How a naked video and an officer's suspension led to an internal rift at the Dallas Police Department
Dallas Police Department command staff didn't believe a sergeant's explanation for how video of a nude female DPD officer ended up on his phone.
According to records and audio recordings from an internal affairs investigation obtained by CBS News Texas, Sgt. Daylon Grandberry had been making advances on the female officer for years. It all came to a head last year, when the video showing the officer naked ended up on Grandberry's phone.
"No one believes this story that you're putting out. It sounds like something my kid would make up," an assistant chief said to Grandberry in a recorded interview.
While some on the command staff felt Grandberry deserved to be demoted, Chief Daniel Comeaux settled on a much lighter punishment, which has had lasting effects on the department.
How it all started
In a statement to internal affairs, the female officer recalled how Granberry would "approach her desk, hug her" and repeatedly suggest they "go on a date," despite the fact she would always say no.
"I'm not attracted to him at all and he knows that, but he just continues to ask," she told detectives in an interview.
During a disciplinary hearing in July of 2026, an assistant chief questioned Grandberry about his behavior.
"Did you go over to [the officer]'s desk and ask her when she was going to take you home to [another state] to meet her mother?" the assistant chief asked.
"Yes, I've asked her that for about 5 years," Grandberry said.
"Did you ask her when she was going to dump her boyfriend?" the assistant chief asked.
"I think I did," Grandberry said.
"Did you ask her if she would go on a date with you?" the assistant chief asked.
"Um, ish? In a roundabout way. Yes," Grandberry said.
According to records of the investigation obtained by CBS News Texas, the officer said she didn't initially report the sergeant's behavior "because she did not want to create a conflict or be perceived as causing issues."
"I feel like as a female in a male-dominated field, I don't want to get nobody in trouble," she told detectives.
That was until November of 2025, until things escalated.
A stolen video and the sergeant's story
The female officer said Grandberry asked to borrow her phone to play games and that "after a couple minutes, he brought up how bad the cell phone reception was" and stepped away with the device.
Later, she described being "in shock" to find a private "explicit video of herself was sent to Sergeant Grandberry's phone twice."
When she confronted him, the Grandberry denied sending himself the video. "I'm sorry sweetheart, I don't know what you're talking about," she recalled him saying.
He later admitted that was a lie.
"I did lie to [her]. I panicked. I understand the way it looks. It looks screwed up, right?" he told his superiors.
In a written statement to the department, Grandberry called what he did an "unintentional, unfortunate accident" that's caused him "tremendous embarrassment."
While he had her phone, he said he "decided to look for a picture" to save to his contacts and said his "thumb inadvertently touched the screen" and "accidentally selected the wrong photo."
"In my effort to not drop the phone, my thumb touched the screen, and the video was sent."
He said another officer then happened to walk by, "so I swiftly pulled the phone closer to my chest area and the video was accidentally sent a second time."
Command staff didn't buy the story.
"Instead of admitting this to her and saying 'I'm sorry,' you're sticking to a lie," one said in a recorded interview.
"You still stand by that? That all this was accidental. Even if it was an innocent photo, you didn't have permission. Like if I give you my phone because you say you want to play a game, you don't have permission to go find a picture," said another.
Grandberry, at times, argued back. "She said I could look at what she gave me, which was…"
An assistant chief interrupted, "Did she say, 'Go look at my phone and look at my photos? You have permission.' Yes or no?
"She gave me access. She gave me permission. Yes. Yes. She gave me permission to look at her phone," Grandberry said.
According to the female officer, Grandberry would not have been able to come across the video by chance. To access it, she said, Grandberry would have to find her hidden images folder and enter her passcode. She suggested that Grandberry could have seen her enter the passcode when he asked to play the game, which he has repeatedly denied.
"The hidden files, as I stated in my statement, was actually in the gallery. The only thing I had access to was the gallery. I did not have access to anything else," Grandberry said in response to a commander's question in the interview.
"Somebody is lying here," said another interviewer. "Either it was in the hidden files or it wasn't. You're saying it wasn't. She's saying it was."
"Try to be the third party on this one," he said. "Why would she lie? I don't know why would she lie. Why would you lie? ... Because you're looking somewhere you're not supposed to be looking. That's what it sounds like."
More calls and texts
The same day the video was sent, cell phone records show the sergeant called and texted the officer multiple times. The officer also reported he approached her at the station with questions about payroll and other officers.
"(She) thought it seemed like Sergeant Grandberry was going out of his way to contact her all day with the excessive calls, texts and in-person encounters. (She) felt so annoyed and violated by someone who was a superior," an internal affairs detective observed.
The female officer also described a personal question she claimed he asked.
"The last time he calls me, he was like, 'Are you faithful?' And I was like 'What?' And he's like 'yeah,' he's like, 'are you faithful?' And I said, 'I have a boyfriend and I don't want to date you. Is that faithful enough?' He's like, 'Yeah, I guess that makes sense, whatever.' And I was like, 'It's just weird. Like, you call me more today than you call me my whole career,'" she told detectives.
The discipline and the backlash
Police records show that Grandberry's superiors recommended a range of punishments, from just a one-day suspension all the way to a demotion.
The final decision lay with Comeaux, who met with Grandberry during a second hearing on August 3.
"I have an opinion, a strong opinion on what took place this day. It's just not enough to push me over the edge on you all the way, so today is your lucky day on today's date. And I'm gonna give you 15 days suspension," Comeaux said, according to a recording of the hearing.
The news upset the Dallas Police Women's Association.
"Personally, I think he should have been terminated," said DPWA president Jennifer Atherton.
When she learned of the punishment, Atherton said she immediately texted Comeaux, asking if it was true.
"And he said 'yes', and then he said, 'We couldn't prove it wasn't an accident,'" Atherton said.
On social media, Atherton called the suspension "a slap on the wrist to him and a slap in the face to every female officer in our department".
She also blasted "a cycle of predatory behavior that is frequently ignored or brushed aside by the department."
A department divided
The DPWA's Facebook post has garnered more than one million views in less than two months. In that time, Atherton said Comeaux has criticized the association, insinuating that it was "making the department look bad."
"Since then, at his request ... myself and my entire board, the Dallas Police Women's Association Board, met with him, and there was no more insinuating at that point. He blames us and blames our being public about this for him getting phone calls about it or questions about it, telling me I'm hurting the department," Atherton said.
She said the chief invited to the meeting two female members of Grandberry's chain of command who had recommended more lenient discipline. Left out of the meeting were any male commanders who had weighed in, or the female assistant chief who had recommended that Grandberry be demoted.
Atherton said she felt Comeaux's intention was to turn the women against each other.
"Our board will not be pitted against any women in the department," she said.
Her message to Comeaux: "You made the mistake, not us. We shone a light on it."
Chief Comeaux's response
Comeaux declined a request for an interview about the discipline, but provided the following statement:
"I respect the Dallas Police Women's Association and their right to express concerns, but my responsibility as Chief of Police is to make decisions based on the facts, department policy, and what is in the best interest of this organization. I will not allow outside pressure, whether it comes from an association, an individual, or anyone else, to determine how I lead this department or make personnel decisions."
"Disagreement does not have to damage a professional relationship. I remain willing to listen and have productive conversations with the association, but we are not always going to agree. My expectation is that even when we disagree, we remain professional and focused on our shared responsibility to the men and women of this department and the people of Dallas."
Atherton said she is willing to work with Comeaux to address what she sees as a larger problem in the department.
"This isn't about Sgt. Granberry. We have a lot of Sergeant Grandberrys in this police department. Why? Do we cultivate that culture? Or does it just come out because they're allowed to?" she said.
When officers are not held accountable, Atherton said, women on the force do not feel safe reporting them.
"The people who were scared to come forward in the past are more scared now than they ever were, and that's not our fault," she said.
Asked about the DPWA's belief that there were "a lot of Sergeant Grandberrys" in the department, a police spokesperson responded,
"We respect the Dallas Police Women's Association's role in advocating for its members and raising concerns about issues affecting women in this department. At the same time, we must be mindful that when an individual employee's experience becomes the basis for a broader discussion, there is a real person at the center of that conversation who may be forced to relive an experience she did not chose to have publicly debated. Advocacy should ultimately make employees feel more supported, not re-victimized. Our focus is not simply responding to one incident or one employee; it is making sure our workplace expectations are clear, concerns can be raised safely, inappropriate conduct is addressed, and our employees know their department will support them."
The department confirmed that Grandberry continues to work as a sergeant at South Central Patrol. CBS News Texas reached out to both him and the female officer through their respective associations requesting comment, but did not receive a response.
