Lt. John Chris Hooper, public information officer at the Corpus Christi Police Department, soon will be pinning on a new badge. Hooper was hired as the new Nueces County sheriff to replace Sheriff Jim Kaelin, who announced his retirement in September with two years left on his four-year term. Courtesy photos
Chosen from five candidates for the job, Lt. John Chris Hooper of the Corpus Christi Police Department was named Nueces County sheriff by county commissioners on Oct. 17. Hooper will replace retiring Sheriff Jim Kaelin, who is stepping down as of Oct. 31. Cooper will serve the remaining two years of Kaelin’s unexpired term and will have to run for re-election in 2020 if he wants to keep the job, something he told reporters he most likely would do.
The 58-year-old Hooper has 37 years’ experience in law enforcement, most recently serving as head of the Public Information Office. He began his career as a Nueces County jailer, moving from there to the Port Aransas Police Department followed by a lengthy career with Corpus Christi.
He was interviewed along with the four other candidates, chosen from a field of 29 applicants, during a four-hour public meeting of the Commissioners Court. The 3-2 vote in favor of hiring Hooper came after a public discussion by commissioners. No executive session was called.
During the interview, Hooper said he would make recruiting and hiring “the best possible 18-year-olds we can” a priority for the sheriff’s office, which currently has dozens of vacancies.
“They only have to be 18,” he said of new hires. “Hiring those employees, getting them trained up, and then retaining them — I have innovative ideas about how to do that.”
He also spoke about overcrowding at the Nueces County Jail, stating that the 140 new beds due to be added were not a final solution.
“Unless we change something deeper, those 144 beds two to four years from now, we’re going to still be talking about jail overcrowding,” he said, adding that he would look at citing minor offenses in lieu of making arrests for Class A and Class B misdemeanors.
When asked about enforcing agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that deputizes local employees so they can identify and process undocumented immigrant detainees for deportation, Cooper replied that his job would be to uphold the law. Detainees can be held up to 48 hours in the jail to allow ICE time to get them for deportation.
“The sheriff or head of a department shouldn’t be picking or choosing which laws they enforce,” he told commissioners. “These laws are the laws.”
Other finalists for the job were Scott Mandel, CEO at Asset Protection and Security Services, a government contractor managing detention facilities for ICE; Daniel Perez, assistant chief deputy with the Nueces County Sheriff’s Office; Monica Villagomez-Rios, captain with the Nueces County Sheriff’s Office; and Larry Young, a former Corpus Christi police officer now working with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services’ Special Investigation Division.
