In addition to the new radars in several patrol vehicles, the Wise County Traffic Enforcement Division under Sgt. Cavin Riggs also has a handheld radar to help reduce speeding on county roads. AUSTIN JACKSON | WCMESSENGER
The biggest challenge facing the Wise County Sheriff’s Office Traffic Enforcement Division on Tuesday wasn’t finding drivers who were speeding on County Road 4668.
It was choosing which one to stop.
Rush hour had ended hours earlier, but traffic was still steady on the 1.73-mile county road connecting FM 730 and FM 718 — better known to most residents as Bobo Crossing. Once a narrow stretch of gravel, the road now carries an average of 11,000 vehicles a day as growth continues to press outward from Fort Worth.
For WCSO Sgt. Cavin Riggs, life on the traffic beat has become routine. His patrol unit rarely idles, at least on County Road 4668, pulling over a series of vehicles that are going well over 50 mph on the 40 mph road.
“My job is to slow people down,” Riggs said while watching cars pass. “I don’t want to write tickets. That’s not why we’re doing this. We just have to have a presence, to at least have people think about their speed.”
Riggs is the WCSO traffic division right now. It officially launched Jan. 20, 2025, when Riggs hit the road equipped with radar and a directive to address speeding on county roads that were not meant to support the volume of vehicles they now carry.
In less than a year, Riggs issued 831 citations for the traffic division. Over the same period, based on his estimate of stopping 15-20 vehicles per shift, the one-man force performed an estimated 3,000 traffic stops.
That estimate seemed conservative based on around an hour with Riggs at Bobo Crossing. Reports may take him miles away, hitting other problem areas in the county’s four precincts. The assignment shifts constantly, following problem areas determined by data, citizen feedback and potentially hazardous situations, like roadwork, that could use some extra enforcement attention.
Sgt. Cavin Riggs returns to his vehicle after issuing a warning for speeding. In 2025, he wrote more than 800 tickets and conducted thousands of stops for the WCSO traffic enforcement division. AUSTIN JACKSON | WCMESSENGER
In five years, Wise County grew by about 13,000 residents to more than 81,000 in 2025. Wise County roads felt the full weight of the boom.
New hazards in traditionally rural areas include rows of freshly poured driveways on these rising thoroughfares, increasing the number of people turning out and stopping in front of speeding vehicles. The traffic, and types of drivers changed, too, with people taking the backroads to travel to and from work. The days of mom and pop and the occasional tractor representing the only traffic are long gone.
Back then, many of Wise’s county roads were built as oilfield roads, with narrow widths, sharp curves and limited sight distance. As housing and businesses replaced portions of open land, traffic counts on some roads climbed from a few hundred vehicles a day to the thousands. It was only recently that the vast majority of once gravel roads became paved.
The comforts from paving over the last 20-30 years has brought consequences.
“You pave a road, smooth it out, and people drive it like a highway,” Precinct 4 Commissioner Colby Shawn said. “But those roads weren’t built for that.”
In 2024, 35 people died in wrecks in Wise County, a record number of traffic fatalities in a year. It was a wake-up call that led to an outcry for action from residents and a search for ways to complement road safety for county and city leaders alike.
Mellema campaigned on the issue.
“That was the No. 1 thing I heard when I was campaigning door to door,”Mellema said. “Everywhere I went, people talked about speeding and these dangerous roads. We had to do something about the fatalities.”
Part of the sheriff’s action plan involved contacting Riggs with a large task: come out of retirement to lead a new traffic enforcement initiative for the county.
Riggs accepted.
It turns out, it wasn’t a hard sell. Riggs said he quickly became bored of retirement, and he knew he had more to give.
Ever since last January, he spends nearly all of his shift looping back and forth on problematic county roads, slowing people down in his modest, subtly marked patrol car. His radar hums quietly from the 2017 Chevrolet Caprice, with the worst offenders firing up the new ticket printer that rests on the floorboard.
The WCSO traffic enforcement division started in January 2025. AUSTIN JACKSON | WCMESSENGER
These efforts are hoping to close the gap created by development outpacing law enforcement presence — changing the belief that a speeding ticket is not a realistic threat on county roads.
Wise County Commissioners are deploying tools of their own to complement his efforts.
Commissioner Shawn acquired speed radar message trailers in Precinct 4, which are essentially electronic signage on a trailer that tells people how fast they’re going. It tracks traffic volume and speeds, too.
One was parked on County Road 3225. The first week it went up, it registered 5,300 vehicles, of which 465 exceeded the 40 mph speed limit by 10 mph. One driver was going 99 mph on the road, the slowest was going 10 mph. The next week, there were just 310 speed violations, despite 6,011 vehicles passing through. The most reckless speed registered was reduced, too with the fastest driver clocked at 75 mph.
The data from these traffic calming devices have helped Shawn determine if requesting some attention from Riggs would be worthwhile, or if the county needs to undergo the process of reducing the speed limit on other roads. Shawn said the approach is intended to be proactive, combining visibility, data and enforcement to slow drivers down.
Wise County’s crash statistics indicated that progress was being made by the end of 2025.
In 2024, there were three fatal crashes on county roads. All three listed speeding as contributing factors to the deadly accidents.
The number of fatal accidents went down to zero in 2025. Including highways, farm roads and city streets, Wise County roads claimed its fewest lives since 2022 last year, with 14 people killed in 13 separate traffic accidents.
The WCSO and county officials declined attributing Wise County’s 60 percent drop in total traffic fatalities from 2024 to 2025 (which includes all road classifications), or the fatal crash shutout on county roads last year, to any single action or change.
But Shawn said the data shows that doing a little more has made a difference. For Riggs, he can see the shift in driver behavior after working an area for an extended period of time.
“It is becoming harder and harder to issue citations every month,” Riggs said. “I think our presence has absolutely made a difference in how people drive on these roads. They know we are out there now.”
The veteran member of WCSO has had an interesting law enforcement career.
WCSO Sgt. Cavin Riggs speaks with dispatch after conducting a stop on County Road 4668 Tuesday near Boyd. AUSTIN JACKSON | WCMESSENGER
He’s spent nearly all of it at the WCSO, serving under seven different sheriffs. In that time, he worked patrol, narcotics, responded to violent incidents and pursued criminals, with one notable chase ending Evan Ebel’s 2012 killing spree after an attempted escape brought him to Decatur.
Several local agencies were in pursuit after the man shot a Montague County deputy multiple times, according to the Texas Rangers investigation. Ebel was wanted in the murder of a Colorado prison chief and a Dominos delivery driver. After Ebel crashed out at the intersection of U.S. 380 and Business 380, he began firing towards Deputy Christopher Michael Hodges. With Hodges returning fire and taking cover, Riggs calmly stepped forward and fired two initial shots before Ebel went down. The Rangers report indicated Ebel was shot in the temple, “just above and between both of his eyes.”
The chase and case made national news. Looking back on his law enforcement career, Riggs said he’s fortunate to be alive.
“During my 26 years tour of duty, day and night, I have always had a partner next to me,” Riggs said. “That partner is Jesus Christ. I’ve been in so many situations over those years, that if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be able to go home, and I mean that.”
Fourteen years after that chase, his focus is more narrow: watching cars speed and suddenly brake before going on a series of little walks back and forth to driver-side windows to communicate the importance of slowing down.
It may not seem glorious compared to some of his previous work.
The stakes, however, are just as high.
A vehicle traveling 20 mph over the speed limit on a narrow county road leaves little margin for error. And wrecks on these roads, often surrounded by large tree lines, are devastating.
The risk multiplies as more drivers who haven’t felt the threat of a speeding ticket in the country flood the roadways.
Mellema believed the WCSO could do more about roadway safety after taking his oath of office. In addition to forming the traffic division, the WCSO installed 12 radars in patrol vehicles that previously weren’t equipped with the tool. Commissioners helped share the cost with the WCSO.
And after a year-long proof of concept for the WCSO Traffic Enforcement Division, Riggs will soon be getting reinforcements.
In the most recent budget cycle, county commissioners approved funding a second full-time traffic enforcement deputy this year. On Monday, they approved the insurance and lease agreement to allow a reserve deputy to begin using his Harley-Davidson for traffic enforcement, potentially bringing the traffic division from one to three this year. The WCSO will look to fill the full time position soon, Mellema said, after training up WCSO’s new patrol recruits, a position that gained interest after recent salary bumps in 2026.
The longterm goal is to eventually increase the division to have traffic enforcement deputies in each of the county’s four precincts. Regardless, Riggs plans to continue taking as big of a bite out of the unwieldy speeding problem as he can.
On Tuesday, he made thousands of impressions on motorists just south of Boyd.
That little road is notorious for being one of the first to flood when the banks of the West Fork of the Trinity River rise. It’s also known for its proximity to a large pink cross that serves as a painful reminder of the slain 7-year-old girl whose body was found nearby years ago.
Riggs hopes the traffic division adds another wrinkle to Bobo Crossing’s reputation, along with Wise County roads in general.
“I want drivers to think about us whenever they’re driving around Wise County,” Riggs said. “I want them to think twice about speeding.”
The reward for establishing that rep, writing citations and the risk that comes with each stop, is the same thing that convinced him to take on the 900 square mile traffic beat in the first place.
Riggs had a shot to make a difference that allows one more person to make it all the way home to their families.
“[Saving] one is all it takes,” Riggs said. “That makes it worth it to me.”
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