On 7/31/17, Sarah Cole was hired by Chody. She and her now-husband Pence worked together at College Station. He applied to WCSO. The story goes (very good sources that may decide to be identified) that she planned on applying at the jail when she accompanied Pence on his job interview, Fikac suggested that she apply. Apparently, he was impressed with her “appearance”, let’s say. She had approximately two years experience.
Pence was. hired at Hutto and then came over to WCSO the following May.
Cole/now Pence tested for K9 but was not the highest-ranking applicant. It is believed that she was given the position to put Chody in line to appear on Women on Patrol, while he waited for LivePD to begin filming.
In March of 2019, allegedly, after learning of some, what he felt inappropriate text messages on his fiance’s phone, Pence reported a text thread on personal cell phones for the K9 unit. That information came from a high-ranking member of the SO at the time who asked not to be identified. It is substantiated by this clandestine meeting captured by a Youtuber, with Cole, a deputy, Luera, and Deaton a Commander (since separated from the SO).
It is not difficult to believe she met with them to show the content of the text messages. Especially since she was not put through an Internal Investigation, as evidenced by the lack of responsive information to an open records request for such.
After hearing of the text thread, Chody admitted he wanted to immediately fire the deputies involved. Remember, Ryle testified in his deposition that he didn’t involve Chody in IA investigations unless there were criminal charges. Chody claims to have no knowledge of the report of his theft by Brian Johns, yet he was immediately notified about personal text messages and wanted to fire them. He did not have the same reaction to Commander Steve Deaton’s Naught Elf photos, if you remember. He stated that he saw them and asked Deaton to take them down (Which is a lie. Screenshots prove he liked at least two over a year before a citizen reported them to him and they were still up) He didn’t look for a way to fire Deaton, in fact he allowed him to resign voluntarily. You can read more about the K9 text threads and subsequent punishments here. Essentially, two deputies were terminated without a proper IA investigation, two others were sent back to patrol and had their K9s removed for not being, as Chody put it “remorseful enough”, and the remaining members stayed on. Attempts to acquire the interviews and IA information for the terminated deputies have been unsuccessful. Both were accused of lying but no proof has been provided. Both received dishonorable discharges on the F5 which were overturned when appealed.
So four K9s were placed with new handlers. One of those was K9 Axel, who had been recommended for retirement earlier in the year.
Axel was placed with a new, inexperienced handler, was finally retired, and died without any of the usual honors or accolades on social media. You can read more about it here.
Duvall is one of the handlers that was allowed to keep his K9. He is said to have groveled and begged Chody and apparently it worked. He continued to appear on LivePD and most recently, acquired a bloodhound.
In June 2020, Duvall posted on the DL Bloodhound Facebook page about how successful his bloodhound has become. It’s interesting that Chody and Duvall have not posted anything about the bloodhound on Twitter or their Facebook pages.
What’s even more interesting is that Chody is requesting another “trailing dog” for a total of $14,000.
How many tracking dogs does Chody think we need?
Could it be he needs another cute pup to use as a photo prop?
What it all comes down to is that the text messages pissed Chody off. He was angry about some of the things said about him. Those things were not technically work-related and therefore should not have been required to be released. Deputies were told to submit the text thread in its entirety. It should be noted once again that the SO received the text thread AFTER the two deputies were terminated. So how did the know what it said? That goes back to the meeting with Cole, Luera and Deaton.
Chody bravely posted this on his personal Facebook page. County business, offering records only usually obtained via Open Records Requests.
