ustxtxb_obs_1962_07_27_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

The Texas Observer An Independent-Liberal Weekly Newspaper A Window t6 the South Voulme 53 TEXAS, JULY 27, 1962 15c Per Copy Number 17 FORT WORTH “The sister of a 195-pound berserk man, who held eight policemen at bay with a 14inch double-pronged fork for almost two hours last night, today thanked the officers for the humane manner In which they captured him.” The above paragraph led off a news story in the Fort Worth Press last Friday. The story went on to describe how the eight policemen captured the “berserk man” by using a sheet and a rope “to bind him with to keep him from getting hurt.” Following the description of the humane capture, came this paragraph : “The police recently were criticized for shooting a berserk Negro to death. They said that incident had nothing to do with the way they handled the man yesterday. ‘We go and do the best we can,’ Captain Derden said.” Captain Derden’s statement notwithstanding, the Fort Worth police obviously have learned something about handling “berserk men” \(if not “berserk Neshot to death on June 29. \(Obs., forth a flood of protests after a film of the shooting was shown on a local television newscast. Chief in Trouble? Even before the Scott shooting, however, Fort Worth Police Chief Cato Hightower was in trouble with his immediate superior, City Manager L. P. CookIngham, and some members of the city council. Hightower has been Fort Worth police chief longer than anyone else, but there is talk that he will be fired soon, or demoted, unless he makes sweeping reforms in his department before Cookingham’s contract comes up for renewal in October. The city manager knows that more “embarrassing” incidents involving city police between now and October could result in his own premature retirement, therefore he can be expected to transfer the pressure he feels onto the shoulders of the man directly responsible for the conduct of the police department. City Manager Cookingham has called the Scott shooting the result of “insufficient training, planning and supervision” and ordered Chief Hightower to “correct the deficiencies.” Chief Hightower backed his men and said no disciplinary action would be taken. He added, however, that his men would get special training “in three or four weeks” on how to handle mental cases. Captain Dwight Johnson was in charge of the patrolmen on the Scott case. When asked by Kent Biffle, Dallas News reporter, why his men did not use a net to subdue Scott, Captain Johnson said, “That’s a good idea but we didn’t have a net. Somebody suggested that we should have used a hypo gun too, like they use to drug wild animals, but we didn’t have one of those either. If we had used a hose on him, it might have set him to running. He could have reached a bystander and hurt somebody.” So they shot him. Nine pistol shots were fired. Six hit the target. ‘Don’t Shoot’ Scott’s mother, Mrs. Susie Stolden, 51, said, “I cried and begged them not to shoot my baby. When a bull gets loose in the city the police go out and catch it. They don’t shoot it. They could have done as much for my baby.” Captain Johnson said the mother had changed her story since the day of the shooting. “She said then she didn’t hold any grudge.” John Ohendalski, Fort Worth Press staff writer, wrote last week: “Several city council members recall that Captain Johnson is a controversial man who has been criticized for spending too much time putting out and adpacked magazine which has been disapproved by at least one Better Business Bureau in Texas. Chief Hightower was criticized for allowing one of his officers to do this. When the controversy was promoted to captain after passing a Civil Service exam.” “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” said one city council member recently, “and smoke has come up often from the police department in the past year.” Publicized incidents of the past year include: A AUSTIN TEXAS’ NEW REPUBLI-CANS, and their interim sympathizers, are intensely serious in trying to link John Connally with George Parr in the public’s mind. The Duval county political boss’ unique role in Texas politicsfrom the 1948 delayed unveiling of illusive Box 13 to the recent jailing of the Duval county GOP chairmanhas been a big issue in the governors race thus far, from the Republican viewpoint. This week, however, Republicans from around Austin seemed prepared to penetrate the Mesquite Curtain around George Parr country with some laughter as well as serious political talk. Marion Findlay, Travis County GOP chairman, invited Republicans in the area to join him, in a chartered bus, on a “safari” into Duval county Saturday to hear Jack Cox speak at a Republican rally in San Diego, the Duval county seat. AUSTIN MAJOR OIL COMPANIES have financed almost all of the state’s expensive well surveys that have confirmed what Atty. Gen. Will Wilson, in an Observer interview this week, called “probably the biggest trespass and possible theft in Texas history in the amount of money involved.” Wilson said at least 100 slant-hole wells have been drilled to bottom out under other owners’ leases. \(This week, 64 had been definitely “It’s been estimated,” Wilson said, “that there could be allowables for between 300 and 700 wells involved in it.” This is possible because often the crude pumped up from the slant-hole wells was funneled through underground pipes to nearby wells that were not actually producing, but on which the slant-hole producers claimed allowable production. Parallel Interests Not a single major oil company has yet been implicated; Wilson says that none has been charged with slanting a well, to his knowledge. Wilson explained to major that money is not appropriated by the state for oil well surveys of this kind and accepted contributions to “the Attorney General’s Trust Fund” to finance them. “We have accepted donations from anyone having an interest parallel with the state, ‘ he said. “That turns out to be people in the middle of the East Texas field. That’s nearly all majors . . . We just tell ’em there’s no appropriated money for this sort of thing. They don’t select the wells to be surveyed.” Referring to criticisms of the fund, Wilson leaned back in the swivel chair of the airy office he will vacate in January and said, “They say that this is being “Who Will Go To Duval County With Jack Sox?” Findlay’s facetious invitation, or challenge, began. It was mailed to 1,300 potential Cox supporters in and around Austin. Those who “dared” to accept were asked to send $7, for the round-trip bus ticket, to Jane GOP executive director James Leonard. The chartered bus will leave the Austin Greyhound station at 2 p.m. Saturday if a sufficient number accept Findley’s daring invitation. The rally in San Diego begins at 7 p.m. The bus will return to Austin Saturday night. The trip will be made in cars if too few accept to afford the bus, Mrs. Leonard said. financed by the majors, and that’s truelargely.” On request, he readily provided the Observer with a list of contributions to the survey-financing fund, dated between June 5, 1962, and July 19. They total $178,775; almot all the money came from majors. The run-down: Humble, $30,000; Continental, $13,500; Gulf, $15,000; Hunt Oil Co., $6,000; Sun Oil, $6,000; Mobil, $9,000; Texaco, $10,500; McAlister Fuel Co., $6,000; Ohio Oil Co., $6,000; Atlantic Refining Co., $7,500; Pan American Petroleum Corp., 24,000; Shell, $15,000; Cities Service, $8,000; Socony Mobil, $10,000; L. F. Bueke, $60; Tidewater, $7,500; Luling Oil & Gas, $1,000; General Crude Oil Co., $2,500; Goldston Oil, $1,000; Vaughn Petroleum Co., $200; and C. M. Langford, $25. Wilson said that it has been a customary policy of his office to accept such contributions from people who have an interest parallel to the state’s, for example, for surveying costs in land law suits. “I see nothing wrong with it,’ he said. Wilson says he will survey wells of “anybody we have information has deviated,” but that so far no majors “that I know about” had been accused. “If there is we’ll jury survey their own wells” with their own money, he said. ‘Everybody’s Doing It’ So far the Attorney General’s office has filed penalty suits only on the basis of alleged violations of a Railroad Commission order prohibiting plugging suspected wells. Wilson will wait until all The tone of the text of Findlay s invitation may have been an answer, in kind, to a statement issued a few weeks ago by Duval County Judge Archer Parr, nephew of George Parr, after it was known that GOP Candidate Cox planned to speak in San Diego on July 28. In this statement, Judge Pharr \(who is opposed in the November election by guarantee Cox and his supporters “safe conduct behind the Mesquite Curtain.” George Parr, himself, would meet Cox at the county line, the county judge said, and escort him to the Windmill Cafe, \(the cafe sits exactly on the county line, which runs along If the weather turns bad, Parr said, local Democrats will furnish a telephone booth to house the crowd. The GOP invitation to ride the chartered bus from Austin to the Duval rally declared: “Not since Old Ben Milam issued his stirring call in 1835 to take San Antonio de Bexar from General Cos has surveys of suspected wells have been completed before deciding how to proceed against defendants for violations of commission orders against deviating wells, and against government personnel who are culpably implicated. \(The only exception to these policies so far is a state lawsuit that has already been filed against the one discovered deviated well in Wilson said that the defense he had heard is being advanced by the accused drillers is that “it was a common practice, and everybody was doing it.” Aggrieved private parties, of course, may seek to recover damages in private suits. These could take at least three forms. One would be suits by owners of leases under which the deviated wells bottomed. In the water-drive East Texas field, these leaseholders may have trouble proving actual damages. Another would be suits by leaseholders on the west side of the East Texas field alleging that their wells went to water earlier than they would have because of the deviated wells at the east side of the field. And a third might be a claim by a driller on a lease adjacent to one on which a deviated well had turned out to be a producer. The adjacent driller might content he was misled by the fruits of his neighbor s fradulent procedures. So far the only names that have worked their ways into court records have been those of oilmen enjoined by Austin district judge Herman Jones from preventing the surveying of wells to see if they have been deviated from the vertical. In the standard, formal pleading of these cases, it is alleged that in one unspecified instance, a district court in Gregg County enjoined the Railroad Commission’s district supervisor from conducting a deviation survey, \(Continued on Page such a challenge been offered to Texans who are willing to stand up for freedom. . . . The Duke of Duval and his Crown Prince have guaranteed ‘safe conduct’ to all Republicans entering Duval County on July 28 \(naturally the amsince Fannin tried to reach the Alamo has a more hazardous expedition been planned. . . To immortalize youif worse comes to worstDawson Duncan of the Dallas Morning News will accompany our convoy as War Correspondent. He guarantees your name will be spelled right in the casualty lists.” Special attractions of the trip were listed as follows: “SEE the home of Landslide Lyndon’s eighty-seven votes. “SEE what life is like behind the Mesquite Curtain. “SEE Texas’ first concentration campthe San Diego calaboose. “SEE the only county where 93.25 percent of the votes went to Lyndon’s boy John. “SEE the bravest Republican of SHOOTING AFTERMATH Ft. Worth Police Chief On Spot ATTORNEY GENERAL DISCUSSES: The Oil Survey Fund Daring GOP Expedition