Fort Worth\u2019s next police chief will be Eddie Garc\u00eda, who formerly headed up the Dallas Police Department and is currently overseeing Austin public safety.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, city officials announced Garc\u00eda will serve as Fort Worth\u2019s 28th police chief, succeeding Chief Neil Noakes who retired in May. Officials announced the hire in a news release, saying city leadership is unavailable to comment until a press conference Friday morning.<\/p>\n
Garc\u00eda has worked in Austin\u2019s city manager\u2019s office since November, taking a job as assistant city manager after leaving his role as Dallas\u2019 top cop. Garc\u00eda worked for the Dallas Police Department as chief from 2021 to 2024.<\/p>\n
He previously spent three decades in San Jose, leaving his post as chief there to oversee Dallas\u2019 force.<\/p>\n
Finalists included interim Chief Robert Alldredge, who spent 26 years in the Fort Worth Police Department; former Dallas Police Deputy Chief Vernon Hale; and Emada Tingirides of the Los Angeles Police Department, who withdrew her candidacy after receiving a promotion in her hometown.<\/p>\n
Garc\u00eda, Alldredge and Hale participated in a public forum Aug. 14 to meet residents and answer questions during a moderated panel. During the discussion, Garc\u00eda emphasized his experience leading the police departments of two major U.S. cities.<\/p>\n
Garc\u00eda stressed his commitment to serving Fort Worth, as his daughter lives in the city, and his mother lives in North Texas.<\/p>\n
After leaving Dallas, he said, he gained valuable administrative experience as an assistant city manager but realized his true passion was in policing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, I was born to be a police officer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Throughout the hiring process, some community leaders and council member Chris Nettles expressed skepticism that Garc\u00eda was right for the role and how long he would commit to the job.<\/p>\n
Garc\u00eda left his Dallas job a couple months after committing to stay in the role until at least mid-2027, then was named a finalist for the Fort Worth job less than nine months after taking the Austin position.<\/p>\n
During this month\u2019s forum, Garc\u00eda highlighted his past work with an oversight entity for the entirety of his career and how he looks forward to working with Fort Worth\u2019s Office of Police Oversight Monitor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a profession that can legally take people\u2019s rights away \u2014 we need someone to be watching us to ensure we\u2019re doing it right,\u201d Garc\u00eda said. \u201cI have no issue with that. And we have nothing to hide. When we\u2019re wrong, we\u2019re wrong. When we\u2019re right, I\u2019ll defend our men and women.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at\u00a0cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on Fort Worth Report<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fort Worth\u2019s next police chief will be Eddie Garc\u00eda, who formerly headed up the Dallas Police Department and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":164601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,7371,7372,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-164600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fort-worth","10":"tag-fortworth","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115068489307282655","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}