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Dickinson City Council members have appointed a former police officer who surrendered his law enforcement license following extensive domestic violence accusations to a top post in the city, which has been wracked in recent months by political turmoil and allegations of misconduct across city government.
The five-member Dickinson City Council unanimously voted last week to appoint Claude Allen Oliver to the role of city secretary, a position responsible for running elections, hosting board meetings and handling public records.
The appointment comes about two months after Oliver, a former Dickinson Police Department officer, permanently gave up his law enforcement license as part of a deal with the Galveston County District Attorney’s Office to drop two misdemeanor charges against him, court records show.
Prosecutors charged Oliver with assault causing bodily injury and interfering with a 911 call, both stemming from the same alleged incident of domestic violence in August 2021. In that case, prosecutors said Oliver slammed a female victim’s head into a car window multiple times, dragged her by the hair and threatened to kill her.
A separate six-page filing in the case included several more allegations of Oliver assaulting, choking, berating and graphically threatening to kill the woman over a decade-long period. On one occasion, prosecutors said, Oliver beat the woman so violently that she vomited and urinated on herself.
Multiple efforts to reach Oliver on Monday were unsuccessful.
Dickinson Mayor Sean Skipworth, City Manager Theo Melancon and City Councilmember Johnnie Simpson defended the hiring in separate interviews, noting that prosecutors ultimately dismissed the charges against Oliver.
Skipworth, who holds a vote on the city council, said Oliver indicated he planned to take the case to trial, but ultimately agreed to the deal with prosecutors because a trial could impact a separate family court case. Skipworth and Simpson told the Landing after the appointment that they were not aware the court filing laying out abuse allegations existed.
“At some point, you can’t go after people because they’re accused of things, then cleared of things,” said Skipworth.
Whitney Rasberry, the Galveston County prosecutor on the case, said she did not drop the charges due to a lack of evidence. Rather, the victim agreed with prosecutors dropping the charges in exchange for Oliver surrendering his law enforcement license.
“If it’s in the (court filing), that’s what I believed was true,” Rasberry said. “I feel like there was family violence committed in that household.”
A difficult hire
Oliver’s appointment follows months of strain in Dickinson, a city of about 20,000 residents between League City and Texas City.
In February, Galveston County prosecutors filed felony and misdemeanor charges against a Dickinson Police Department officer related to the 2022 arrest of 65-year-old Michael Scurlock, who was thrown to the ground by the officer and didn’t receive prompt medical attention while suffering from a traumatic brain injury. An independent investigator and some city council members accused the police department’s senior leadership, all of whom have since left the agency, of covering up the incident and lying to city officials.
Skipworth also has faced multiple petitions for a recall vote against him, most recently in June, by a group arguing in part that the city has failed to meet its financial responsibilities.
While Skipworth has fended off the recall efforts, he announced in May that he plans to resign in November. Skipworth attributed his decision to “a campaign of rumor, smear and intimidation” directed at him, his family and other city officials by “people in our city who feel their power slipping away.”
Meanwhile, Oliver’s predecessor, Ana Urps, also resigned her post in March following months of harassment by supporters of the recall petition, the Galveston County Daily News reported. As city secretary, Urps was responsible for reviewing recall petitions and certifying whether they met the legal requirements for proceeding to a citywide vote. Urps rejected two recall petitions, citing legal shortcomings in their wording.
Melancon said he went through several unsuccessful recruitment cycles for replacing Urps, with the harassment of city officials weighing on his search. Oliver’s colleagues in city hall, where he worked in the permit office after leaving the police department, ultimately recommended him for the role.
“I had multiple staff members from city hall, across multiple departments, say, ‘Hey, Allen Oliver… has really taken on a leadership role in community development and we really do enjoy working with him. Have you ever considered him for the city secretary role?’” said Melancon, who said he read the prosecutor’s court filing prior to recommending Oliver.
Melancon, who said Oliver maintained his innocence of the abuse allegations when asked, also emphasized that the charges resulted in a dismissal, not a conviction.
“The big thing is I felt like he was contrite in the situation,” Melancon said. “That’s where the conversation went to at the end — if he’s coming on to be a clerk for us, that he has grown from that situation, no matter what the truth is of what happened that night.”
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