When Garland’s new Police Chief, Jeff Bryan, a 22-year veteran of the Garland PD, got his degree from Texas A&M, he had no doubt about his next goal. He wanted to be an attorney or an assistant district attorney. He felt that the best way to his goal was to become a police officer for a few years and then go to law school. Bryan had no idea how much he would like police work.
“I did not start out wanting to be a police officer,” he said. “But once I started doing the job, I knew it was for me. I look forward to coming to work every day.”
Bryan said that when most people think about being an officer, responding to emergency situations is what comes to mind. But once they get involved in the job, they begin to think about how many people they can help.
“You can really make a difference in your community as you become a part of it,” the chief said. “That’s what I like about it. I like to serve. It’s what I enjoy doing.”
He came up under former chief Mitch Bates and said that he “whole-heartedly bought into Bates’ philosophy on policing.”
“We are a community- and service-oriented department. One thing that is really great about our department is that almost a third of our police officers came to the department on lateral moves,” Bryan said. “They started somewhere else then saw how great the Garland Police Department is and came here.”
He added that it is rare for someone to leave the department and said that when they do, it is usually because of a life change.
“We get a lot of local transfers because we are a good police department,” Bryan said. “When Dallas has something major going on that requires their SWAT officers, they call the Garland PD to watch their department. Also, our bomb unit is the regional response bomb unit for here and everything east to near the Texas border.”
He added that Garland is always in the top 10 safest cities of comparable size.
The department’s relationship with the public is good. Bryan explained that there is the local public that the department serves directly and then there is the national public that has lost confidence in law enforcement.
“It’s true that there are some cops doing things they shouldn’t be doing. A lot of times police work as a profession is judged by stuff that happens far away so that is impacting us,” Bryan said. “Nationally we need to clean up our act as a profession. But locally, most citizens see that we care and that we’re engaged and highly trained.”
Citizens can be sure that Garland police officers are caring and competent. The chief said that the Neighborhood Police Unit does an incredible job working with the public.
“Neighborhood policing really is listening to the community and getting input from the citizens,” he said.
Ensuring officer safety is one of the chief’s top priorities and that is accomplished with good, up-to-date equipment and numerous types of training.
“A great thing about this city is that if we need something, they get it for us. When Dallas had their shooting, we recognized that we needed hard body armor,” Bryan said. “We had soft body armor, which stops pistol rounds, but not rifle rounds as hard body armor does. City officials acted on it right away. All our officers are issued hard body armor and ballistic helmets.”
The best way for citizens to learn about the police department is to attend the Citizens Police Academy. Bryan described it as “a blast” and guaranteed that participants will enjoy it. There are programs for both adults and high school students.