SAN ANTONIO – A criminal case against the controversial former head of the San Antonio fire union appears to have vanished into smoke — at least, in the public record.
And questions from KSAT has the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office looking into whether there’s a wider problem at play.
Christopher Steele left the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association and the San Antonio Fire Department in August 2024, but police said he didn’t leave its politics. The former SAPFFA president was arrested on a felony stalking warrant in May, accused of trying to scare off the highest-ranking woman in the SAFD from applying for the fire chief’s position.
The case was out of Bexar County, but Steele was arrested and booked into jail in Hays County on May 31, records show. He was released on a $3,000 bond the following day.
More than four months later, Bexar County’s court records system shows no sign of the criminal case against him. Despite Steele’s high-profile arrest, the Bexar County Magistrate’s Office told KSAT the warrant showed as not having been served yet.
KSAT contacted the BCSO, the Hays County Sheriff’s Office, the Bexar County District Clerk, the San Antonio Police Department, and the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office to try to get answers.
Steele’s arrest came about the same time as Bexar County’s changeover to a new criminal software system, Odyssey. It was a rocky rollout that included expunged or inaccurate information showing up in records and a backlog at the Bexar County Jail.
But BCSO Public Information Officer Johnny Garcia said the Odyssey changeover did not appear to be at fault for the missing public information file. Instead, he blamed missing documents and faulty, older equipment.
An HCSO spokesman said Bexar County was notified on Jun. 1 “that the subject bonded out and the bond information was sent to them.”
Garcia said BCSO’s dispatch did receive word Steele had been released on the Bexar County warrant. But when they relayed the information on to the BCSO warrants division, which is typically done with fax and teletype machines, apparent “connectivity issues” caused the system not to update.
So, while BCSO dispatch removed the warrant from a state and nationwide database, Garcia said the warrants division never knew to change the warrant’s status in Bexar County’s system.
Garcia said this was the first time BCSO had heard of an issue, and said they would begin double-checking whether it was a larger problem. The department plans to replace the equipment, he said.
Even if BCSO had logged Steele’s release into the system, the Bexar County District Clerk’s Office told KSAT that since Steele had not been extradited back to Bexar County, it needed his bond documents before it could open a public case file.
The clerk’s office and BCSO both say those documents never arrived. It was not immediately clear what had happened to them.
But while Steele’s case may have been a public question mark, SAPD says it did not hamper their investigation.
Investigators turned their findings over to prosecutors in late August, and the DA’s office said the case is still awaiting indictment.