3 Communities Working With Agencies, Schools To Stop Drugs, Violence
Rachel Horton, The Dallas Morning News
Police chiefs in three local communities have created a regional intelligence team to better combat crime, officials said.
Highland Village Police Chief Ed O’Bara, who organized the coalition with Flower Mound and Lewisville, said the idea came to him after a recent quarterly meeting of the North Central Texas Narcotics Task Force in which he began to see a need to intensify local efforts against drug distribution and violent crimes.
Officials have yet to set a date for the first meeting.
“It is amazing the volume of drugs that travels through here, and it would be nave to think that some of that isn’t trickling off into our communities,” Chief O’Bara said. “We as chiefs are responsible to our citizens and our community, and I have to be able to say to them, ‘We are doing something locally to keep drugs off our streets.’”
The team will comprise representatives of the three police departments, one member each from the Drug Enforcement Agency and the North Central Texas Narcotics Task Force, and school resource officers from Lewisville, Marcus and Flower Mound high schools, Chief O’Bara said.
“Anytime we can communicate and help each other out with more information, I can’t see the down side,” said Denton County Sheriff Lt. Paul Jaworski, commander of the North Central Texas task force. “It’s all about exchange of information.”
The North Central Texas task force includes officers from Denton and Wise counties, Lewisville and Highland Village, and focuses on serving search warrants, busting methamphetamine labs and seizing large shipments of drugs that are transported north via Interstate 35, said Lt. Jaworski. The group seized $ 3.6 million in illegal drugs between June 2001 and August this year, including cocaine, heroine and marijuana.
The southern Denton County regional intelligence team will also focus on preventing violent crime by enhancing communication between the three departments’ dispatchers, he said.
“We’re going to set up an electronic system so we can immediately send to each others’ dispatch or service desk that we just had a forgery or a robbery,” Chief O’Bara said. “We will increase what we can do for our citizens dramatically just by disseminating information to those other communities, because if a criminal leaves here, they are going to go into those cities.”
Members of the team will combine information about areawide drug traffic with specific information from local high schools in order to develop more sophisticated intelligence and focused enforcement, Chief O’Bara said.
“What we’re looking for is more street-level information,” he said. “If it’s methamphetamine, how are they making it? Are they cooking it in cars or making it in houses or hotels? I want to know how they are transporting it so that when we stop somebody, we are aware.”
The effort comes two weeks after a 20-year-old former Marcus student died of a drug overdose after camping out in Pilot Knoll Park. Walter Chandler III of Highland Village had been drug-free for 18 months, said his father, Walter Chandler II.
“That Friday night, he decided one more time,” Mr. Chandler said. “He was a great kid.”
The young man had a 9-month-old daughter and was engaged.
“That was an end-result tragedy,” Chief O’Bara said. “It should be an awareness catalyst, not only for law enforcement, but for the community.”
Lewisville Police Chief Steve McFadden said the coalition enhances the communications already established between the departments.
“We want to do everything we can to work together to make the community safer,” he said.
Flower Mound Police Chief Kenneth Brooker said the formal partnership is long overdue.
“It’s a great idea,” he said. “Hopefully it will help us keep some of our citizens from becoming crime victims.”
The chiefs also agreed to begin sharing in-house training, Chief O’Bara said.
“It’s kind of like taking three cities and becoming one police department,” he said.
“Let’s get a realistic picture of what’s going on, and let’s share our information and then band together.”