Former Lake Dallas Police Sergeant Could Lose License

From The Dallas Morning News
Written by Gale Reaves (GReaves@dallasnews.com)
Thursday August 20th, 1998

715-235-6502

The article listed below appeared in the Dallas Morning News on July 20th 1998. It concerns Marcus Cook who is the President of the Texas Police K9 Assoc. To understand why I would choose to include this article on my web site you would have to go to my list of training articles and read the other articles concerning Marcus Cook. I have listed links to these articles below.

I would like to mention that there are many good trainers in the Texas Police K9 Assoc. It is unfortunate that these men and women associate with scum like Cook. Since Cook wrote the by-laws to this organization and appointed himself "president for life." I will not be surprised if the majority of these members don't leave and form a legitimate police K9 organization in the near future.

The fact is that the Texas Police K-9 Chat line is still up and running today. Totally amazing!

• How I got kicked off the Texas Police K-9 Assoc. Chat List
  
• The Problem with the Texas Police K-9 Association Puppy Drug Dog Program
  
• UPDATE - ON TEXAS POLICE K-9 ASSOC. & Their Narcotics Puppies Program
  
• An article on Marcus Cook from the Dallas Morning News
  
• Another article on Marcus Cook from the Dallas Morning News

A state attorney said Wednesday that a former Lake Dallas Police sergeant should lose his law enforcement license because he faked evidence of his education, including one purported transcript in which “college” was misspelled.
Marcus Cook resigned his Lake Dallas job in December 1997, after the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement standards and Education began investigating him. For more than a year before that, he had been a controversial figure in the small town on Lewisville Lake, involved in lawsuits and allegations of misconduct.

He testified Wednesday that he agrees with all of the commission’s rules and standards “and they have been followed since Day One” He also said allegations against him are a smoke screen raised by his enemies.

Assistant Attorney General Lynn Bey-Roode, representing the commission that licenses Texas Peace Officers, told an administrative law judge that Mr. Cook faked a North Mesquite High School diploma to get his officer certification in 1993.

More recently, she said, he faked a high school equivalency certificate that he said he obtained through a company called the Belvins Institute and Independent Study Program, which he said operated at Eastfield College in Mesquite.

The Spurious High School diploma was submitted with Mr. Cook’s application to become a law enforcement officer. The application, which he signed, includes a notation that he graduated from high school.

Mr. Cook said he never claimed to be a North Mesquite graduate. He said the document naming North Mesquite- which includes the word “diploma” in large letters, the name of the school and the names of alleged school officials- was not meant to indicate he graduated from the high school. He said it meant he had completed studies, through the equivalency course, like those required at North Mesquite.

Mr. Cook also said he was not responsible for the incorrect information on his original application to the commission because he had signed a blank form. The information had been filled in by Lake Dallas Police Officials, he said.

Mr. Cook said he obtained the diploma through the high school equivalency, or GED, course he took from Belvins at Eastfield.

Rita Delgado, a commission administrator who investigated Mr. Cook’s case, said North Mesquite officials told her the diploma was not issued by their school and that names of school officials on the diploma are fictitious.

Ms. Delgado said an assistant registrar at Eastfield College told her she has never heard of the Belvins Institute. She said the college never has a “superintendent of studies,” as referred to in the purported transcript; never used the transcript form Mr.Cook sent in; and never heard of the person listed as a registrar.

Mr. Cook said commission investigators had not tried hard enough to find the Belvins Institute. However, he also said his own "vivid efforts" to find a Belvins office also failed. Ms. Bey-Roode asked Mr. Cook how the word "college" had come to be misspelled as "collage" both on the alleged GED transcript and in a letter Mr. Cook sent to the commission.

"It's definitely ironic," he said. North Mesquite officials told The Dallas Morning News last year that Mr. Cook withdrew from their school in 1983 after repeating the ninth grade and never graduated there. In December, Texas Education Agency officials told The News they had no record of him receiving an equivalency diploma anywhere in the state.

Mr. Cook has testified in other legal proceedings that he had completed "almost four years of college study" and was a few hours short of a bachelor's degree. In another lawsuit, he said he had about 16 hours of college credit.

Judge Ehret will make a recommendation to the commission, probably within 60 days. Ms. Bey-Roode said the commission expects to consider Mr. Cook's case and the judge's recommendation when it meets Sept. 9-10 in Marshall.

Mr. Cook said he thought the hearing "went fine." He said he is working these days with the Dallas World Aquarium and other wildlife-related companies and has no desire to return to police work.

He said he's contesting the attempt to revoke his license "because I'm being accused of something that's not right."