A Dallas police officer was arrested on Thursday and charged with two counts of capital murder after a witness said the officer had instructed him to kidnap and murder two people in 2017, the city’s police chief said.

The officer, Bryan Riser, joined the Dallas Police Department in August 2008 and had been on patrol until his arrest, the chief, Edgardo Garcia, said at a news conference.

The chief said that Officer Riser had been taken into custody after an internal affairs investigation into two murders. The first one was reported to the police on March 10, 2017, when officers found a woman’s body in the Trinity River. The woman, later identified as Liza Saenz, 31, had been shot several times, Chief Garcia said.

Two years later, on Aug. 13, 2019, a witness told the police that Officer Riser had directed him to kidnap and murder Ms. Saenz, Chief Garcia said.

The witness also told the police that Officer Riser had instructed him to kidnap and murder another person, Albert Douglas, 61, who had been reported missing by his family in February 2017. Mr. Douglas’s body has not been found, Chief Garcia said, but witnesses said that he had been kidnapped and murdered in the same block in Dallas near where Ms. Saenz’s body had been found, Chief Garcia said.

The motive for the murders is not known, Chief Garcia said. He declined to describe the relationship between the officer and the victims, but said the killings were connected to Officer Riser’s “off-duty conduct” and not his police work.

Nevertheless, Chief Garcia said, the Dallas Police Department will examine Officer Riser’s conduct as a police officer and the arrests he made.

“There’s an old adage in police work that says that no one hates a bad cop more than a good cop,” Chief Garcia said. “We hire individuals from the human race and, when we find individuals such as this, it’s the actions that we take afterward that we should be judged by. We will hold ourselves accountable to the highest levels.”

Officer Garcia was arrested and charged on May 13, 2017, with assault family violence, a misdemeanor. It was not immediately clear what happened with that case. At the time, he had been placed on administrative leave, pending an internal affairs investigation. Chief Garcia said he could not discuss the specifics of that case.

The chief acknowledged that the department had allowed Officer Riser to remain on patrol since 2019 while he was under investigation in the killings. But he said that “terminology is important.” The chief said that a person does not become a “murder suspect” until there is enough information to find probable cause that he committed a murder.

“I think the community should know that this Police Department wants to be as thorough as possible, because we certainly don’t want someone slipping through the cracks that has no business wearing this uniform,” Chief Garcia said. “And so he’s a person of interest until he becomes a suspect. And that’s what the diligent work of our homicide detectives and the F.B.I. were trying to do.”

The chief said the department was now moving to fire Officer Riser. “We will not allow anyone to tarnish this badge,” he said. “As we all know, the actions of a few affect the many.”

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