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Constable has long history with District 4 JP
Published January 9, 2009
MCQUEENEY — Gene Mayes is quiet and he’s low-key, and there’s a story he rarely tells about a call on April 27, 1997.
A woman had escaped from a couple who had kidnapped her for sex and had run, screaming for help, to a neighbor’s house.
It was the neighbor who called the sheriff’s office — just as the male abductor had broken into the home with an AR-15 to get her back. Guadalupe County’s chief investigator was relaxing at home a short distance away, heard the call on his radio and went to the residence to confront the shooter.
In doing so he made what was very nearly a fatal mistake: going up against the civilian version of the U.S. Army’s M-16 with a handgun.
“To make a long story short, we confronted him, and he came out with an AR-15 and we got into a little shoot out,” the investigator recalled, standing on the porch outside his office Thursday, nearly a dozen years afterward.
The investigator was hit twice and sprayed by broken glass shrapnel, and “went down,” as cops clinically say, behind his car.
Gene Mayes was one of the patrol deputies who backed him up.
“I was hit in the left arm and he had shattered my finger,” the retired officer said, holding up a mangled stump as a souvenir. “The guy came at me to take another shot at me, and Gene dropped him.”
And Mayes, who has just began his third term as Precinct 4 Justice of the Peace Larry Morawietz’s constable, was recognized by commissioners this week for his long career in law enforcement and community service and for being named recently to head a professional organization that represents the interests of constables and justices of the peace across South Texas.
“I’ve been lucky,” Mayes said. “I’ve worked with some great officers who have had a positive effect on my career.”
County Judge Mike Wiggins announced that Mayes had been named president of the South Texas Justice of the Peace and Constables Association, which represents officials across this part of the state from here to the Rio Grande and on down to Brownsville.
That appointment came on the heels of the state justice of the peace and constable conference, where Mayes was elected 2008 Director of Region VIII of the state justice of the peace and constables association.
Mayes has also served on the board of the Guadalupe County Family Violence Center, where he holds the office of secretary/treasurer.
“Any time one of our elected officials does something above and beyond the call of duty, I’d like to recognize them,” Wiggins said. “These associations serve pretty big areas, and I will tell you that there’s no bigger honor than when you’re selected by your peers from other areas to be president of the association.”
Mayes has been around the county for a long time, Wiggins noted, beginning as a volunteer reserve sheriff’s deputy in 1974. In 1990, he became a full time sheriff’s deputy, leaving the sheriff’s office at the end of 2000 to become Precinct 4 Constable, serving Morawietz’s court.
The office of constable and its statutory duties go back to the Byzantine Empire, where the “comes stabuli” or “count of the stable” was responsible for caring for horses at the imperial court.
The office was introduced in England after the Norman Conquest of 1066 and was responsible for the keeping and maintenance of the king’s armaments and those of the villages as a measure of protecting individual settlements throughout the country.
Today, a constable is a law enforcement officer, and constables and their deputies have all the enforcement powers of other peace officers such as sheriff’s deputies or police officers. But they are also charged with responsibility for the justice court in their precinct, where they provide security, subpoena witnesses, execute judgements and serve papers such as subpoenas or evictions. They also take part in patrol functions and in criminal investigations.
In November, Mayes received his certification as a master peace officer, the highest certification for any law enforcement officer in Texas.
“That certification requires many years of service and a lot of education hours,” said Wiggins, a retired highway patrol sergeant. “I’m proud of Gene.”
But Wiggins, who had a long tenure as Guadalupe County’s DPS sergeant and has known Morawietz for more years than either man might care to acknowledge, joked he also feels some sense of sympathy for Mayes, which he recently told a courtroom full of observers when he swore the constable into his third term in office — a term for which Mayes ran unopposed.
“Gene has always been a good, solid lawman and a good, solid constable,” Wiggins said, noting that near the end of Mayes’s tenure at the sheriff’s office, Morawietz followed his parents into the Precinct 4 JP office — and that Mayes went into office to work with him.
Mayes told Wiggins he enjoyed his work — and his judge.
“We get along pretty good,” was what Mayes said. “Larry and I have been together for 18 years except for that year after he retired from the sheriff’s office, before I ran for constable in 2000, and I really enjoy what I do here. All of us — Larry and the women who run the office — are like a family.”
And Morawietz, in saying he hoped that would never change — whether he was judge and Mayes was constable or whether they were just hanging out, cracking the covers on a couple of cans — told the rest of the story.
“Gene Mayes saved my life that day,” Morawietz said, turning to Mayes. “You’re my guardian angel, buddy. You’re never going anywhere.”
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