For the past year and a half, a gun-toting San Antonio man has forwarded more than 100 pages of complaints to the Texas attorney general’s office detailing supposed violations of the state’s sanctuary cities law and threatening to shoot undocumented immigrants.

Ralph Pulliam’s 14 emails account for nearly half of all “sanctuary complaints” sent to the AG since the law took effect in September 2017 and established penalties for local police who fail to cooperate with immigration authorities.

Typed mostly in all caps, Pulliam’s complaints warn of an “invasion of illegal aliens” and repeatedly threaten gun violence against the interlopers.

“We will open fire on these thugs,” Pulliam, who is white, vowed in one email. “It will be a bloodbath.”

His rhetoric has taken on a new resonance in the wake of two Texas massacres: one last month at an El Paso mall, where a white supremacist is accused of killing 22 people, and another last week in Odessa and Midland.

The El Paso gunman wrote in an online manifesto that his attack was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Weeks before that rampage, the El Paso shooter’s mother reportedly called police out of concern that her son had an assault-style rifle.

In recent years, as mass shootings in America have proliferated, support has grown in other states for legislation that would allow law enforcement to remove guns from people deemed a risk to themselves or others.

Since the February 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., 12 states have enacted so called “red flag” laws, bringing the total to 17.

Texas has resisted such a law, despite suffering four mass shootings since 2017.

Pulliam’s neighbors and nearby business owners, many of them Hispanic, have grown wary of the 62-year-old retired car salesman, who often emerges from his security camera-laden home on Gilbert Lane toting a handgun or shotgun, police reports indicate.

San Antonio police have known about Pulliam’s behavior for years. Since September 2017, officers responding to 911 calls — many made by Pulliam — have been sent to his house at least 35 times, but he never has been arrested.

“He’ll take it right up to the line,” Sgt. Michelle Ramos said, “but doesn’t commit the crime.”

Police were not aware of Pulliam’s complaints to the AG until a reporter pointed them out this week. The attorney general’s office never forwarded any of the messages to the San Antonio Police Department, Ramos said.

The AG’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

“Since you’ve made us aware of those threats, our fusion center and our mental health unit have reached out to the AG’s office and are trying to work something to make a case against Mr. Pulliam,” Ramos said. “They’re going to investigate that.”

The Southwest Texas Fusion Center is a collaboration of area law enforcement and federal agencies formed in 2011 to investigate and respond to criminal and terrorist activity.

‘Hand on the gun’

The Legislature adopted Senate Bill 4 in an effort to ban so-called sanctuary cities, a broad term for places that limit how local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration agents. The 2017 law prohibits policies that bar local police from enforcing state or federal immigration laws, among other provisions. It also established a process for citizens to complain about alleged violations of the law.

Since the law was enacted, the AG has received more than two-dozen complaints.

Many are brief and refer to events in the news, including SAPD’s release in 2017 of a dozen Guatemalen immigrants, who were smuggled across the border in a tractor-trailer, to the care of private charities.

The incident spurred Attorney General Ken Paxton to sue the city for violating Senate Bill 4. Key parts of the lawsuit since have been dismissed.

In September 2017, the same month the sanctuary city law was enacted, police were sent to Pulliam’s house for a report of a discharge of a firearm. They found “nine empty casings from an AK-47,” but no suspects, according to a police report.

In January 2018, Pulliam began using sanctuary complaints to vent about two used-car dealerships and two apartment complexes near his house.

The dealerships were harboring an “Army of illegal Aliens,” and the apartments were “Havens for Gang members and illegals,” he wrote. Pulliam feared the “illegals” were shooting at his house.

“We will open fire on these thugs who will not leave us alone,” he wrote in all caps in his first complaint. “Do you get the point!!!!???? I say this to you Atty Gen Paxton with all seriousness we are being pushed into a corner … and it will be a bloodbath.”

Alex Delgado, who works at one of the car dealerships, said Pulliam has approached their customers who park near his home, as well as residents of the apartment complexes.

“If you park your car, he’ll come out with a gun,” Delgado said. “The little kids who live here will come out and play in the street, and he will come outside with his gun still on him, and he’ll tell the kids to get out of the street.”

Luis Avila, who works with Delgado at the dealership, agreed: “He comes out of his property with his gun. He has literally his hand on the gun.”

Around 3 a.m. on March 21, 2018, Pulliam called police about a “suspicious vehicle” at his house. According to a police report, Pulliam “pointed his firearm” at the SUV.

A few weeks later, Pulliam sent another complaint to the AG, this one warning that his neighborhood had become an “illegal alien cesspool.” He threatened to “shoot” a “wet back monkey” and accused the car dealerships of “hiding wetback soldiers” and the apartment complexes of housing “huge army’s (sic) of wetback male soldiers.”

Around 5:30 a.m. on July 28, 2018, Pulliam again called police. According to a police report, he was holding a shotgun and shining a spotlight on a Hispanic man in front of his home.

Pulliam told an officer he was “in charge of neighborhood watch.” The Hispanic man told the officer he was simply walking down the street. The officer left without taking action.

Since then, Pulliam has sent the AG more than a dozen rambling complaints, including three last month. In some, he describes pointing guns at vehicles. In nearly all, he threatens “the use of deadly force.”

“We see it coming — the day when these thugs will push this into a showdown,” Pulliam wrote in May, “and it all could have been prevented by city hall and police.”

Why no red flag law?

Coupled with Pulliam’s complaints to the AG, San Antonio police now see “an escalating pattern of alarming behavior” in his actions, Lt. Jesse Salame said.

Although Pulliam often has stopped just short of committing a crime, “in this day and age, we don’t know” what he’s capable of, Salame said, “and that’s what’s so alarming.”

In mass shootings, warning signs often precede the carnage.

In May 2018, a 17-year-old student armed with a revolver and a shotgun entered Santa Fe High School near Houston and shot 23 people, killing 10. Weeks earlier, the shooter had posted on Facebook an image of a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “born to kill,” along with photos of guns and a trench coat with Nazi insignia.

After a series of round-table talks, Gov. Greg Abbott asked the Legislature that year to consider passing a red flag law. A Texas Senate committee considered the legislation last summer. But hours after the hearing, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick released a statement opposing such a law, and Abbott soon backed away from the idea.

Last week, in the wake of the El Paso shooting, Abbott again convened a round-table talk. Ed Scruggs, board vice chairman of Texas Gun Sense, was present at both rounds of talks. His group supports red flag laws and other gun-control measures.

“We talked about red flag laws extensively both times,” Scruggs said. “I think there has been some interest there with the governor, but politically it is extremely difficult in that governing coalition they have in the Legislature. The No. 1 reason we don’t have one right now is the Republican caucus can’t come to an agreement on how they would proceed with this.”

On a recent afternoon, no one answered knocks on the door at Pulliam’s house. A sign posted on the front door depicted a hand pointing a revolver at any visitors.

“Never mind the dog, beware of owner!” it read.

Reached by phone, Pamela Merritt, Pulliam’s sister, defended her brother’s actions. She said Pulliam moved into the home to care for their elderly mother.

“I think he’s very well mentally, as far as knowing when and what to do with the appropriate gun,” she said. “He lives in fear, and they do live in a bad neighborhood. I don’t think he’s a threat to anybody or himself.”

Merritt acknowledged her brother acts aggressively toward perceived threats.

“That’s the only thing that scares me,” she said. “He does seem to go out there, and when he sees things that are happening, he does approach them. He doesn’t show any type of fear.”

bchasnoff@express-news.net