Secondhand Harassment Allegations at Italy PD; Chief's Unread Oginski Statement Released

On October 6, an Italy resident emailed me a written complaint alleging that a sergeant inside the Italy Police Department is making sexual harassment remarks toward a rookie female officer. None of these allegations have been proven.

Italy Texas News (ITXN) published its own version of this story on the morning of October 9. ITXN is the nonprofit I founded in 2024. Today, it is managed by Shelby Browning. My copy had been sitting in my inbox for three days.

I held it because I did not know how to handle it. I was not sure how allegations like these would land in this town, or whether people would believe them coming from me, and I thought about what publishing would do to the officers' reputations. The formal route was records requests first, and in Italy that route is slow.

Then the allegations reached the public anyway, through the Italy Talk Facebook group on October 8 and through ITXN on October 9. They come less than three weeks after the city upheld the firing of Officer Kevin Oginski, in a case whose original allegation was not sustained.

I have faith in this community. If these allegations are true, I believe Italy will stand behind these officers and demand accountability from its police department and its city leadership. As of publication, the department had not addressed the allegations publicly, and I do not know whether it has opened an internal investigation.

A Year at Italy PD

On October 8, 2025, Police Chief Scott McAuley was fired without a council vote. Italy has no city manager. Its city administrator is Keith Whitfield. On October 20, the council voted 5-0 to put McAuley back on the payroll on paid leave. On October 27, it took the vote itself and upheld the termination 5-0. The same night, it adopted an ordinance requiring a two-thirds council vote before the city administrator can remove an officer, and it accepted the resignation of city attorney James Parker of The Parker Law Firm. Parker's letter, read aloud that night, gave the city 30 days' notice and no reason. The whole time, the city was also paying Messer Fort for legal services, and a Messer Fort attorney signed the city's 2025 answers to my records requests as "Assistant City Attorney."

Did Whitfield fire McAuley? If whoever fired him had the authority to do it, why did the council put him back on the payroll and then take the vote itself? Did Italy have two city attorneys at once, and why did one of them resign in the middle of it?

In November, the council named Lt. Chad Nelson interim chief. In January 2026, the city's hired assessor, Michael Boese of Clear Career Professionals, told the council that Italy could not produce some of the most basic policies a police department runs on, including use of force, a code of conduct, and vehicle pursuits. An offer to one chief candidate was made without the council's authorization and taken back in March. An April 22 called meeting on the hire fell apart for lack of a quorum. The council approved conditional offers twice without naming the candidate, 3-2 in May and 4-1 in June. TCOLE, the state agency that licenses Texas officers, lists Nelson as Italy's Chief of Police effective June 22, and the Mayor swore him in on July 13. Before joining Italy PD in January 2024, Nelson spent about four years at Milford PD and three as Garrett's police chief.

Sgt. Timothy Collums left Italy PD in November 2024, spent nearly a year at Red Oak PD, and came back on January 19, 2026.

I have had my own conflicts with this department, including two arrests on Italy PD warrants that the Ellis County District Attorney rejected.

Last year, Officer Kevin Oginski ran Italy's National Night Out. This year there is none. The department says it did not have the budget or the staffing.

Three small police departments in this part of Texas shut down this year. TCOLE's standard for keeping a department open includes whether it provides a public benefit to its community. According to news reports, TCOLE revoked the appointing authority of Frost in August and of Trinidad in September. In Seven Points, the Mayor told the council in June that the county's District Attorney and County Attorney would not accept the department's cases for six months, and the council voted to deactivate it. I am not aware of any TCOLE inspection of Italy.

On August 6, Chief Nelson fired Kevin Oginski. On September 22, the council upheld it.

The Post That Came Down

The allegations first went public through an anonymous Facebook message, from an account that has since disappeared. The writer said they had overheard officers talking about it at dinner.

On October 8, a resident posted a screenshot of the message to the Italy Talk Facebook group, with a caption that said: "Since y'all are on a drama train. I hope this isn't true."

It did not stay up long. According to the resident, the officers sent the post to Sgt. Collums, and Collums reached out. The resident told me he did not ask for it to come down, that he acknowledged posting it was a First Amendment right, and that he did not dispute what the post said. He wanted the resident to know the officers have family in the group and were embarrassed. The resident took it down.

That same week, on the department's own Facebook post about National Night Out, I publicly asked Sgt. Collums to tell the truth. The Italy PD TX page liked my comment.

The Complaint, in Full

The resident who emailed me on October 6 heard the allegations from someone else. A deputy with the Ellis County Sheriff's Office, who is not named, told the resident about them in conversation. When the resident named a sergeant, the deputy nodded. The resident then asked a Milford PD officer, who would not discuss it, said to file records requests, and said he was frustrated with how it was being handled.

The resident gave me permission to publish the complaint word for word. I removed one phrase describing the officers. Everything else, including the spelling and the profanity, is the resident's.

In a follow-up email on October 8, the resident told me the deputy had seen the Italy Talk post too, and had said Milford is encouraging Italy media outlets to request the records.

What the Record Shows

I have not seen a complaint, a report, or any document showing what happened, and no one has been charged with or found to have done any of it.

The complaint also says, through a council member, that Chief McAuley let Geddie go for misconduct. That does not match what I was told at the time. Geddie told me himself that he was let go during the 2025 budget season, that it came down to the budget, that it hit him hard for a while, and that the city later found a way to bring him back after McAuley was gone. A city official gave me the same budget reason back then.

Geddie's state record tells a third story. His TCOLE record shows unbroken service at Italy PD from December 2022 to today, with no separation recorded. Texas requires a department to report an officer's separation to TCOLE. If Italy let him go, was that ever reported? If it was not, why not?

Training is the other gap. TCOLE does not require harassment training, but it keeps a general course number for it, #3910 "Sexual Harassment Recognition," and departments do report it. Sgt. Collums has four harassment courses on his TCOLE record, all from his year at Red Oak PD, the first one week after he started there in November 2024. None appear from any of his time at Italy.

Neither Chief Nelson nor Geddie has a harassment course anywhere on his TCOLE record. Italy does report its own in-house training, including field training, active shooter response, K-9 and Taser, but no harassment course appears on any of the four Italy officers' records I checked. A department can train in-house and never report it. Does Italy train its officers and supervisors on harassment at all?

On September 12, the Italy PD TX page marked National Police Women's Day by recognizing the department's two female officers. "Thank you both for all you do!" the post said. "We're proud to have you on the Italy PD team!"

The department's Facebook page is active, and Sgt. Collums appears to be its main manager. On October 8, it posted a full explanation of why there is no National Night Out this year.

Does Italy PD have a written sexual harassment policy, and what does it require? Who investigates a complaint against a supervisor? Has the city received any complaint or correspondence from another agency, including Milford PD, about an Italy PD employee? The anonymous message claims Milford's chief sent the city administrator a lengthy email about it. If that email exists, it is a public record.

The Statement the Chief Didn't Read

I am a party to this part of the story. The investigation that cost Kevin Oginski his job began as a question about whether he told me about my own arrest warrant.

On September 22, at Kevin's appeal hearing, Chief Nelson told the council he had written a statement and decided not to read it. I requested it three days later. The city released it on October 9, in full, labeled "Publicly Available Information." I am publishing it with this article.

Nelson writes that on April 23 he learned Kevin "had allegedly disclosed an active warrant to the individual named in it." That individual is me. I turned myself in on that warrant the next day. Nelson consulted the City Attorney's Office, a complaint was served on Kevin, and the City Attorney's Office hired an outside investigator, Jesse Prado.

His own statement says:

What the investigator did sustain came later. In Nelson's words, "other information received during the course of the investigation revealed concerning conduct," and Kevin received "an amended 614 notice." The finding Kevin was fired on:

At the hearing, Kevin's attorney described what the report alleged: that "Kevin was conspiring with you Mosley, and you Long," meaning Council Members Raymond Mosley and Billy Long, to get himself the chief's job. He said neither council member was ever asked about it.

Nelson describes his own role this way:

Nelson signed the complaint against Kevin, and Nelson made the decision to fire him. His statement ends:

He writes that the DA "may determine that Mr. Oginski is no longer eligible to testify in criminal prosecutions." Were the findings ever sent?

My Involvement

Nelson did not read that statement on September 22. Instead, he told the council: "I actually have a conversation between Sergeant Collums and Patrick O'Dell, where Patrick O'Dell flat out told us that Kevin Oginski told Ron about it, but he did it in good faith, and then he completely recanted his story."

I dispute that account. Kevin Oginski never told me about my warrant. I learned about it from someone with no connection to Italy PD or the Ellis County Sheriff's Office. The night in question, April 22, I was at Rowdy T's with a group that included Neila Owen, an Italy resident and an acquaintance of the Mayor. She was present every time I spoke with Kevin. No one from the city, and no one working for the investigator, has ever asked me about any of it, and as far as I know, no one has asked Owen either.

Who Started It

There are now three accounts of how this investigation began.

Nelson's August 6 termination letter calls it "the complaint brought forward by me." His unread statement says he learned of the allegation and consulted the City Attorney's Office, and that "We determined that the allegation required investigation." Neither one mentions the Mayor.

At the hearing, Council Member Mosley asked the question directly.

Asked why, Mayor Clinton Sulak-Tovar answered, "because of everything in executive session." Moments later he gave the fuller version:

The Mayor then presided over the appeal. Why do Nelson's accounts never mention the Mayor?

Kevin had asked for his appeal to be heard in public, and the Mayor acknowledged it, opening the hearing "at his request." Before the hearing began, Patrick O'Dell spoke during citizen comments and reminded the council that under the Texas Open Meetings Act, the personnel exception for a closed meeting does not apply when the employee asks for a public hearing.

For roughly ten minutes, the Mayor and council let Kevin and his attorney present their case in open session. No one else in the audience was allowed to speak to it. Then the council went behind closed doors, from about 6:26 to 8:15 that night. The agenda posted the closed session under two exceptions: consultation with the city's attorney and the personnel exception. Kevin's attorney, Ben Casey of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT), objected on the record:

When the Mayor said "executive session," Casey asked whether the investigator had been in there. "You violated the law," he said.

Prado was in there. I watched him leave through the back exit at the end of the closed session, and I recorded it at 8:11 that night. Council Members Mosley and Long, who were in that session and who voted against upholding the firing, told me on the record that Prado was in the room for most of it and left afterward. Prado is the investigator who wrote the City of Uvalde's 2024 report on its police response to the Robb Elementary shooting.

The Vote

Council Member Robert Hodge moved "to deny the appeal of the termination and uphold the decision of the police chief to terminate Kevin." Council Member Luin McConnell seconded. It passed 3-2. Hodge, McConnell, and Vincent Fleming voted yes. Mosley and Long voted no.

Mosley: "So we've been told that it's all about appearances, the reason this termination was done. Because somebody, an officer, hung around with the wrong people. Jesus hung around the wrong [people] too, look at what they did to him. This is just a, I'm just gonna say it, it's a total shit show, and it should have never happened like this. If anybody has any conscience to do a good officer like you're doing to this man tonight, you're the ones that don't have any morals."

Long: "What we heard in that executive session was total bullshit."

Long, one of the two council members Kevin was accused of conspiring with, also addressed what witnesses in the report said about him: "the same witnesses said that Officer Oginski gave me a thumbs up and I walked back to the council meeting. Also said that I went over to Rowdy T's to visit with Officer Oginski."

Two Allegations, Two Processes

One officer was accused of telling a journalist about a warrant. The city brought in an outside investigator, the allegation was not sustained, the complaint was amended, and he was fired. The Chief says the findings have to go to the District Attorney, where they could end his ability to testify.

A supervisor in the same department is now accused, secondhand, of making sexual harassment remarks toward a rookie female officer. A month ago the department thanked its two female officers in public. It has said nothing in public about these allegations.

I have sent the City of Italy a request for comment, with a link to this article, and I will publish a follow-up when it responds. I have also urged the department to address these allegations directly, in a statement on its own Facebook page, where residents already go for news from Italy PD.

I do not know whether the city has opened an investigation. What process does a sexual harassment allegation against a supervisor get at Italy PD? Who is investigating it? When Kevin was accused, he was placed on administrative leave. Has the supervisor named in this complaint been? If not, why the difference?