Your thefts, which are probably my biggest crime, then vandalism to cars or school desks or rooms. But what I call violent crimes like rape, murder, you don't see that inside our schools.
I get back two times from what I give to the kids. You do start relationships with the young people that are lifelong.
The program has really been successful. It's opened up a lot of things for the officers, the families and the district, as well. The main thing is our kids. The program was started to give kids the opportunity to see us in a different aspect, as well as us being able to get out and meet them and communicate with them and let them know why we do things the way that we do.
I think that this is more real. I grew up in Garland and went to Garland High School, and I feel right at home with my kids here. I look at these kids like they are my kids. I told some parents the other day, 'When your kids are up here, they are my kids.' That the way I feel about it.
These kids have grown up together, and they see that all races get along well together. We don't see any black on white, white on black, Hispanic on black. Most of ours is them fighting each other -- black on black, white on white, Hispanic on Hispanic -- more than we have any other. We don't have a lot of racial issues here.
I think that I have the best situation of any liaison officer because I have all type of children, not more than one. I'm at about 53 to 47 [percent] in majority/minority. What I find is that our kids fight with each other, but nobody else fights with them. It's like, 'I can slap my brother, but you can't;' it's that type of situation.
Well, we have never had a homicide here at school, thank goodness. We have had some of our kids go off campus and gotten killed. We had one of out student that was shot in a drive-by on U.S. 75, but really, we don't see that type of crime.
In '87, Kelley Moore was an eighth-grader, and when I came in, I was a younger officer, and I became his big brother and everything that I did he thought was cool. I would just talk to him and hang out with him. Now, Kelley is a engineer with Channel 8, and he comes and gets me and takes me to lunch, and it has become a lifelong friendship.
You'd be surprise what they tell us. I just got a deal the other day where I got a crime stopper tip where I ended up getting almost an ounce of pot, That's almost $200 worth of hydro off a kid, because of a kid coming in and telling me. It's a good program, and I enjoy it.
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