Chief accepts Uvalde job

By Editor | April 27, 2023

DELGADO DITCHES DILLEY

Homer Delgado

Nine months after declining a job as the top law enforcement official for the city of Pearsall, Dilley Police Chief Homer Delgado has accepted an offer to serve as second in command for the Uvalde Police Department.
Delgado took the job late last week and is scheduled to begin work as the assistant police chief at Uvalde on May 8.
In his resignation letter to the city of Dilley last week, the police chief said he was making the decision “with the utmost respect, gratitude and humility.”
“This decision was not made lightly,” the chief wrote in a prepared statement, “and comes with nervous excitement for the betterment of my family, self, and the community I will be serving.”
Hired at Dilley in July 2020, Delgado’s three-year tenure was marked by a number of events pivotal to the police department’s work in the community. Foremost among the challenges faced by the small municipal law enforcement agency has been an increasing spate of smugglers driving at speed through the town while trying to evade capture. Pursuits of human smugglers and drug traffickers on IH-35 have increased as a result of developing conditions along the US-Mexico border, where criminal organizations have taken advantage of an immigration crisis to move undocumented immigrants through South Texas. Transports of human cargo in cars, pickup trucks, freighters and tankers have been intercepted in highwayside communities after high-speed pursuits that Delgado believes pose an immediate threat to public safety.

As a preventive measure, the Dilley police chief promoted a policy of blocking highway exit ramps to help prevent smugglers from driving recklessly through residential streets. In many instances, he said in recent interviews, the policy was effective.

Dilley police officers have also been involved in capturing smugglers, corralling immigrants who flee, and working closely with the Frio and La Salle county sheriffs’ offices, the US Border Patrol and the Texas Department of Public Safety in a coordinated effort to quash the burgeoning traffic in human cargo.

Pressure to enhance community safety has also been an issue for the Dilley PD, and while the department has taken an active role in local events to enhance its presence in the town, the chief successfully negotiated an interlocal agreement with Dilley ISD in October 2022 to assign a second school resource officer to the district.

Delgado faced scrutiny from city councilors in June 2022 after he was appointed incident commander for an operation to relieve Uvalde officers in the wake of a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in that community on May 24. Councilors quizzed the chief over his involvement in providing assistance to the city that had sustained multiple fatalities and casualties, and where law enforcement was reportedly in dire need of additional manpower.

A month after facing council interrogation over his assistance to Uvalde, Delgado placed his name in the hat for the job as chief of police in Pearsall, subsequently becoming the top candidate for the city. He then declined to pursue the career change and chose to remain as chief in Dilley after the city council approved a pay raise. He later said in an interview with the Current that he had declined the job in Pearsall because he was ‘going to stand by [his] commitment to the people [of Dilley]’.

“I cannot express the emotions I feel for my departure from all of the wonderful people I have grown to love here,” the chief said of his exit. “The community of Dilley has helped shape my career in ways I could never have imagined at the start of this journey. I thank them for that.

“This community will be sorely missed,” he added in his prepared statement.” The friendships I developed here will be cherished forever.”

The departing chief added a note of gratitude to the mayor and city councilors for their support of his work.

“I could not have asked for better people to work with,” he wrote.

Posted in Breaking News