Former Dallas County Fire Marshal assistant chief Zack Masri, center, stands at a Dallas County Commissioners Court meeting April 1, 2025.
Anja Schlein/Special Contributor
Dallas County Fire Marshal assistant chief Zack Masri unholstered his gun and pointed it down while talking with a colleague, prompting a firearm instructor who witnessed the April 7 incident to report it, according to an internal memo. An internal review stated Masri was “joking,” but he received a written warning for misconduct a month later.
The day after the gun incident, Masri walked into another colleague’s office, picked an argument with him and called women nearby “bitches,” according to an account written by the man.
Masri announced he answered to no one but the fire marshal, the man alleged.
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The tipping point, according to a human resources investigation, came after Masri ghost-wrote an email defending the authority of the fire marshal’s office and had a county commissioner send it under her name.
Fallout from the email led to Masri’s firing June 8 for misconduct, removing him as second-in-command of an agency already under fire for testing the limits of its power. Masri is appealing the termination from his $160,000-a-year job. He did not respond to questions sent to him or his lawyers.
Legislators and the body overseeing law enforcement in Texas raised concerns last year that the Dallas County Fire Marshal’s office acts more like a security force than a fire safety agency.
County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins declined to comment directly on Masri or the fire marshal’s operations, saying only that the county “remains committed to ensuring the safety” of employees and residents.
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With no public vote, the Commissioners Court in 2015 created the Dallas County Marshal Service to use peace officers commissioned under the fire marshal for security in county buildings. Commissioners approved a $2 million budget and six positions for fire marshal duties this year and another $13 million and 96 positions for the agency to handle building security.
Last year, Texas Commission on Law Enforcement director Greg Stevens told county officials there is no such thing as a county marshal under state law and he was concerned the fire marshal’s office was too focused on duties unrelated to fire safety.
State lawmakers passed a bill last year targeting Dallas County that clarified the role of fire marshals as essentially fire investigators and building inspectors. The law also prohibits counties from creating law enforcement agencies that don’t exist in statute. County Administrator Darryl Martin responded by eliminating the name “county marshal service.” Since the law does not explicitly prohibit fire marshals from conducting building security, he didn’t change their operations.
Power Struggle
County officials planned an active shooter training for March 26 for employees of the sheriff, fire marshal and constable offices. During a coordination meeting Feb. 12, emergency services chief Scott Forster announced the sheriff’s office would lead planning and operations of the drill as the county’s chief law enforcement authority, according to an investigation led by human resources director Robert Wilson.
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Four days later, Masri drafted an email to Forster in the voice of County Commissioner Theresa Daniel stating the appointment of the sheriff’s office as training lead was done “despite the direction I previously provided.”
“Moving forward, the Fire Marshal’s Office will remain the lead agency and evaluator (of) this exercise in accordance with court direction,” the email states.
According to the human resources investigation, Masri said he approached Daniel after the sheriff’s office was put in charge of the drill and asked her how to proceed.
Masri said Daniel asked him to draft an email “based on his interpretation of the authority previously granted to the fire marshal’s office by the commissioners court,” according to the investigation.
The email stated the marshal’s office was mandated by commissioners to lead security and training in county buildings. Masri told human resources Forster had no authority to oversee active shooter training.
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Fire Marshal Captain Philip Brown told human resources he hand-delivered Masri’s draft email to Daniel.
Daniel sent the email that afternoon to Forster and the four other county commissioners, records show. Daniel declined to comment for this story.
The next day, after Forster alerted County Administrator Darryl Martin, Fire Marshal Robert De Los Santos confirmed Masri wrote the email, according to a memo.
Masri was given “verbal counseling” on the incident. A month later, Martin asked human resources to investigate.
The ordeal came after an earlier power struggle with the sheriff’s office: during a multiagency training drill in June 2025, De Los Santos raised his voice, pointed his finger at the chest of a sheriff’s assistant chief and blocked sheriff’s employees from participating, according to a human resources investigation.
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‘Should not be normalized’
On April 12, while the email issue was under investigation, firearm instructor Tony Hinojosa emailed De Los Santos to report an officer’s mishandling of a gun five days earlier at the county administration building during a debrief of a bomb threat.
Hinojosa said he witnessed the officer, later confirmed to be Masri, unholster his gun around others in “a sul position,” where a gun is pulled to the body and pointed down.
“This type of behavior should not be normalized or treated as acceptable,” Hinojosa wrote, adding it was a significant safety concern and poor judgment.
The day after Hinojosa’s email, Brown, the captain, replied “the incident has been addressed.”
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Then Assistant Chief Michael Barber wrote an internal review May 4 stating Masri pulled the gun “in a joking” manner while talking with another employee. But by the time De Los Santos told Barber to conduct the review, he said surveillance footage of the incident had been taped over.
In an email, Captain Ramon Gonzalez said he witnessed Masri holding his gun in the sul position while talking to someone and intervened, saying: “What are you doing? Put that away.”
Masri received a written warning May 7, records show.
The day after the gun incident, security systems analyst Allen Rucker said Masri entered his office and asked what he had been doing all day. Rucker, in an email to De Los Santos, said Masri began talking to a female employee about divisions in the department and used derogatory language about two other women nearby.
Rucker wrote that Masri cursed at him for sending emails instead of walking over to his office to talk. Rucker said they both began yelling and that Masri made a comment he took as a threat. Rucker said he was so upset he reported it to an assistant chief that afternoon.
Records do not indicate whether Rucker’s complaint was investigated. The human resources investigation into the email concluded May 19 and Masri was fired June 8 for violating employee conduct rules and insubordination.