Opening Speech:
City of Bastrop Police Department
3rd Annual Law Enforcement Banquet
Bastrop Chief of Police, David Board.
Mr.
Mayor Pro-Tem, City Council Members, City Manager, Community
Leaders, family and friends and to all of the members of the
City of Bastrop Police Department, I wish to express my heartfelt
appreciation and gratitude to each of you. You are the reason
we are able to gather together as a community to celebrate
the lives of the men and women whose hard work, dedication,
and sacrifice remains an inspiration to us all.
During
my 20 years of law enforcement experience, I have come to
realize that lieutenants, chief deputies, and sheriffs and
yes, even police chiefs like myself, do a lot of networking
and attend a number of meetings. We sit on boards, councils
and task forces and review committees. We develop policies,
programs, budgets and work on special projects. We deal with
the complaints, politics and the every day business of running
a police department. We endeavor to provide the citizens of
Bastrop with a safe and secure community. My job is full of
challenges, but it’s the individual police officers
on the street, who actually make it work, they breathe life
into it and they give it real value and true meaning.
One
of the funny things about police work is the ability of the
people at the very foundation of this police department, who
make the most important decisions: decisions that have powerful
meaning, make permanent impact, and make quantum changes in
peoples’ lives. And, yet they do it without first reviewing
policy or the latest case law.
They do not have the benefit to confer with the city attorney
or consult with the city manager. They are expected to take
immediate action, sometimes split second decisions with ever
lasting consequences, and that is what they do.
The patrol
officer is an individual. There are tall ones, short ones,
thin ones and well, large ones. But, there is one thing they
all have in common, when people are in crisis, they are first
to come to their aid.
In the
moments where there are blood and pain and injustice and suffering,
there is little or no time to defer to management, a program
or information of “managerial support.” Given
their training, experience, education, and most important,
their gut instincts and just plain guts, patrol officers’
respond and they take care of business.
A patrol
officer meets with innocent broken children who don’t
need policy set in the future--they need their little bones
set now. They don’t need a children’s safety review
committee--they need safety and comfort right then. They don’t
need an administrator to schedule a meeting concerning the
problem. They need a hero now, and they find that hero in
the patrol officer, as does the abused spouse, the sexual
assault victim, the robbery victim, and the Alzheimer’s
patient found walking blocks from home on a cold dark night.
Administrators are about the business of policing. But, these
amazing and courageous patrol officers. They are about practicing
the craft of police work. It is a craft, you know, part science
and part art, part application of law and part application
of common sense.
Because,
you see, when ' the fats in the fryer ', budgets, grants,
and protocol make no difference. It is the patrol officer
who makes the difference, often a huge difference. They are
the artists of the craft.
These
men and women of the City of Bastrop Police Department don’t
make their business sitting in an office behind a desk; they
make their living patrolling the streets of Bastrop Texas,
practicing the wonderful, dangerous, thrilling, compelling
craft of police work. They standby the Department Motto “To
Serve with Pride and Dignity". I am proud of these men
and women and I know you are to. They are the real heroes
who make a difference.
Thank
you and may god bless each and every one of you.
