Texas dad arrested for theft after taking away daughter’s phone faces judge

A Texas man was acquitted by a jury Tuesday after he had been arrested for taking away his daughter’s cell phone as a punishment.

Ronald Jackson says back in 2013, when his daughter was 12, he discovered a rude text message on her phone.

A few hours later, he says, police showed up at his door and asked for the iPhone 4.

“I didn’t want to police department telling me how to parent my child. You tell them what they did wrong and you give them a punishment to show that they shouldn’t be doing that”, Jackson said.

Steppe noted that she was not happy with the verdict because she had purchased the cell phone.

Responding to her child’s father in refusing to give up “her phone”, Steppe whose current partner is a Grand Prairie police officer, chose to press charges, arguing that it was wrong for her estranged partner to have taken property that was not his, as the phone belonged to her and the cell phone plan was under her name.

“I was being a parent”, Jackson said. ‘Someone can take it from you’. The mother and father had never been married, and the father had only started seeing his daughter when she turned 7-years-old. In January 2014, the prosecutors offered Jackson a plea deal if he would return the phone, but he refused and hired a lawyer and said he would take the case to trial. WFAA reports Jackson was facing six months in jail and a $2,000 fine. The new offense allowed for a judge to issue an arrest warrant, and Jackson was arrested at his home in April 2015 and released on $1,500 bond.

According to Jackson, the legal dispute has rendered any future relationship with his daughter, who also testified in court, and her mother impossible.

Cameron Gray, a defense attorney representing the father, has made apparent his intention to file a federal complaint against the arresting police department and the city attorney’s office over alleged civil rights violations, WFAA reported.

The father told WFAA he now fears he “can’t ever have a relationship with [his ex and daughter] again”.

Jackson still has the phone in his possession.