Ex-police chief of small Texas town gets 10 years for ‘despicable’ act while brandishing gun

The former police chief of a small West Texas town was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison Monday for forcing two people he arrested to perform a sex act at gunpoint.

Robert Michael Cross, 36, pleaded guilty in October to a federal charge of deprivation of rights under the color of law. A judge sentenced him Monday in Wichita Falls.

Cross was the acting police chief in Olney, a town of about 3,000 people in Young County about 90 miles northwest of Fort Worth, when the incident took place.

He arrested two people in November 2017 on aggravated robbery charges and then began to coerce them “to engage in conduct for his own personal benefit,” authorities said. In return, he promised to drop the case against them.

That December, he took the two people to Wichita Falls for dinner and a movie. Afterward, he forced one of them to perform a sex act on the other at gunpoint, authorities said.

“The city of Olney deserves police officers with respect for the rule of law,” U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox said in a written statement. “Instead, this defendant abused his power, stripping citizens of their dignity for his own perverse ends. We are gratified he has been held to account for his despicable behavior.”

Cross also has been accused in a separate case of telling a woman in early 2018 that if she would be his “chore slave” and “belong to him,” he would let her husband out of jail. He also asked her for nude photos, she told authorities.

Cross resigned from the Olney Police Department after being arrested in March 2018 on a count of official oppression in that case. The status of that case is unclear.

Before working in Olney, Cross was a police officer in the Tarrant County town of Pelican Bay.