An employee for the Ellis County city of Maypearl has sued the city, its police department and the former police chief, alleging wide-ranging and systemic corruption and mismanagement in the small town.

In the lawsuit and an interview with The News, Maypearl court clerk Teresa Aguilar also said she faced retaliation and intimidation for speaking up with her concerns about city operations and records-keeping. She said her problems culminated in then-police Chief James Novian backing her against a wall, towering over her and screaming in her face.

“I swore he was going to hit me,” Aguilar said. Novian never did.

Novian did not respond to attempts to contact him, including a message sent to his Facebook account and a note left at his Johnson County home. Other city officials, including the city attorney, mayor and every City Council member either declined to comment or did not respond to requests seeking a response to Aguilar’s accusations.

Camille Avant, a lawyer representing Aguilar, said her client “just went to work as a low-level city clerk making $14 an hour and walked into a situation where she’s been retaliated against on a daily basis, to the extent where an armed officer is lunging at her in the workplace.”

The purpose of the lawsuit is twofold, Avant said: The first is getting relief for someone who has allegedly endured months of harassment after blowing the whistle on improper city practices.

The second? “Hoping that other individuals like Teresa who are willing to do that understand that the law is going to protect you,” she said.

Aguilar seeks damages between $250,000 and $1 million.

‘They definitely do not like newcomers’

Aguilar, 49, and her husband both have law-enforcement backgrounds. Aguilar worked in a civilian role at a law-enforcement agency in California’s Central Valley, while her husband was sworn. The pair had long planned to retire to North Texas and get season tickets for the Dallas Cowboys.

Aguilar was hired as a court clerk in early April. She said she was told by city employees soon after she started her job that Maypearl did things differently from other cities.

“I was told that I was an outsider, and Maypearl doesn’t like outsiders very well,” Aguilar said. “They definitely do not like newcomers.”

The recent history of Maypearl’s city government has ranged from quirky to extremely dark. In 2019, the city made news after its citizens elected a dead man to be mayor. Two years earlier, Maypearl police Chief Kevin Coffey was sentenced to 40 years in prison for sexually assaulting a teenage girl.

Aguilar said she noticed irregularities during her first few days at work, when she found about $33,000 worth of unpaid traffic tickets filed between May 2021 through March 2022 that were “untouched or minimally managed,” according to the lawsuit.

She said she also found other court and tax records that had not been properly submitted to the state.

Not only did the mismanagement of unpaid tickets in a small city where traffic citations make up a sizable portion of revenue not make sense, Aguilar said she was also disturbed by the appearance that those who received the tickets were not afforded due process. Other city employees told Aguilar to put a hold on the driver’s licenses of the ticket recipients and send them to a debt-collections agency, she told The News.

She said she was then told to keep her mouth shut: “I was told, ‘That’s how things are done here in Maypearl, you understand?’ Well, that may be how it’s done, but it’s not done like that on my watch.”

Aguilar believes the records were intentionally mismanaged to reflect poorly on her boss, Municipal Court Judge Danielle Boston, whom she said has clashed with city officials in the past.

“It was evident that Novian and the Police Department were sabotaging Judge Boston’s courtroom, undermining her authority as judge, and intentionally mishandling her court cases,” Aguilar’s attorneys wrote in court documents. “As a result, Judge Boston closed her courtroom for approximately two weeks as she investigated.”

Boston declined to comment when reached by The News via text message. Maypearl Mayor Joy Landry also declined to comment. Each of the five Maypearl council members did not respond to emails seeking comment about the lawsuit. Maypearl City Attorney Cara Leahy White did not return phone calls and emails asking about Aguilar’s accusations.

Aguilar also made complaints to the then-chief, Novian, members of the council and other officials about issues she noticed, including a city employee having improper access to police credentials and the ability to search criminal background checks; a former police officer having a sexual relationship with a city employee in the department’s patrol room while on-duty; an employee forging the signature of Judge Boston; and Novian running improper criminal searches on people who received traffic fines before later mishandling those reports, according to Aguilar and the lawsuit.

Retaliation and intimidation

The complaints came at a price, Aguilar said. While her starting salary in April was $14 an hour, she negotiated for and was promised a raise to $19 an hour in July. That raise was later denied, which Aguilar said she believes is directly related to her whistleblowing.

Aguilar does not have social media, but friends and colleagues sent her screenshots of posts on Maypearl community Facebook groups complaining about her and the issues Aguilar raised.

Aguilar said she met with Novian, Mayor Landry and two other members of the city’s police department on July 22 to discuss the social media posts. At one point during the meeting, Aguilar said she shook her head and chuckled while talking to Landry.

Novian believed Aguilar was laughing at him, she said.

“He flips around, I mean he pivots, he comes flying at me,” she said. “I backed up against the wall because I swore he was going to hit me. He was screaming. Spit was coming out of his mouth.”

The mayor was shocked, Aguilar said. The two other officers looked away. While the lawsuit describes the incident as an “assault,” Aguilar said she did not file a police report.

On Aug. 1, Aguilar’s lawyers sent a letter to several city and Ellis County officials underlining her complaints. The letter included a preservation notice which ordered city officials to not destroy documents related to the complaints.

Aguilar said she caught Novian shredding documents two days later. Novian soon left his position and now works as a lieutenant for the Joshua ISD Police Department.

Though Aguilar said she’s wanted to leave her job “so many times,” she also has a reason for staying.

“My hope is that they will be cleaned up and that they realize this is not normal,” she said. “In good conscious could I just walk away and call it a day? No, I couldn’t. I can’t.”