GALVESTON — One of the five people the city council appointed to the civilian review board last week has yet to pass the background check required for him to serve on the committee.
When the city council created the board earlier this year, it decided to exclude applicants with felony convictions and those who had misdemeanor convictions within the last three years.
Leon Phillips, whose appointment is temporarily on hold, does not have any convictions, according to the background checks conducted by the Galveston Police Department.
But he does have arrests on his record that do not come with any corresponding information about legal action.
The police department is investigating those incidents to find out whether any of them ended in convictions that for some reason are not showing up on the background check.
Phillips said the investigators will come up empty-handed because he has never been convicted of anything.
The extra investigation is nothing more than an attempt to intimidate people who eventually will be evaluating the police, Phillips said.
“The police department does several things to try and intimidate people,” he said. “This may be an intimidation factor, for all I know. But then they might be working in my best interest. But I do know that the police department intimidates people.”
Phillips is president of the Galveston County Coalition for Justice, a group that promotes civil rights. He advocated for a civilian review board before it was created.
Two detectives contacted Phillips about his record, but he declined to give details about the incidents they questioned him about. It should be the police department’s job to release that information, he said.
Phillips did say the detectives were looking at three incidents that happened in 1967, 1968 and 1972.
The delay in the background checks came up during Thursday’s city council meeting when member Tarris Woods said he thought the council should adopt a new policy for conducting the checks.
Candidates should be investigated before they are appointed to avoid embarrassing them after the council has already given its blessing, he said.
But Police Chief Charles Wiley said he never would have brought up the situation publicly if he had not been asked about it on Thursday.
Wiley never named Phillips as the appointee being investigated. After the meeting, Woods confirmed that Phillips was the one involved.
Although he said he understood the need to do a background check on members of a board that will work so closely with the police department, Phillips said he did not see the reason for the continued investigation into his background when no convictions showed up on his record.
Wiley told the council he thought the investigation would be finished within the next few days.
In the future, each civilian review board candidate will have to pass the background check before being appointed.
On Thursday, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas nominated Eddie Janek Sr. to the board. Councilwoman Susan Fennewald is the only member who has not yet made a nomination.
