“As a career police officer in Texas, the fact that my state always had a high rate of officer line of duty deaths stayed in the back of my mind. It is not something you thought about all the time, but it is a reality that is always there.”
Just last month I wrote about a police officer being killed in the line of duty at Texas Tech University where I am currently studying law. Sadly, this article is about yet another fallen Texas police officer. While the Texas Tech officer was new to the job, San Marcos Officer Kenneth Copeland was a well-trained 19-year veteran of the San Marcos Police Department.
Officer Copeland was shot and killed Monday afternoon when he was serving a warrant in the El Camino Real subdivision of the city of San Marcos, Tx.
The officer – who was wearing a protective vest – was with other SMPD officers when he was shot multiple times. When he went down, other officers pulled him out of the line of fire and rushed him to the hospital in a patrol car. There was no time to wait for an ambulance to arrive. He was taken to the Central Texas Medical Center immediately and was later pronounced dead at 3:50 p.m. local time.
Copeland joined the department in March 1998, according to a press release. Previously, he was a corrections officer in Huntsville, Texas and San Jose, California. He had also been a deputy sheriff with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office and served with the Corpus Christi sector of the US Coast Guard, which included duty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
San Marcos, like so many police departments, is shorthanded and Copeland was working on his day off to help fill in.
The shooting happened near Bowie Elementary School in San Marcos, Texas. The suspect was taken into custody following a shootout with law enforcement. He also suffered a gunshot wound during the incident and was transported to a hospital in Austin, police said. It has not been determined whether the suspect was shot by officers returning fire or from a self-inflicted wound.
The suspect was identified in court documents filed in Hays County on Monday as 51-year-old Stewart Thomas Mettz.
The arrest warrant affidavits said Mettz faced a family violence assault charge after his wife and mother-in-law came forward on November 26 to report that he’d assaulted both of them.
Mettz is also identified by public records as the owner of the property where Officer Kenneth Copeland was shot and killed.
The affidavits said Mettz and his wife have been married for the past seven years, and the mother-in-law lived with them for roughly a year and a half. The mother-in-law told police Mettz became angry on November 25 because she was in his room. She said he grabbed her by the shirt and neck and pulled her out the room, the affidavit said.
According to the report, the women told investigators Mettz told her, “You had better not file charges or you know what will happen.”
Mettz’s wife also reported being assaulted on August 30, and said several other physical altercations had happened in which Mettz was the aggressor.
“(The women) advised that they have never reported any previous incidents because they are scared of Stewart,” the affidavit said.
On the outside, the house where slain San Marcos police officer Kenneth Copeland arrived to serve a warrant on Monday afternoon seemed like the perfect property – it even won “yard of the month” several times according to a neighbor who spoke to the American-Statesman but declined to give her name.
“On the inside, it was a house of horrors,” she said. “It was a bomb waiting to happen.”
Texas Governor Gregg Abbott tweeted the news, saying:
“We pray for the family of the San Marcos police officer killed in the line of duty. We remember the sacrifices our men and women in law enforcement make every day. #BackTheBlue.”
In a separate statement, the governor said, “Today we grieve for the family of the fallen San Marcos police officer, and we vow swift justice for the killer. The men and women in law enforcement put their lives on the line every day to protect and to serve our communities, and we will never forget their sacrifices.”
He added: “Cecilia and I extend our heartfelt condolences to the officer’s family and to the entire San Marcos Police Department.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement that he’s “deeply troubled and saddened” at the officer’s death, and added, “Officers around our state courageously serve and deserve our utmost honor and respect, especially during this time. Please join Angela and me as we pray for the officer’s family, the people of San Marcos, and for our law enforcement officers around the state.”
After the July 2016 ambush shootings of five Dallas, Texas police officers, there was much discussion about the dangers of police work and if (or how) the shootings, which also wounded nine officers and two civilians, might damage police-community relations.
Charley Wilkison, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas
(CLEAT) executive director, said, “I think there’s a heightened sense of reality because the fear part, of course officers are trained to deal with that. But Texas has lost the most. Texas has lost the most law enforcement officers in the line of duty of any state in America. So that’s absolutely something they (police officers) are aware of coming into the job, coming into the profession.”
Based on figures from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE), 1,959 Texas officers have been killed in the line of duty since Texas became a state. Ken Mobley, legislative liaison for the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement said in an email that the names of “1,955 law enforcement officers are on the Texas Peace Officer Memorial. These are the individuals who were approved by the commission as per TCOLE rules of eligibility, some (individuals) dating back to the early 1800s.”
Wilkison’s figure turned out to be higher than other counts we found of law enforcement deaths for Texas, though two other analyses support the notion that Texas leads other states in officer deaths.
As of September 7, 2016, the Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP) – which was cited by Wilkison and others as a data source and is curated by a nonprofit dedicated to honoring America’s fallen law enforcement heroes – listed Texas’ count at 1,866 officer deaths (plus 12 deaths of K9 dogs) across 27 cause-of-death categories.
In 2017, 14 officers have been killed in the line of duty in Texas, again the highest number of any state.
As a career police officer in Texas, the fact that my state always had a high rate of officer line of duty deaths stayed in the back of my mind. It is not something you thought about all the time, but it is a reality that is always there.
This death hits home for me. For years, I was the chief of the felony warrant division in a department in Texas. When my officers found someone we were looking for, I was called. Those calls were at all hours of the day or night. My wife became accustomed to me answering the phone on the second ring with one word, Harris.
When those calls came, I was out the door within minutes. It meant my guys were involved in a situation and I was normally the first through the door. I was in charge, and it was my job, my responsibility.
Officer Copeland was about the same age as I am and I even remember meeting him at several training events when I was still active in law enforcement in the area.
Officer Kenneth Copeland is the first officer killed in the line of duty in the San Marco Police department’s history. He’s survived by a wife and four children.
Police departments in the area are stepping up to provide support as the San Marcos Police Department deals with the tragedy. The Hays County Sheriff’s Office will help cover calls during Copeland’s memorial service and funeral and will assist with the dispatch center as well. A spokesman says Hays County took over all the department’s calls when the shooting happened so San Marcos officers could respond. Austin police also say they’ve offered assistance and “stand ready to provide it if requested to do so,” as have other departments.
