Actor and martial arts expert Steven Seagal has been sworn in as a deputy in the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department. Hudspeth County is located in far west Texas and is on the border with Mexico, according to the Houston Chronicle.
* Seagal was born on July 10, 1952. Besides being a martial artist, a film star, and a law enforcement officer, he is an environmentalist, an animal rights activist, and a practicing Buddhist.
* Seagal lived in Japan in his teens and became the first westerner to operate an Akido dojo in that country. Seagal is a 7th dan degree and Shihan in Akido.
* Seagal's first movie, "Above the Law," came out in 1987. In the movie, Seagal plays a Chicago police detective who used to be a CIA covert operator during the Vietnam War. His character gets involved in stopping a government conspiracy to use the profits from an illegal drug operation to fund an invasion of Nicaragua, at the time under communist rule. A then relatively unknown actress named Sharon Stone played Seagal's character's wife.
* The most famous of Seagal's movies was "Under Siege" in which Seagal played a former US Navy SEAL who was finishing his career in the Navy as a cook on board the battleship Missouri, at the time of the first Gulf War, used as a platform for launching cruise missiles. The Missouri is taken over by a gang of terrorists, led by a character played by Tommy Lee Jones. In a plot that obviously has origins in "Die Hard," Seagal's character, along with a motley crew that includes a former playboy bunny, have to retake the ship before the terrorists can use it and its weapons to blackmail the United States. The movie spawned a sequel, "Under Siege 2: Dark Territory."
* Seagal recently appeared as a villain in the controversial Richard Rodriguez film, "Machete."
* While best known for his movies and his prowess in martial arts, Seagal is no stranger to law enforcement. He worked for almost 20 years as a reserve deputy sheriff in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. Seagal' work as a law enforcement officer was depicted in the reality series, "Steven Seagal: Lawman" which ran on A&E. The series garnered some controversy with a sexual trafficking lawsuit against Seagal by a former, female employee, since dropped. Seagal is being threatened with another lawsuit revolving around a raid depicted in the series in which it is alleged that a puppy and almost 100 roosters are alleged to have died.
* Seagal's duties as a Hudspeth County deputy sheriff will include patrolling the Texas/Mexico border in conjunction with the Border Patrol. He will also serve as an instructor to his fellow deputies in Akido. There are no current plans to turn Seagal's experiences in Texas into a reality show.
Texas resident Mark Whittington writes about state issues for the Yahoo! Contributor Network.
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