As border security concerns continue to grow, the Oak Ridge North Police Department has sent several policeofficers to train with border lawenforcement agencies to be betterprepared for the local presence ofinternational criminal elements.
To date, the Oak Ridge North Police Department has sent three policeofficers to train with Rio GrandeValley law enforcement agencies,including the Brownsville PoliceDepartment, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Pharr PoliceDepartment, along with the Brooks County Sheriff's Office.
Oak Ridge North Police Chief Andy Walters said the training—which costs about $1,000 per week—prepares officers for combating crime at the local level, especially once professional criminalelements make it past border lawenforcement agencies and farther into Texas.
"It is a training opportunity for us to go down there, get the information, bring it back, share it amongst us," Walters said. "For a long time in Oak Ridge, for years and years we were a rural community. People slept with their doors unlocked and their keys in their cars. Now we are starting to see more professional[criminal] types where this is how they make their living. It is a hard paradigm [shift] for people to understand."
Montgomery County has experienced an influx of gangs from Houston, Walters said. While the gangs may not be directly affiliated with Mexican drug cartels,Walters said gang members are being solicited to sell narcotics. Houston has also been identified by the Department ofJustice as a top human trafficking hub.
Because of their training, Walters said officers are more aware of the sort of vehicles, slang and other signs ofinternational criminal activity that border law enforcement agencies see regularly.
"[Border officers] are seeing down there what we are going to start seeing up here," Walters said. "The same types of cars, same kind of trucks, same kind of people, same kind of language. That is what [the officers] are bringing back."
Police officer Daniel McGrew trained for one week with the Pharr Police Department. The city of Pharr operates its own border crossing to Reynosa, Mexico.
"That was hands down some of the best training I have ever received," McGrew said. "This is right here in our own state. People travel, people move around. It is very relevant to what we do. Not only that, [but] we are aligned with an interstate, so it is very relevant."
With the Hispanic community growing in The Woodlands area, McGrew said the training has prompted him to give creedence to the notion that some residents may have migrated to flee crime in Mexico. He said some Mexican residents migrate to U.S. border communities—such as Pharr—but later move farther inland to escape spillover on the U.S. side of the border.
Walters said he has been in contact with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which has expressed interest in formalizing the training program. The ORN Police Department plans to continue sending officers to train with Texas law enforcement agencies as training funding allows.
