The Tarrant County Commissioners Court recently voted to authorize a feasibility study for constructing a new law enforcement training center for the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office.

Currently, our Deputies and Detention Officers train in a small facility housed within the larger Tarrant County Resource Connection building. For any field or shooting range training, the Sheriff’s Office currently utilizes property owned by the Tarrant Regional Water District.  It is old, outdated, cramped, and not worthy of a world-class law enforcement agency.

The public safety of our residents and the security of their property is one of my top priorities as County Judge. Investing in the training and professionalism of our Sheriff’s Office is critical to achieving that mission.

However, a local pundit has called the prospective training center “pointless” and has absurdly remarked that our Sheriff’s Office provides “little law enforcement role” in our county.

Let’s start with the facts. Our Sheriff’s Office is the primary public safety agency for every Tarrant County resident who lives in an unincorporated area of the county—that is, anyone who does not live within any city limits.

Additionally, our Sheriff’s Office has contracted with the cities of Haslet and Edgecliff Village to serve as their local law enforcement agency, providing patrol and responding to all necessary calls.

Altogether, Sheriff Waybourn and his Deputies exclusively serve approximately 78,000 Tarrant County residents and are the primary protection of their families, businesses, and property.

Only the cities of Fort Worth and Arlington directly serve more people than that. In addition, our Sheriff’s Office provides additional resources, manpower, and backup to every city police department within our county.

Just last year, our Deputies answered over 3,100 calls for support from our municipal police forces across Tarrant County, which is in addition to their duties to protect and serve the other 78,000 residents. Wherever our Deputies are needed across Tarrant County’s 902 square miles, they can be counted on—every day, without fail.

Our Deputies aren’t just on patrol, they’re doing the hard work to bring criminals to justice. To put it in perspective, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office made about 8,300 arrests in 2022 compared to around 1,200 and 10,000 individuals arrested by the cities of Mansfield and Arlington, respectively.

And what about special details that impact the quality of life of every one of our residents? Our Sheriff’s Office serves as the lead agency for our local Human Trafficking Task Force that has rescued hundreds of people from sex trafficking, including a victim as young as 4 years old.

“Little law enforcement role?” That is a grossly uninformed, or simply outright dishonest statement.

Tarrant County is the best place to live, work, and raise a family in Texas, and one of the pillars of our success is our dedication to and support of law and order. Investing in the training and professionalism of the Sheriff’s Office will only serve to improve the lives of our people, better protect their property, and bring more lawbreakers to justice.

If funding law enforcement isn’t for you, you may find that Austin is a better fit, where its city leaders have conducted all manner of social experiments with the public’s safety. And the result? Lawlessness is so out of control that the state has recently had to step in and provide basic police services.

Austin city council members celebrated “defunding the police” and now they’ve lost control of their streets. In Tarrant County, we will go the other way. We will fully support our local law enforcement officers, ensuring they have the training and tools they need to do their jobs.

If the critics of better facilities for our Sheriff’s Office have their way, Tarrant County will look a lot more like Austin in the years to come. For me, that’s a nonstarter.

My commitment to every resident while in office is that I will never stop fighting to make Tarrant County the safest large county in the United States.

And that starts with first acknowledging the critical role our Sheriff’s Office plays in the safety and security of our county.

If you can’t do that, Austin is a few short hours away. You’ll likely fit in just fine there.