Mercedes Police Chief Roy A. Quintanilha will step down as the city’s top cop, effective Friday.
City Manager Alberto Perez confirmed the news during an interview Tuesday, making Quintanilha the third chief to resign from the department over the last year.
“Kudos to the chief,” Perez said. “He’s cleaned up a lot of stuff that needed to be addressed… he stabilized the department.”
The chief himself echoed those sentiments, speaking positively of his time in Mercedes.
“It was a great experience,” Quintanilha said. “I got to be the chief there and I think we did a lot of positive things. We did a lot of good things for the police department and for the city and I have no regrets.”
Quintanilha’s resignation comes nearly five months to the day since the city first announced his hiring in a news release on July 15.
He was brought on board to replace Jose Macias, who resigned after just seven months. Like Quintanilha, Macias came out of retirement to work for Mercedes as an assistant chief under Dagoberto “Dago” Chavez.
Chavez was named chief in the summer of 2019, succeeding longtime chief, Olga Maldonado. But Maldonado left the city under a cloud, after allegations that she had long ignored the dilapidated state of the police department building, which was soon abandoned.
Chavez, too, faced scrutiny for his policing tactics. One moment that highlighted that concern was when Chavez oversaw the arrest of four residents during a public meeting, and — months later — the arrest of a fifth resident in relation to that same meeting.
During the first week of December 2020, Chavez announced his resignation. It was followed days later by a similar announcement from then-City Manager Sergio Zavala.
Since then, Mercedes has seen two more police chiefs, and two more city managers.
Through it all, tensions among the city commission have remained high, with opposing factions accusing each other of playing politics over matters such as department head hires, finances and more.
However, Quintanilha declined to say if the city’s strained politics impacted his decision to resign.
“Right now I really don’t want to get into that,” Quintanilha said.
“I’m going to leave that to the citizens to decide when enough is enough and let them make those calls during the election season,” he said.
But the city manager was more forthcoming. Though he didn’t name them directly, Perez laid the blame squarely on the political minority for some of the upheaval within Mercedes.
“It’s not easy to work in this city with the current environment we’re under, and you know who they are,” Perez said.
“We have some individuals that want to move the city forward and other individuals that really are not moving the city forward because obviously they keep coming back to the same stuff,” he said.
The city manager was referring to Commissioners Leonel Benavidez and Jose Gomez, who are known for questioning decisions, but that has often put them at odds with both the previous and current voting majority.
The disagreements often boil over into heated discussions during public meetings, and — most recently — led to Perez accusing Gomez of undermining his authority.
Benavidez, too, thinks politics has played a role in the ongoing turnover within the city, though not for the same reasons as Perez.
“I think what comes into play is the politics that majorities want to bring in their preferred choice for the position and our mayor acknowledged that in open session,” Benavidez said, referring to Mayor Oscar Montoya’s acknowledgement earlier this year that he had recommended Quintanilha’s hiring.
Montoya and Quintanilha previously served together at the sheriff’s office.
For his part, Gomez continues to be critical of the city manager, saying this latest development within one of the highest echelons of the city is disappointing.
“It’s a lot of information kept away from us,” Gomez said, saying the commission had not officially been notified of Quintanilha’s resignation.
Perez admits he knew of Quintanilha’s pending departure since early November, but that the commission wasn’t informed until last week, behind closed doors.
