Newman Park Picked for First Police Shift Meeting

The City of El Paso is planning year-round shift meetings in each of the different districts. Central Command picked the 56th District which includes Newman Park as its first meeting for the year. That meeting was held this morning at 10 a.m. at the park.

Police officers and code officers met with neighbors. There were six of us which was great given the short notice that we received. (Officer Slack promised that they would be doing another such meeting in the summer and that he would be giving us more notice first.)

Officer Slack addressed several important issues including auto theft, Operation ID and the Border Star program which stops cars before they cross the border so that ownership can be verified. (There are two main reasons for stealing cars: for the parts as they can be sold for a lot more money; or, especially in the case of 4x4 trucks, to be used to smuggle drugs back into the U.S. across desert terrain.)

Slack said that the team assembled today would be going up and down the streets in the area principally looking for quality of life/code compliance violations.

Judy Gutierrez from Representative Susie Byrd's office was there. She stated that quality of life issues are very important to the Mayor Pro-Tem.