SAN ANTONIO – Bexar County’s two largest law enforcement agencies saw the number of criminal charges filed against their members decline for a third consecutive year in 2024.
Overall, arrests within the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office and San Antonio Police Department were down a combined 33% this year.
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Seven BCSO deputies and cadet applicants were taken into custody on criminal charges in 2024.
Two of the criminal cases have already made their way through the court system.
After Deputy Joshua Martinez was arrested in February on a charge of tampering with a governmental record, the case was dismissed for further investigation in early June, court records show.
Martinez had been accused of throwing a female inmate to the ground during an October 2022 incident and then falsely writing in his report that she had thrown herself to the ground.
Off-duty BCSO patrol sergeant Houston Pons was charged with driving while intoxicated in early April.
He was later admitted to the county’s Veterans Treatment Court, which deferred judgment in his case in late October.
Pons agreed to surrender his Texas Peace Officer’s License, use an ignition interlock device for six months, take a DWI education course and will be on community supervision for two years, court records show.
Two BCSO cadet applicants, Cesar Merced-Lozano and Joseph Matthew Juarez, were both charged with possession of child pornography this summer after BCSO officials discovered explicit material on each of their phones during the application process.
The arrests occurred about two months apart.
At last check, both Merced-Lozano and Juarez were awaiting indictment in their respective cases.
SAPD officer arrests down nearly 50%
Only five San Antonio police officers faced criminal charges in 2024, a 45% decrease from a year ago.
Officer Albert Sanchez was arrested on a child pornography charge in January after investigators said Sanchez admitted to a witness that he was having sex with minors.
An arrest warrant affidavit states Sanchez told the witness he had “multiple sexual encounters with several juveniles, both male and female.”
Detectives with SAPD’s Special Victims Unit secured a search warrant for Sanchez’s cell phone in early January, where they found multiple explicit pictures of minors, police previously said.
The minors seen in the images all appear to be younger than 10 years old, the arrest affidavit states.
Sanchez was indicted last week on 24 felony counts of possession of child pornography, court records show.
Officer Andrew Gonzalez was arrested in mid-July and charged with making a terroristic threat against a family member.
Gonzalez was admitted to Veterans Treatment Court late last month, court records show.
His case is scheduled to be reviewed in November 2026.
If Gonzalez completes the program successfully, no criminal conviction will appear on his record.
Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.