappelled down a wall naked after helping another officer out--fully clothed--with a training video.