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There’s a new beat in Bridgeport


Bridgeport Police Chief Steve Stanford this week announced a new patrol program for the city he hopes will improve the quality of law enforcement service to citizens.

The announcement was made during a Facebook Live video filmed during a rainy Thursday evening drive around the city with officer Kaleb Elledge where they talked about the police department and the city in general, taking and answering questions in real time during the video.

Brian Knox

Stanford mentioned the department is starting the Beat Management Program, which will divide the city into two parts for patrol purposes with 13th Street marking the dividing line. One patrol officer will be assigned to the east side of town for a three-month period while another officer will patrol the other area during that time period.

Using officer Elledge as an example, Stanford described what he’ll be doing.

“He will take all calls, do foot patrols, knock on doors, he will talk to citizens, he’ll get to know the citizens more, get to know what vehicles belong where,” Stanford said. “So I believe it will be a great program to better our partnership with the community, as well as crime prevention and building some partnerships with our officers as well. We have a few new officers and that will help them get to know our citizens as well.”

The chief said they’ve done something similar in the past to address a short-term issue, but he believes having officers assigned to a specific beat over a longer period of time will further enhance their efforts and better serve citizens.

Stanford said Friday he is in the process of obtaining beat phones (cell phones) for officers so they can be contacted directly by citizens. Those numbers will be published on the department’s Facebook and web page once they are activated.

Also in the video, Stanford said the department had a little more than 53,000 calls last year and made 211 arrests. It continued a four-year trend of decreasing arrest numbers, he said. In the late 1990s and early 00s when Stanford started at the department, he said it was not unusual to see 750 to 1,000 arrests a year.

ANIMAL CRUELTY CASE CONTINUES

I checked in with Lt. Chad Lanier at the Wise County Sheriff’s Office this week about the gruesome animal cruelty case from last November.

In that case, a family’s dog was found cut in half with a rope tied around its neck Nov. 23. Lanier said the dog had apparently been strangled prior to being cut in half and its body dumped on County Road 3552 just off Farm Road 2123 in the Paradise area.

The bad news is no one has come forward with any more information about that particular case since my story a month ago. The good news is there have not been any more similar animal cruelty cases.

Anyone who has any information that might be useful to the case is encouraged to call Lanier, 940-627-5971, or email lanierc@sheriff.co.wise.tx.us.

Brian Knox is the Messenger special projects manager.

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