WACO, Texas — Waco Police Department ends the year with a decrease in crime and credits its latest strategic plans, according to the Police Chief Sheryl Victorian.
Victorian has been with the department since March of 2021. The native Texan has 30 years of police experience. Since taking on the top brass role, she sits down with area news outlets annually to provide insight on her department.
Below is the full transcript of the one-on-one interview with 6 News' Baylee Bates. Some of the questions were edited for clarity:
Q: How have things been this year and what are you looking forward to going into the new year?
A: "I think that we have had an exciting year. We've done some great things in the city and right now we are experiencing a decrease in crime. Considering we do have a couple more weeks left, hopefully we continue to maintain that trend. So, it's just good to be able to see the hard work that our team puts in with this prevention, intervention and effort, apprehension strategies to make our city a safer city and a better city. So it's been fun."
Q: What does Waco PD do to help mitigate crime? What do you credit the decrease in crime to?
A: "The beginning of last year we started off with some increases in violent crime and in homicides. The city asked that we put together a strategic response to that crime and since we have put that strategic response out that we have been begin to see those decreases. That strategic response involves some prevention strategies, intervention strategies, and of course, apprehension strategies for individuals who may have been wanting for crime or participating in crime. When we're talking about prevention and intervention usually our community outreach division, our community services division with community outreach, our neighborhood engagement team and our safe unit are those units that are out there equipping our city with prevention strategies and how to reduce victimization. Then increasing the number of interactions that we have with the community in order to build that trust so when things do happen, we are receiving cooperation and solving crime. Public safety, I say this all the time, is all of our responsibility. It's just not the responsibility of the police. In order to do that, we have to make sure that we have the trust of the community, that we're going to be trusted with the information and the resources that were given to do that. Our officers have been out there being proactive in you know, identifying suspects, arresting suspects, recovering dangerous weapons, drugs and stuff off the street and it's been a good year. They are beginning to see the fruits of their labor and I'm just really excited about that."
Q: What are some resources that you would like the department to have, already have or something that might need to change going forward?
A: "Some of the resources that we started working with is force metrics. We're improving our CAD system, CAD/RMS system. We're deploying ALPR cameras and we're still in the process of getting that worked out. We've always had ALPR cameras, or we've had them in the past. ALPR cameras which is the automated license plate readers that are only to be used to conduct investigations and follow up on investigations. Some of the resources that I wish we had more of would be cars, but that's not anything that we could do anything about locally. There's manufacturing production, and making cars available. But, the resources and tools that we have had and that we have adopted -- our officers are using them and it's been beneficial in helping us to see or helping us solve crime."
Q: How is staffing, what does it look like going into the new year?
A: "I was very fortunate in our first year that our city manager's office and our council approved 25 additional slots would have which puts us at 292 authorized police positions. Right now, we currently have 261 police officers with 11 Going into the academy in January, we're very excited about that. We are still hiring and we are looking for individuals with hearts of gold and want to be public safety and want to make a difference in their community and give back to their community. We also have positions in dispatch as well. So, we're going into the new year with 261 sworn officers, but we do have positions available and we'll start the hiring process again, looking for more eligible candidates. It's always kind of hard to keep up with attrition with individuals retiring, or individuals leaving, or you know in the unfortunate event, someone has to be terminated. But, I think that we are we are doing fairly well, especially in comparison to other cities across the country. Our officers work diligently each and every day. We didn't know, what we didn't know that we had been working as short as we were right, but with the addition of more officers I can only see us getting better."
Q: Is there anything your officers are struggling with? How is the mental health aspect handled in Waco PD?
A: "Were struggling to get cars I mentioned that, but I think that's everywhere. We have developed some good partnerships and we do all we can to make sure that our officers have the resources that they need through peer support. Everybody cannot do this job, and the things that we see and our officers see day in and day out are traumatizing and they're traumatizing for us as well. We have the peer support network and other resources for our officers to help keep them healthy mentally and we form partnerships with a Behavioral Health Health Network. We are trying to redirect calls where individuals who may be in crisis, but do not need police assistance can get the help that they need through mental health professionals. That kind of reduces some of those calls that officers have to respond to with people in crisis and just by seeing an officer in uniform it may escalate the situation. So, developing that partnership and having some mental health professionals in our dispatch center is going to be something that's really going to help us in an area where most agencies across this country struggle. I would say I can identify any other real struggles, I think we are a very blessed department."
Q: Do you have any concerns with public safety going into the new year?
A: "I just think around this time of year everybody needs to be diligent in their surroundings when they're out shopping and making sure that their heads aren't buried in their phones, that they are securing their purses, securing their property and their vehicles, that we're not leaving weapons in our cars because unfortunately at this time of the year people try to target people at their most vulnerable times and then, walk away or run away with the things that they bought for their loved one. So, just to be diligent out there and be cognizant of your surroundings, making sure that they're paying attention, making sure that they are reporting anything that they are seeing and if you're witnessing anything, don't just see it and then decide to leave and think that somebody else is going to report or somebody else is going to be a witness. Make sure you stick around. If in the event something bad does happen to you or someone else."
Q: Are you seeing an issue with teen violence and teens committing crimes in Waco?
A: "As far as teen violence is concerned, it's a concern. I'm sure for not just police departments and not just families, but schools as well. Then, trying to figure out a way to intervene and help change the trajectory of some of these kids lives which is why it's so important for me that we increase the number of interactions that we have with our community and with our youth to try to help redirect their lives or offer them hope or show them that we care about their success. Education is very, very critical and when a young person drops out of school or a young person is suspended from school, and they're missing that education, opportunity for education and to succeed -- often they turn to crime, and we want to prevent that as much as we can."
Q: It's been almost an entire year of working with a new district attorney. How has that been? Is your department seeing more of the cases worked getting complete?
A: "I think that working closely with all of our public safety partners from our local, state and federal officials, to our judges and our district attorney's office, that is incredibly important to us as a department because you know, we make the arrest, we file the charges and we rely on the court system to prosecute and hold those individuals accountable. We have a good relationship with the district attorney's office and have their support. We call and make recommendations, or they call us and need our assistance, and we are more information in cases and I think that we are just very privileged to be able to have a partnership where we actually collaborate and communicate with one another to hold people accountable."
Q: A couple months ago, some Waco PD officers were involved with incidents with dogs. One was fatally shot. Are you able to provide a comment on these incidents? Is there anything you would want to say to the families of these pets?
A: "Unfortunately, I can't talk about either one of those individually. One is under a lawsuit that has been filed. So I can talk about but yeah, it's personal because I have dogs. I'm not gonna make any statements regarding that."
Q: Going into the new year, is there any new trainings that Waco PD might be undergoing?
A: "I'm hoping to bring a couple of new trainings to not just the Waco Police Department, but the Central Texas areas. I have been exposed to several trainings that I think will be beneficial in the development of our police officers and our leaders in policing. Sometimes we neglect to develop those that we put in leadership and I would love to have an opportunity to provide resources and just opportunities to those in leadership positions. One of the classes is the active bystander for law enforcement classes that I would love to bring here. Whatever training that I can bring, that is cost effective, that we can get officers trained to help them to be better and to to serve our community -- I want to make sure that we bring it."
Q: Are there any new laws that are requiring adjustments/changes in your department?
A: "There's not anything that has really happened that we have to make any adjustments for. I know that everybody's has hype about the the new law that just recently passed, but that's not going to change any of the processes that we have. Our overall objective is to make sure that we are are building relationships with our community, that we're putting the right people in jail, that we're holding people accountable, and that we're not accused of being... any way I'll just stop right there. We have to build enough trust in our communities where when something does happen, that they feel safe to call the police."
Q: Is there anything else you would want the public to know about you or your department?
A: "I would love for everybody to know that the Waco Police Department and our officers, our support team work very diligently each and every day to make sure that our city is safe, to make sure that we are holding people accountable for crimes that they commit. We want to be good partners. We want to be good partners, to our community stakeholders. We want to be good partners to our other public safety partners. We'd love to be a model city for public safety and police community relationships, and I think that we're heading in the right direction to be able to do that."
Q: You are a big supporter of the 30x30 Initiative, to get more women in the police force. How has that been for you and what do you plan to do in the new year to help contribute to the goal?
A: "Women add a different touch to the profession of policing. We only represent 12.5% of 18,000 police agencies and female police chiefs only represent 3% of 18,000 police agencies. So, we always talk about we want our police departments to be representative of the communities we serve and in most communities, women make up about 51% of the community. So, there's a push to get more women in policing. I love when I go out, it's an inspirational thing, but also it tells me how much work that we have to do. When I go out into communities, or read to little girls and then I have a little girl come up to me and say, 'I didn't know girls can be police chiefs' and I go 'yeah, we can, matter of fact, you can be whatever you want to be.' I take the opportunity anytime I'm out and about. I was just talking to some MCC Presidential Scholars a couple of Sundays ago and one of the young ladies said she wants to be a police officer and I was like, come talk to me and she took me up on it. Anytime, anybody wants to sit down and talk to me about the specifics of being a police officer, what it's like, what their concerns are -- then I sit down and talk to them. I've been doing this for 30 years, and I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else. I wholeheartedly recommend and love solicit women when I'm out and about to change their majors, or just encourage them to get into the police profession. It's a very rewarding profession and I'm sure there's a lot of value that they'd be able to add."