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Harcrow is overcoming that obstacle by hiring locally .
“ For a long time , we weren ’ t hiring many people who were from here , Harcrow said . “ When you can tap into people whose family and friends are here – they grew up here – money is not the biggest factor . Instead of going out and recruiting at academies in other places , we can tap into the people we have here . The chances of them leaving as soon as they can for more money are less .”
According to Harcrow , hometown hiring also helps with relational policing .
Harcrow recently swore in four new officers , Miguel Vernado , Isiah Pettigrew , Carson Brandenberger and Jonathan Conley , all recent graduates of Tyler Junior College Law Enforcement Academy .
“ This is the largest class of graduates we ’ ve had from the academy in 10 years ,” Harcrow said . “ We are proud to welcome these new officers to the Palestine Police Department family . These young men fought hard through several months of academy delays due to COVID , which also created some academic hardships . They kept going and we could not be more excited to have them here with us .”
Vernado and Conley are both from the Palestine area , Pettigrew is from Tyler and Brandenberger is from West Texas .
“ We are especially proud of officer Conley , who joined PPD several years ago as a code enforcement officer and
worked his way up to being a sworn police officer ,” Harcrow said “ Hopefully this is a trend that continues in the future .” Three of the new recruits are men of color . “ Diversity is extremely important in law enforcement ,” Harcrow said . “ Policing is most successful when its police force reflects a ratio comparative to their community demography . Our numbers in diversity have more than doubled in the past year , we now have seven minority officers , four Black and three Hispanic , with 33 officers that puts us roughly at 21 %. These are officers who care deeply about their community and are ready to get to work .”
He added , “ Traditionally , we haven ’ t had a lot of interest from minority communities . We had no minorities in our department at one point . Now it ’ s growing . We ’ re seeing an uptick of minorities applying to become police officers .”
This has also been a year where the department took a hard look at policy review .
Harcrow said the last one was put in place in 2017 .
“ Things change constantly , and it ’ s very important to stay on top of the best practices ” he said .
Being from Palestine , Harcrow said he hopes for longevity as chief and the opportunity to grow the department to its fullest potential .
“ My family ’ s here . My friends are here . I love it here . I know not everyone feels that way . I have a lot of friends who left as soon as we got out of high school . I want to be here as long as it ’ s right for me to be here . This is home .”