More details emerge in resignation of Ennis city manager and retirement of police chief

ENNIS – The city of Ennis still remains vague about what led to the sudden resignation of its city manager and the retirement of its police chief.

The Ennis mayor and city commission accepted the resignation of City Manager Scott Dixon, and the retirement of Police Chief John Erisman on Nov. 8. 

The city hasn’t given details about what happened, but the mayor says there’ve been recent concerns about oversight of the police department. 

It all comes just weeks after an independent report came out detailing an apparent systemic failure of leadership and training at the Ennis Police Department.

That report revealed a culture of poor training, distrust and mismanagement.

Everything seems to stem from a robbery investigation from 2016. The report says officers botched that investigation so bad that the Ellis County District Attorney didn’t get the case for two years. And even then, it couldn’t be prosecuted.

The Ellis County DA’s office hired Gill & Brissette, an independent law firm in Fort Worth, to review the Ennis Police Department’s handling of a 2016 aggravated robbery at a now-closed Chipotle. 

In addition, the DA’s office earlier this year temporarily paused cases from the Ennis Police Department, holding off trials and plea deals. Several cases, which depended solely on the testimony of an officer and had no clear victim, were dismissed altogether after prosecutors lost confidence in the department’s competence and credibility.

City commissioners received the independent report just weeks before the resignations.

“Oh, it was a horrible, scary crime,” said Ellis County District Attorney Patrick Wilson. “Masked gunmen came in the back door and violently robbed the place and pistol whipped an employee.”

The independent investigation concluded that Ennis PD “mishandled the investigation to the point that the underlying aggravated robbery case could not be prosecuted.”

Even more surprising to those reviewing the case was an absence of detail about an exchange of gunfire, in which an officer fired shots at fleeing suspects.

“There were officers on scene who wrote reports, and if you read their reports, you would have no idea a shooting took place there. None,” said Wilson. “It’s shocking and appalling and extraordinary, to say the least.”

The investigation found a crime scene investigator didn’t have enough evidence markers.

“So he simply used the few… available to him,” read the prosecutors’ report.

It took two years for the DA to get the case.

“The suspects, they got away. They were unidentified,” Wilson said. “DNA was recovered from evidence that was left of the scene, and it took two years to get a CODUS hit on their DNA.”

The report also touched on instances where there was a clear lack of training, equipment that was missing or didn’t work, and officers who displayed no faith in their leadership.

Wilson expressed hope recent changes in leadership would result in a better police department for Ennis residents.

“They deserve professionalism, they deserve integrity, they deserve competence and I think they’re going to get it as a result of this,” said Wilson.

At a city commission special called meeting Wednesday night, Nov. 13, the city named retired Dallas Police Veteran Andy Harvey as interim police chief, and also named David Willard as interim city manager.

It remains unclear what role the city manager may have played in all this or why he resigned.