roxo media house [Music]
it’s filmed on location with the men and women of the Fort Worth Police Department my name is Neil Knox I am
very proud to be the chief of police at Fort Worth Texas I was born here in Fort Worth Texas at
Harris Methodist Hospital I grew up a little bit West of here went to school in a small town but I got back
to Fort Worth as soon as I could and this is where my heart has been ever since
and you know growing up I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life my dad was a firefighter so I was always drawn
towards Public Service uh my dad on his days off worked construction one of the
hardest working people I’ve ever known never knew him to have less than two jobs he’s also a Baptist Minister which also
goes towards service my mom was a stay-at-home mom for a lot of the my younger years but once me and
my sisters were all in school she wanted to contribute financially so she started cleaning houses while we
were at school get us up get us fed get us ready out the door she’d go work and she tried to be home to be there for
us before we got home from school she was a Sunday school teacher youth pastor
you know I never understood really all the sacrifices my parents were making what they were doing
to serve others but my dad was saving lives saving Souls my mom was she was
scrubbing other people’s toilets to provide a better life for me and my sisters so for me it was always about
some form of service I didn’t know what it would be and eventually after meeting some people that were in law enforcement
and finding out about how they had Direct impact a potential to directly impact
somebody’s life in a positive way I knew that’s what I wanted to do you know I first started out working
contract security for the federal government and interesting facts I mean it works I
worked some places like the Federal Building in the federal courthouse but another place I worked was the Federal
Depot which is now where our Administration and training facility is the Bob bowling Public Safety complex I
started with Fort Worth in 2000 May of 2000.
went to the academy in our old Academy which is off Calvert Street and this is the only law enforcement
agency I’ve ever worked for and as far as I’m concerned it’ll be the only one I ever worked for
a learning process all along all the way along and I needed every lesson I learned to be able to do what I’m doing
now so once graduating from the academy and going through field training I spent a little over eight years
in Patrol which is the heart of the department if a citizen calls for help
almost every single time the person they’re going to see is a patrol officer they never know what they’re going to see from day to day every day is
different and they’ve got to be able to respond appropriately efficiently effectively regardless of what the situation is
very difficult position but it’s where most of the learning really happens
that I promoted to detective actually the rank is corporal promoted to
Corporal became a detective worked in general assignment and then in traffic investigations
a little more than three years of that than I promoted to Sergeant I spent time as a patrol Sergeant a DWI
sergeant and then in Motors the motorcycle unit
they Lieutenant I was a special assignment Lieutenant downtown working with special events I went to Internal
Affairs after that from there I was appointed a commander over at the time our brand new North
Division up in Far North Fort Worth from there I was promoted the deputy chief and spent a little time as the
deputy chief over both of our Patrol bureaus for thankfully being selected to be the
chief of police
[Music] thank you
[Music]
so a typical day for Floyd police chief there really is no such thing there’s no
typical day that the only thing is typical about it is complete uncertainty about which way the day is going to go
foreign [Music] than not the live just kind of takes on
or the day whether it takes on a life of its own and we just adjust and pivot to
whatever that day brings around and we get the job done uh I feel like a
firefighter sometimes because it seems like I’m putting out fires all the time there’s always some crisis I’ve heard a
term called the tyranny of the urgent there are things that come up all the time and they’re urgent to somebody
every single one and the thing is even if they aren’t the most important thing going on in the world at that point it’s
likely the very most important thing going on in that person’s world so it’s important to them it’s important to me we try to take care of everything the
only reason things get done and done so well it’s the grace and blessings of God and
the people he puts around me if I wasn’t surrounded by such an amazing team if I didn’t have such amazing officers
amazing support staff professional civilian staff volunteers citizens city leaders without
that there’s no way the job would get done so people thank me oftentimes for work
that’s done and I when I get the chance I let them know it’s not me that’s doing it it’s everybody out there that’s doing
the job they’re the ones that deserve credit for all the good things that are happening what I’m trying to do with my days is do
everything I can to provide people with this support the equipment the training that they
need Empower them to do their jobs and then I need to get out of the way and let them do their job and they do it
well so days may include meeting after meeting after meeting yesterday I went
to a ribbon cutting for a great organization called Academy four that mentors fourth graders and schools here
in Fort Worth may go to a council meeting or a council work session may go to a retirement
celebration for one of our forward BD family members every day is different but really that’s
one of the things that makes the job so exciting much as you’re preparing as much as you
think you know what’s going to happen for one day the next we really don’t know it’s about adjusting and Performing
regardless of what you face I like to stay busy and that’s definitely not a problem
definitely stay busy um every day is exciting every day I get to
sit in this seat is a good day
[Music] I love supporting local business especially local Fort Worth business when we have people like this who grew
up here we’re raised here love this city and they could have gone anywhere and
opened a business but they chose to open it here a couple of reasons I believe one because these businesses are needed
here and second of all because they love the area they wanted to give back
[Music]
our job a lot of people think is just to put folks in jail that is part of what we do we need to take violent people off
the streets to protect residents but that’s only part of it is us doing what we can either on
our own or with other organizations to provide the resources or make sure
people have access to the resources that they need to be set up for success and anytime we can prevent someone from
being involved in crime especially at a young age or intervene at some point that’s always preferable over the law
enforcement side our jails our prisons are packed
that’s part of what needs to happen sometimes because some people are just violent but if there’s a way to actually
Empower someone enable them to be a productive member of society how much better is that for all of us it’s better
for them for their family for the trajectory of their family Legacy it also makes our job easier makes us safer
safer when we’re out there making sure our citizens are safer so there are a lot of things that contribute to it what
I want people to know is we are aware the despite we’re gonna the fact that we are going to put some people in jail
we’re also doing what we can on their front end to create opportunities for that positive
interaction and empowerment so there’s less likelihood of that negative interaction on the backside
uh from the time I took the criminal justice program at Tarleton and then the
Masters criminal justice and criminology program at TCU my favorite classes were
the criminology classes and those classes are geared to help the student understand factors that
contribute to criminality what makes a person commit a crime we hear things all the time about poverty maybe a child’s
upbringing maybe a child at a young age was labeled a criminal so they accept
that label and perpetuate that lifestyle sometimes it’s just growing up in an
area where say there’s gangs everywhere maybe there’s not much support at home you’re looking for a family and that’s
where a person goes ultimately it comes down to decisions people make
it comes down to factors that may influence their decisions But ultimately they make the decisions and they they
determine those things it’s something that personally I believe from what I’ve studied and what I’ve
seen again people talk about trauma they’ll talk about poverty
poor education systems food deserts lack of access to good quality Medical Care
lack of access to jobs job training transportation
I think that all falls under trauma different types of trauma and we have a
lot of people who experience that type of trauma sometimes on a daily basis personally but then they also experience
and so do officers what’s called vicarious trauma which is even though it
may not be trauma you’re experiencing personally you are experiencing someone else’s
trauma and eventually especially over time compounding your own trauma and
that vicarious trauma eventually it’s going to manifest itself positively in negative ways
you know Fort Worth Police Department’s really been involved with what’s referred to oftentimes as community policing which is community engagement
intentional engagement with our community members really
in a very impressive way since Chief Thomas Windham so back in the early 90s we had all
these programs that were developed like our citizens on patrol code blue the
clergy and police Alliance which we call Kappa ministers against Crime we call them Mac and those programs are still
around we’ve also had other programs like our Police Athletic League where we work
with different uh schools and different organizations to help kids sometimes
coach sometimes just be there to cheer them on and flag football basketball cheerleading boxing we just started Judo
it’s a great way to be able to interact with kids without it even having to be a law enforcement incident it’s just being
around them because we want to be we’ve got operation progress which is a non-profit that was started to help
Empower kids in the Como Community through that non-profit their tuition at
River Tree Academy Miss Indies Christian Academy idea all several different schools throughout Fort Worth it’s all
paid for and every kid gets a forward police officer is a mentor and it’s been a great way for us to engage and not
only change perceptions maybe about the children or the families of the community about us but you know sometimes we need a
reminder that although officers see a lot of negative things every day that there are more amazing wonderful
people in every area of Fort Worth than there are people who are trying to do harm and it’s a great way to Res for us
to reset and engage with the community in a really positive way we have our Explorer Program where kids 14 and up
can come and learn about what we do even participate in some of our training we have our Cadet program where we’ll
actually hire them to come work with us and get uh to see what the Department’s like and determine if maybe they want to
be officers we’ve but we started this Coalition with some other members of the
community with TCU with TCC with Tarleton where we’re going to have kids
that are going to be able to come into this program and for instance say they want to maybe have a career in law enforcement
they’ll have some kind of Criminal Justice program at their schools and right now we’re looking first at Eastern Hills because they already have such a
program we’ll have officers that can come in and teach them we’re going to have TCC providing dual credit for the
classes that they take the chill the students that are successful in the program and stay with
it automatic acceptance to a college once they graduate the Lord will be well on their way to their associate’s degree
and once they finish we’re gonna have a job waiting for them we want to be able to hire what we’re calling homegrown
Heroes right here in Fort Worth to be part of the Ford police department there are several programs where we’re
engaging uh National Night Out is a great event we do every year we have Community forums we participate in food
drives and food banks our neighborhood police officers do amazing things every
day with Community engagement but it’s not just them it’s all of our officers they all have opportunities to engage in
positive ways and that’s what our encouragement is to every officer is to make sure every interaction wherever
possible is a positive one even if they’re dealing with a negative situation and if we’re able to do that
effectively and I believe we are and we’re improving all the time it doesn’t matter how good a program is it can
always be better we’re always striving to move forward strengthen those lines of communication and strengthen the
trust that we have with the community and they have for us officers
are professionals the staff they make me proud every day every single day
I can’t think of one specific thing that I can say this is my most proud moment
because every time I think maybe I’ve reached that an officer does something else and I think wow how amazing is this
I hear about the the brave work they do the compassionate work they do the way they Serve and Protect each other and
our citizens just being able to wake up every day knowing that I’m part of that team makes
me proud every single day a lot of people across the country think
of Fort Worth first of all half of them call it Dallas you love Dallas I love dpd I love Chief
Eddie Garcia over there but we’re not Dallas we’re Fort Worth they are Dallas very close we’re neighbors we work
together a lot but we’re a little different a lot of people talk about forward being the big city with the
small town feel and when I tell people how big Fort Worth is it kind of blows their mind they don’t know we’re right
on the verge of a million people the department itself forward PD we are at a staffing level an authorized
Staffing level for officers of 1816. unfortunately we’re down 155 officers
right now do have some civilian professional staff and they are absolutely critical to what
we do getting things done behind the scenes to make sure we can do our jobs out in the neighborhoods and we’ve got
about 570 there so we got a little over 2 300 between 2300 and 2400 employees
overall and what we like to call the Ford PD family because everybody’s family
everybody’s important everybody’s job helps the city is broken up into six Geographic areas where we have the
neighborhoods broken down to make sure we can most efficiently deploy our resources and of course we have our investigations
we have our support teams our training academy it’s it’s a it’s a huge
organization and if not for the amazing people we have out there doing the job and the amazing people leadership roles
there’s no way an organization this size could function the way it does
we’re seeing a lot of the same issues that departments Across the Nation are seeing
Fort Worth is unique though it’s it’s a special place I talked to someone recently that came
from another state didn’t know if she was going to like Texas didn’t know if she was gonna like Fort Worth she really thought she wouldn’t
but it took no time for her to fall in love with Fort Worth because she said it was different and you have
to experience it to really understand it and let people who come from other states where it’s not like it is here
they really appreciate it because they’ve seen a different way for things to work and one of the things she said was
coming here shortly before the murder of George Floyd and seeing the turmoil and
the crisis Across the Nation she saw something a little bit different here in Fort Worth we saw it too we had
demonstrations we had some protests people were hurting but she said people of four seem to be
willing to sit down and talk about things they seem to be willing to despite differences come together and
try to find resolutions so although we’re seeing a lot of the same issues I think Fort Worth is doing it in an
effective way and it’s all because of the people some of the things specifically with the
Department obviously violent crime is going to be an issue with any Department even if we’re talking about one crime
that’s an issue violent crime has risen across the country we saw it rise in Fort Worth
unfortunately but we put together a bionic prom initiative where we’re working with our
Patrol officers our specialized units our crime analysts working with community members working with other
organizations who provide resources to the areas that are most affected and
preliminary numbers when finalizing show that some of the main things we were trying to affect homicide and aggravated
assaults are both down it looks like they’re going to be down to double digits versus the prior year which is a
huge win but we’re not celebrating our work isn’t done we’ve got more to do one thing we
know year over year decade over decade the crime numbers will go up and down
some days or some years they might steadily go up some of them at times they may be flat some they may go down but we always know there’s going to be
fluctuations our job is to do everything we can to make sure those numbers Trend
down as much as humanly possible and even though the numbers are up when you
look back in the 80s the early 90s many of those numbers including homicides were bigger than we have now
and that’s when the population was half as much so given the size of our city we’re
doing better than others but we’re never going to be satisfied we’re always going to try to do more another issue we have
and again across the country is making sure we’re doing everything we can in a very intentional way to
positively affect our relationship with the community instead of just waiting for the
community to come to us we have to go to them we have to meet people where they are literally and figuratively
and form those bonds those relationships it takes time to build trust I said recently at a meeting a trust can be
broken overnight just like that but trust cannot be built overnight it takes time sometimes we’re talking about
generational mistrust so for us being able to connect with the
community in a positive way to create our create opportunities for positive engagement that’s not even related to
law enforcement in any way that’s where we’re seeing some of the biggest benefits and we’re going to continue
doing that the feedback we get from the public there’s positive they like us there
and you could go to any neighborhood in Fort Worth I don’t care what ZIP code you’re in you’re gonna have a hard time finding
anyone that says I don’t want the police in my neighborhood but what everybody will say across the board is I just want to be police the
same way as people in other areas I want to be policed the right way I want to be treated with dignity I want to be
treated with respect I want to have a voice I want the officer to be neutral about this situation and hear what I
have to say that’s some training that we’ve been doing for a long time in Fort Worth and it’s really ingrained in all of our
training now instead of just being one class they call it procedural Justice we talked about you know implicit bias
being aware of things that might affect the way you talk with someone and the theory behind procedural I’m
sorry behind procedural Justice is it’s not necessarily the outcome of an
interaction it’s the interaction itself I’ve seen situations where an officer
may be conducted a traffic stop didn’t even give the person a ticket but they want to call and complain because
the officer they believed didn’t treat them with dignity and respect and then there’s been other times where
maybe an officer did a traffic stop and the person received the citation which is for them a negative outcome but
because the interaction was positive because the officer was respectful had some compassion sometimes they actually
get those offers compliments even though they received a citation so it’s not always about the end of the interaction
the outcome of the interaction it’s about the process to get you there there
are people you know in Fort Worth that are maybe not the biggest fans of forward PD
or law enforcement in general and a lot of them have had negative interactions with law enforcement at some time that that contribute to those
feelings it is frustrating sometimes when everything you see on social media or
maybe even sometimes on standard media is just talking about the negative things that happen the negative
interactions and unfortunately they do happen we’ve had some negative interactions with the community in Fort Worth that we still work on we still are
having to deal with but for a city our size it’s really remarkable to have the overwhelming
majority of the citizens of Fort Worth support their Police Department
and without that support it would it would make the job so much harder to do I mean we’ve had officers who’ve been
shot at we had some officers recently who were almost hit by 18 wheelers we had an officer who had to jump off of an
overpass to avoid a drunk driver the officers was during the ice with the 18 wheelers he was actually in the car
when it was Tahoe when it was first struck and hit his door driver side door as he said in it was able to get out but
then two more 18-wheelers ran right into the car but of course they got themselves in the citizens to safety
because that’s what they do and then we had an officer trying to protect some citizens whose cars installed on 35 or on 820 rather going
to 35 as he laid out a second flare line a drunk driver came barreling at him at a
very high rate of speed he ended up having to go over the side of about a 40 50 foot overpass and landed on concrete
thank God he is going to be okay he’s got a long road ahead of him but he will be okay
and we don’t get shot at every day we don’t get hit by 18 wheelers every
day we don’t have to jump off overpasses every day but these officers show up every day knowing that might be the day
they have to face that and they keep showing up and if you take that along with
consistent hate and negative speak about officers it makes it even harder for
officers to want to come to work the fact that we have citizens that supports us does so much to encourage and Inspire
officers to keep coming to work and doing everything they can to keep all of us safe
it’s one of the most critical things in law enforcement right now and I’m so happy that it’s getting the attention it
deserves because there’s been a stigma when it comes to mental Wellness I think across the country but in law
enforcement specifically we’re supposed to be helping everyone else and we don’t want to feel like we are
affected but I talked earlier about trauma officers deal with trauma every single day and in addition to their own
trauma their own personal lives that all of us deal with they’ve got that vicarious trauma of being exposed to all
the negative experiences that other people deal with that compounds and it
is tough so we’re doing everything we can to change that negative narrative
about mental Wellness we’ve got a Peer Net peer support network of multiple officers current
officers retired officers who are there to talk with anyone who goes through any kind of a situation because they’ve been there oftentimes
they understand we have the employee assistance program through the city of Fort Worth
we recently applied and fully expect to receive a grant from the office of the governor of the state of Texas for a
mental wellness program will provide more resources for officers where you’re working on a contract with
a company right now who has an app because we have to make this easy we have to make it accessible and we have
to make it Anonymous and with this app officers at the touch of a finger will
have access to any resource they need for any kind of mental or emotional well-being issue they may be dealing
with uh we have a recent contract we signed
with a group called Frontline who specialize in physical and mental overall Wellness for First Responders
and Military they do very very comprehensive physicals which is critical for us
because the what a lot of people don’t know statistics show the number one killer of
police officers is heart disease it’s the stress it’s the shift work it’s
not having anywhere healthy to eat when you’re on working midnights they address those issues but every year
an officer goes in for that physical there’s also a mental Wellness check-in just to make sure they’re okay just to
make sure they’re getting the resources they need and have the support system they need to be supported
so we’re working all of those on all those things and I recently talked with one of our Deputy Chiefs deputy chief
wheeler we’d like to start a unit a mental Wellness or just not mental
Wellness a wellness unit for overall Wellness to make sure officers have access to everything they need
and they’re actually feeling they feel comfortable reaching out three big important things
for us safe healthy and resilient Department
so we can go out and serve the right way to make sure we have safe healthy and
resilient communities in all of Fort Worth there’s a lot of great things going on in north Texas with policing that a lot of people don’t realize a lot
of Education opportunities a lot of mentorship a lot of coaching a lot of eye-opening things Innovative things are
going on there’s a lot of great agencies across the entire country and if you talk to a lot of those Chiefs they’ll probably
tell you that they have the best department well unfortunately they’re wrong I believe Fort Worth is the best apartment
out there and it’s not because of me it’s not because I’m special it’s because of the amazing officers we have all the opportunities we have for
specialized units for promotions for Community engagement and it’s because
a CDR size of practically a million people they support their officers
if someone wants to come join us I’ll tell you what I want from them I want their best I want them to give us
everything they’ve got but I need them to know that in return we will give them our best we will give them everything
we’ve got if they will invest in us we are 100 invested in them
we need numbers but you know we want quality over quantity every single day we’re going to
provide top-notch training like you won’t see anywhere we’ve got the best training facility you’re going to see anywhere around here
we do some amazing things with the amazing training staff that we have and we want to invest in our officers
what I want to know is they want to come work for us if they’ve got what it takes we want to have them your Chiefs all
across the country talking about recruiting issues hiring issues but it seems constantly we’re talking about the
people we don’t have we got to talk about the people we do have because we want to make sure we’re taken care of
investing in and growing all those people who are working for us right now
if they come on that’s my guarantee of them we’re going to invest in them all the way through their careers it’s not
just about hiring you getting you on and then aren’t you’re on your own we’re going to be invested in them all along and we’re working to do a better job at
that every single day is the best decision they can make no
question about it [Music]
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