On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving city with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with Randy Beamer and the newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on the record with Randy Beamer.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you for joining us for On the Record this week.

I'm Randy Beamer.

We're starting with a story that you may have heard a little bit about.

It happened on the Riverwalk down June 17th in front of the Rainforest Cafe.

It was a killing of a duck.

A man was arrested for that.

But then the reaction to it and what happened after that has become the story.

Joining us to talk about it is Henry Bassuk who is president of the San Antonio Park Police Officers Association.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

First of all, if people have or maybe you've heard just a little bit of this story, what happened with this killing of the duck?

A lot of people are around when this happened.

Right in front of a popular restaurant right on the Riverwalk.

Yes, sir.

5:00 in the afternoon, broad daylight for whatever reason, this individual was walking around down there, saw this animal and decided that they were going to just torture this animal to death and complete disregard to everybody else that was around there, or the animal began, bringing that duck's neck, swinging it around by its head, slamming it on the ground, kicking it, stomping on it.

People were just in total shock by what was going on.

thankfully we had officers that were maybe 50 to 100ft away.

They were instantly flagged down.

They were able to actually catch the individual while he was still at, with the animal.

They were able to review.

People were recording this on their cell phone, so they walked up to the officers and gave the officers, permission to view their phones to see what happens.

The officers made the arrests.

Unfortunately, the animal did not survive the attack.

they got, in contact with the animal control.

They got in contact with the state game wardens.

They came up with the charge of animal cruelty, which is a third degree felony here in the state of Texas.

brought him down to the magistrate's office at 401 South Frio, where they attempted to, to book him for that charge.

And the charge was summarily denied, by the assistant district attorney who was working at the district office that day.

And why was that?

What did they tell you and how did you contact them?

The district attorney's office maintains a small office at the magistrate's, and they review all felony cases that come in before it actually goes before the magistrate itself to justify the charge.

they told the officers that it wasn't meeting the criteria of a captured animal under 49.092 of the Texas Penal Code.

And so the officers went again and reached back out to state game wardens and other people who have much more expertise in these, in this area of wild animals and they were confirmed by state representatives and state law enforcement that this was the appropriate charge for this incident.

It just didn't pass over to the the district attorney's office, who just refused to take it.

And they said it should have been a misdemeanor because it didn't rise to the level of the felony.

What's your response to that?

I think it was I think it was the wrong call.

over the last several days, of course, I get the benefit of having more time to make the determination.

I have read the law.

I read, Joe Gonzalez's the district attorney's response to the original news story and his reading of the law.

I understand that there is an argument that could be made about whether the duck had been previously captured or not, but it's an argument that I believe is easily justified.

And this is because the law says it's an uncatchable wild animal.

And this then part of the law applies.

Yes.

it would require it to have been previously captured, but there's no definition as to previously.

So just the individual's act of capturing it prior to torturing it, in my opinion, and in the opinion of some of the, the legal people who have reached out to me is a clear definition of it's captured right then and then you committed the act of torture.

And aside from all the technicalities, the reason you wanted the man charged is because killing an animal can lead to other, more serious things, as well as an indication of, he was eventually taken to the hospital for evaluation.

He was he was taken, as a misdemeanor charge.

It would at most was a citation or written citation and release.

fearing that releasing him would cause, further, aggressive action towards possibly people.

He was taken to the hospital for a mental evaluation, and I haven't seen much written on his his state at the time and whether he was making other threats or what, disposition of what?

What was he like at the time?

According to officers, from what I was told.

And what, a little bit of the footage that I actually saw from the officer's body cams, he was, I want to say, completely intact.

He was almost emotionless.

He wasn't irate.

He wasn't throwing his hands.

He wasn't acting out in a way that would give you some type of indication of mental illness.

Was he talking about why he wanted to do this?

Was he talking at all?

I don't believe he made any real statements other than I'm not doing anything, to the officers once the officers approached him.

And I'm not aware of any statements that he made while he was doing it in the act itself.

And now, the reason you also want to pursue this is because it sets a precedent.

It does.

I'm not sure.

I think everybody who's been in this, in this town for any period of time remembers George the Duck.

Yes, was a beloved animal on the Riverwalk.

He was taken in by one of the restaurants near Mexican Manhattan.

and he was tortured and killed for no reason whatsoever in the middle of the night.

Caught on security camera.

And the outrage was here, I still worked.

I was working for the park police when that that incident occurred.

And I saw the public outrage over it.

And a ten and $15,000 reward were offered for the capture of his killers.

That doesn't normally happen, but at least in that case, it happened in the middle of the night, away from people.

Nobody could see there was there was an element of they were hiding in the dark doing it.

This individual at 5:00 in the afternoon, in broad daylight, in a busy, popular section of the Riverwalk where families are walking around, where children are there, especially at the The Rainforest Cafe, where it's a very popular family restaurant.

to do something as horrific as this with no emotional outlay whatsoever that has to be dealt with in the most severe way the law can deal with it, because it's going to lead to further violence.

There's been many studies over it.

I've had personal experience where you've seen violence does not go down once you start doing violent, horrific acts.

They will continue and become more violent and more horrific.

If this happened today, would there be a charge?

What would what would you charge this person if the incident happened again?

I would tell the officers to try to do the same charge again and make the District Attorney's office deny it.

We will always do what is best for the citizens, for the Riverwalk, for for the city in general, and trying to protect anyone and everyone.

And I understand you've had a whole lot of reaction from people out there since this happened.

I've had, concerned citizens calling my office.

I've had concerned citizens sending me email to our website.

I've had, a law professor reach out who is a expert in animal cruelty cases, saying, no, there's case law on this.

It's easily acceptable.

Yes.

They always make the same argument about capture, but that's already been dealt with in the past.

Maybe he just doesn't know about it.

I've had people call and say that they know people in the district attorney's office, and we'll be reaching out to those people trying to change this case.

I know the officer is still trying to see if he can get it filed at large so that we can still file this case, against this individual.

And then others have said you need to reach out to the legislature to change the law.

unfortunately, my my association isn't large enough to have a PAC fund where we really have.

Right.

Well, not just you, but the people out there should be reaching out.

And I have, and I've stated that to everyone who's called.

And I know there's a lot more people that I need to call back because I've had so many calls and so many emails.

I'm still trying to go through them all.

So if they see this, I'm still getting to you.

but yes, every every last one of them needs to call their their state representative and have them clarify this law.

I mean, the fact is, regardless of whether you want to say it's been captured previously or not.

The idea that you can do something this horrific to an animal is just beyond.

And why in the law, I don't know.

If you know, why would it make a difference whether it's been captured before?

I really don't know.

because it's it's like, livestock versus non livestock.

Well, there are two separate categories.

One that specifically deals with livestock and then there's the second category which deals with non livestock animals.

And although it says things about feral cats and about dogs and everything and other such animals, it has that one odd provision about previously captured wild animals and why it's written that way.

I don't, I don't know.

I don't know the state legislator that decides for that language.

But regardless, I cannot believe anyone or anyone has ever written a law saying, you know what?

Under certain circumstances, it's okay to take, any animal and viciously beat it to death because we're okay with that.

I can't imagine somebody thinking, oh, this will be good.

All right, well, stay tuned.

It sounds like this is we're going to find out more about what may happen down the road in this kind of situation.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Henry Bassuk president of the San Antonio Park Police Officers Association.

Thanks.

Thank you sir.

There is a brand new and massive book out about the burial records at the Alamo Mission, San Antonio de Valero, and it doesn't just include the direct transcription or translations of those records, but notes about the people who lived there, who they married, how they lived.

Joining us to talk about this is the author of that book, Art Martinez de Vara Thank you very much for coming in.

Now you are by trade a lawyer and, you've got into this fascinating historical research.

How?

I was representing the, the Alamo Defenders Descendants Association and the film called Tech Nation.

And we had applied to the Texas Historical Commission to designate, Mission Valero or the Alamo, a historic Texas cemetery.

And this was the years ago.

Yes, 2019, I believe.

And, to our surprise, the the Alamo Trust, filed a letter within a historical commission arguing that there was no cemetery at the Alamo.

And so the tax fell on me to prove otherwise.

And so, you know, I knew that it was a mission, that there were sacramental records.

there were 1100 burials in the Sacramento records.

there was almost a century of archeology.

And so we began putting together this, this the brief for the historical commission.

And that's kind of really the origin and genesis of the book.

And now their response to this was to say that it wasn't there was eventually a settlement that came out of that.

But tell me about the book.

What do you want?

The book to say to show about the people there?

Well, what you know, one of the things that I've, I've realized is that there is a tendency to overlook the mission period at the Alamo, the indigenous inhabitants, the people that actually built the Alamo.

You know, after this hearing was over, I realized that we needed to go a little bit further and know who were these people.

Right.

You know, because, a burial record by simply say, you know, Francisco, Hiram, a Indian was buried on this date.

Who was Francisco?

Who was he married to?

Who was his children?

What role did he play in the mission?

You know, that he that he contribute to something or did he get in, you know, did he have a court case against him or anything like that?

And so, we started looking at the other Sacramento records, the other missionary records, military records, other other sources, and found this rich volume of information about these people.

And so we've annotated each, each entry, to the best of our ability to kind of revive and kind of give a, a little mini biography of who these people were and what their lives were like.

And one of the things that's fascinating, just from the direct translation and the first of all, a Catholic archdiocese here just transcribed their own.

They have their own book or books of burials as one, baptisms and weddings.

And that's the transcription.

But it also includes, I don't know how many different groups of Indians or you call them nations or tribes, right?

Families.

Correct.

How many are there of that were at the Alamo?

It's hard to say exactly because there's there are several that are similar sounding.

And these are being written down by the Spanish friars, you know, Hispanic sizing it.

So but there's roughly around 50 groups and you can categorize them in different ways.

Right.

So there was an original group that came to found the mission, and they were originally from from the Rio Grande area.

those are, you know, dramas.

and they kind of maintain their status within the mission period, kind of as the as the leaders, you know, they hold lots of political offices and whatnot.

Then there are groups of called Texans, and that's a language group that are from the San Antonio River basin, you know, Medina River area.

They're the ones that are being recruited into the mission.

And then, you know, throughout the mission area, there's other attempts.

There's there's Colesville Indians.

The Chronicle was and Cocos are brought in.

There's, everything from refugees to, there's groups of people called corridos or like, colored ones.

These are these are Wichita and Toccoa, Indians who had a tech mission, San Saba and were given basically a, a sentence of exile and slavery.

And so they're brought into the mission is as slaves, there's Apaches, there's, there's one there's one reference of of a of a Ute Indian girl who sold by the Apache into the mission in the Utes are from the the Four Corners region, you know.

And so there's a large number of people, it's a, you know, which is very important because what happens at Mission Viejo is something we call ethno genesis, that you have all these different groups and they kind of meld together.

These are the founders of San Antonio, basically, and they intermarried with the Spanish, mostly soldiers who came here and the percentage of the, the Native Americans you're talking about here is what, a of the founders of San Antonio, basically the people who lived here, it's certainly the majority.

And even the Presidio soldiers themselves were mostly of mixed race as well.

I mean, it's very rare to find a pure, you know, Spaniard by that's an early San Antonio race.

And so this, goes from 17, 18, actually before the founding of the Alamo, where it is right now.

up through when the mission book ends in 1783.

Basically, pages are missing at that point.

And, but we go to to 1835, so we were able to, using these external sources, find about three dozen more burials that were at Valero through external sources and people who live here in San Antonio who can trace like you right there.

their genealogy back to some of these people.

Then what can you find from here?

Well, well, exactly.

You can find you you can, you know, could potentially trace your ancestry back to the mission.

find out what they were doing at the mission, where they came from, how they intermarried.

So.

So I have three ancestors in the book.

One is a Spaniard.

Presidio soldier.

One is a, is a, is a, is a local indigenous Celtic in and one is a free mulatto.

So we have African, European and indigenous, which is what the hunters are, you know, is this admixture of of people.

And you can see how they intermarried, how they interacted, you know, what period did they enter the mission?

Under what circumstances?

And now I talk to Ramone Vasquez of the American Indians of Texas at the Spanish colonial missions, and he's talked about how the DNA now, like Ancestry.com recognizes and DNA from this area and that it's more and more specific to this area so people can then trace the actual ancestry, but then the DNA, you can also compare to others whether or not you may be related to someone else.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

in fact, you know, I started representing top Tulum just as their attorney.

I did a DNA test, and I came back, related to four of the five tribal council members.

And then based upon that, we started digging into our DNA, and we've been able to find the actual genealogical connections, but it was just to me, it was just a random accident, you know?

But most people that live there are from San Antonio.

you know, they have long, you know, family history here.

Very likelihood that you are descendant of one of the of a million Indians.

And you want this is not the definitive book, but it is a work in progress because you're getting reaction already from people.

And so down the road you'll writing, be writing different versions of this update.

Yeah.

I mean, again, when you annotate something like this there, you could probably annotate for a century.

So we encourage everyone who uses the book if they find additional annotations to send them in, and eventually there'll be a second edition with additional annotations.

And, talk about the illustrations in the book.

I thought, these are fascinating.

The way you went about illustrating this to bring faces to the names, right?

Yeah.

So again, with, you know, with this, with this invisibility bias, one of the things is it's hard to humanize people when they're just a one sentence in a record.

So so we decided to heavily illustrate the book.

We, you know, traditionally that's very costly and time consuming methods.

So we utilize some of the new, artificial intelligence tools to illustrate, and so, you know, we knew a lot about the people, as far as where they came from, maybe their professions, you know, their age, that type of thing.

And so we were able to illustrate, the book and kind of, you know, show people some of the, the activities, you know, that are going on at the mission and the different way, the different ways that the natives are illustrated compared to the different ways that the, the Europeans or Spanish are.

Correct.

So, so we chose to depict all the, all the indigenous people in a realistic artistic style and all of the non-Indigenous people in a in a more abstract style.

And that's because traditionally when we talk about, you know, Mission Viejo or the Alamo, you know, the European, experience there is on the forefront in the indigenous is in the background.

And so we wanted to reverse that.

And so we, we, we made the indigenous, individuals in a realistic style and, and made the non indigenous in an abstract.

And and I think it works really well for people who love the abstract, but those are the ones we get the most compliments on as well.

And this is also in Spanish, in English.

Correct.

So, so the Spanish of the records is, is, is an archaic form of Spanish, and so we have a literal transcription.

Then we have a modern Spanish translation, a modern English translation, and then the annotations.

and so it's very difficult to read, especially with the abbreviations.

it's a lot of like some of the we like reading, you know, this is 15.

I mean, this is the, the 1700s are just the analogous of reading English written in the 1700s.

There's going to be terms of use and things that are not familiar to the to even the modern English reader, similar to the modern Spanish reader.

Well, this is the level of detail on this I can't describe to people, how specific it is to individuals and their, their relations and their cousin.

I, I are you burned out after this.

How do you feel about that being done with this?

you know, it's one of those things where where?

Yeah.

At some point, you have to decide to stop.

I mean, I obviously, I love to research.

That's why.

That's why you can tell.

Yeah.

And again, as a, as a, as a, as a litigation attorney, that's kind of what sometimes makes a difference is how big you can you know how deep you can dig in your research.

And so, yeah, I look forward to working on the next project.

All right.

Well, thanks very much.

Fascinating book Beneath Sacred Ground, Art Martinez de Vara thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you very.

On reporters roundtable this week, a number of stories from the San Antonio Current, starting with how opportunity home, the public housing authority here is now helping people with rent after sending a whole lot of eviction notices out.

Very controversial decision.

Joining us to talk about all of this is Michael Karlis staff writer for the San Antonio Current.

Thanks for coming in.

Great to be here.

This story about, what used to be Sahar San Antonio Housing Authority.

They fired the man in charge partly because of these eviction notices going out.

Is this kind of to make up for that by helping with rent opportunity home has been in the news a lot.

this year, early this year, they sent out 600 eviction notices to, low income tenants who were behind on their rent.

however, it came out last week that those notices were kind of more or less an attempt to recoup some money since, the agency is facing a $18 million hole this upcoming fiscal year.

And due to that hole, they, the board unanimously decided to replace, the last CEO, Ed Hinojosa, with an interim CEO.

And apparently, the new guy is making quick work of it, and, has decided that those making 30% less than the area median income who are in opportunity Home housing, will now receive rental assistance for up to three months, and that includes late fees.

So, that's, very generous.

And some of those eviction notices went out to people, even if they had just a dollar behind in rent and up.

So it was that was part of the controversial part is that they weren't giving a pass to anybody, whether it was a buck or up.

It was yeah, it was very sudden and there was very little notice, given, but it seems like they're going to make right on on that problem.

Another story.

And I thought it was fascinating that San Antonio ranks as one of the worst run cities, according to one study.

How did this work?

Basically, what WalletHub did was they compared the city budget compared to the quality of city services.

San Antonio this last fiscal year to $3.7 billion, city budget, which is exceptional.

It's a large city, but that's a pretty large budget compared to other cities.

And when you look at the city services, I mean, ACS responds to less than half of the calls made to that department.

29% of students in district five that attend sized schools cannot read at grade level.

So when you look at stats like that and you compare it to the city budget does, does that appear to be a low run city?

Although the city budget doesn't directly translate to the schools because it's a whole different bureaucracy.

Right.

But you also have to look at the response time for, police.

Right.

Cost, police officer how long is it going to take them to to get to your house?

Very interesting.

So you can check that out as well as, Chip Roy and what he responded to in was it on X post on X, formerly known as formerly known as Twitter.

Twitter.

yeah.

So last week, Chip Roy, a U.S. congressman, was responding to a tweet from a attorney in Minneapolis, and that attorney was comparing Trump's plans to deport 20 million people from the country.

and he called it ethnic cleansing.

So Chip Roy responded to that gentleman in Minnesota and said that he would like to cleanse America of white progressives.

And, you know, Congressman Roy is no stranger to making comments out of the realm of normal discourse.

you know, last month, he said that migrants were going to impose Sharia law on on Americans, even though the vast majority of them are not Muslim.

But it is concerning because all it takes is one person to act on a, on a off the cuff comment.

And that is, it's a dangerous place for this country to be in, for politicians to even be joking about stuff like that.

And we're still heading into the fall.

I try not to think about that.

So you're going to be busy?

yeah.

Right.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Michael Karlis You can check out his stuff anymore in the San Antonio, CA.

Thanks very much.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see this show again or any previous shows.

You can also download the podcast.

Just go to KLRN.org R&D Beamer and we'll see you next time.

On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho