Months after agreeing to surrender his county cell phone, constable does so

The Hood County Commissioners Court will not have to decide at its regular meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 25, whether to issue a subpoena for Precinct 2 Constable John Shirley’s county-issued cell phone.

He turned it in.

Shirley’s relinquishing of the cell phone was confirmed Wednesday morning (Jan. 19) by Drew Wiederkehr, head of the county’s IT department. He told the Hood County News that Shirley surrendered the iPhone 8 to IT employee Owen Curnutt “just before lunch” the day before.

In an email that was in response to an inquiry from the HCN, Wiederkehr stated that Shirley had “reached out to Owen to let him know that he was in the parking lot, so he went out and grabbed it.”

The phone had been “wiped clean,” Wiederkehr said, meaning that it was “factory reset from within the phone’s settings,” but stated that IT had specifically requested that Shirley do so.

“The only oddities were it was missing the OtterBox case, and the SIM card was taped to the back,” Wiederkehr’s email stated.

SIM stands for subscriber identity or identification module.

The county’s IT department first requested Shirley’s phone last September after, according to Curnutt, an audit of county devices revealed several unauthorized changes that might have jeopardized sensitive county information and violated Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) protocols.

Shirley indicated at that time that he would return the phone to IT but did not specifically state when that would happen.

Several members of the Commissioners Court told the HCN last October that they had not seen Shirley for months, possibly since January (2021).

As an elected constable, Shirley is paid $72,955 per year plus $601 in certificate pay.

Documents obtained by the HCN through Open Records indicated a decline in productivity in Shirley’s office during 2021.

Shirley said he has been caring for his wife, who is battling cancer.

The Commissioners Court considered a subpoena for the cell phone at its regular meeting on Jan. 11 but unanimously agreed to table the matter to give Shirley two more weeks to return the phone.