The War Wounds...

"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories..." - Law & Order

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - They collared and jailed a woman here the other day. Cops said she assaulted her husband, apparently after she caught ear of him talking about another woman. It happens here, perhaps all-too-often.

Only this time, and not that it is all that rare, the woman was an elected official, City Commissioner Jessica Tetreau-Kalifa, a novice at the game of politics, but a hearty woman at heart.

Breathless reporting following her arrest last Saturday has been all over the Journalism map. The newspaper here says she was at home on the phone with her 58-year-old husband, Arthur, when something weird happened. Commissioner Kalifa, shown in photo above, somehow stayed on the phone after the conversation had seemingly ended and overheard her husband and a friend talking about a woman. His line, it seems, had not gone dead after he'd said adieu to his missus. Bad form. She says she heard it all.

It wasn't long, say other reports, before he got home. There, another sordid episode of local spousal sparring moved into rougher words and, say police, then into the physical. Glasses were thrown, glass shards finding their way to the husband's face. The newspaper reported the commissioner then bolted for the bedroom, from where she called police to report the assault. Cops arrived and nosed around, saw bruisings on the husband's face and busted her on domestic violence charges. Later, the plot thickened and the commissioner asked police to note scratchings on her chest. Sometime after that, someone at PeeDee decided they looked very much like self-inflicted nail-scratchings. No sale, wrote the screenwriter.

Tetreau-Kalifa was booked.

The wide-angle camera panned the town and someone said they heard the lady commissioner note that the female arresting officer had been a high school rival and that the arrest had much to do with the officer having it in for Ms. Tetreau-Kalifa. That chicken-on-chicken angle has yet to be confirmed. Observers, however, say the incident is not unlike any of a thousand other such assaults that take place monthly in this wild border town home to some 140,000 documented and undocumented residents. No mention was made of alcohol or drugs being part of this particular husband-wife melee.

It'll be some time before the loose ends are strung together, but things were not looking good for the recently-elected commissioner, owner & operator, it is said, of a car wash business. And who knows how much interest this story will generate in a town used to some of the most mind-numbing, barbaric spousal attacks? The newspaper was doing its part to keep the scandal alive, publishing the distressing police mug as soon as it was able. Story-hungry bloggers quickly jumped in, a few taking full advantage of the situation and making fun of the Kalifa family's foibles.

It was Commissioner Tetreau-Kalifa this time. But, then, a few months back it was the mayor being busted on charges of driving while intoxicated, and before that a city commissioner falling victim to the same. It's a wild ride for anyone wishing to call Brownsville home. Much fun & games comes with the adventure, yet, invariably, it's a mug shot for even the most so-called upstanding citizens.

Epilogue: As we've said a time or two before, and this does not necessarily go to this lady commissioner's case, but it does have to be said that it is unusual to die of shame...

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