Effort To Remove North Texas City Councilman Accused Of Domestic Violence Stalls
McKINNEY, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) - An effort to push a city councilman out of office after he was accused of domestic violence, stalled Tuesday night.
It will take an election to change the city charter in McKinney before voters can have a say on the councilman.
Embattled City Councilman La'Shadion Shemwell says he's being targeted because of his race.
This city councilman has been in trouble before and those time, he also claimed it was his race, not his behavior, that was the issue.
"Yeah, I'm not perfect, but if we are changing the rules, and we can change the rules. We might as well make it whites only," Shemwell said during Tuesday night's council meeting.
Shemwell is trying to slow down the effort to remove him from office.
In recent days, there have been calls to remove him from office after he was arrested and charged with continuous family violence - a third degree felony.
"It was in fact the mother of his children, an African American woman residing in the same neighborhood as Mr. Shemwell that has alleged the domestic violence," said McKinney Mayor George Fuller.
Mayor Fuller is leading the charge to change the city charter, after many have felt that current rules would make it nearly impossible to recall any public official.
McKinney voter Jolie Williams said, "Because we could have somebody taking bribes or doing anything. eEmbezzling or doing something like that there's no way to get them out of office. Except for a conviction which can take several years for that to happen."
There was discussion about how who would get to recall a city official: just the voters in that person's district or city wide?
Time and time again, Shemwell returned to his skin color.
"You saw the emails that said we're going to do a recall election to get Mr. Shemwell out of there. You're talking about occurrences that happen, yeah, it typically happens. I'm the second African American elected that an occurrence that doesn't typically happen, and that's when they started bringing up the recall," he said.
The McKinney City Council is expected to vote on whether it will change the charter next week.
If that goes through, an election to change the charter, making it easier for any elected official to be recalled, could be voted on by residents in in May 2019.
If that's successful, Shemwell could be recalled in November of 2019.