JEFF AGUIRRE RUNS FOR SHERIFF

SWEEEET, we have an opponent for America’s Blowhard. The Witherspoon article is below and it’s not the usual Tommy hatchet job, although KWTX had to put a bigass picture of PAR THE YOUNG up there, but I’m not sticking it up here because just like Par, it’s phony. HE’s old, and we need younger people.

They also did not get into the NO BODY CAMS issue, which, is totally ridiculous. Of course, now that Sherre is in the clink for another solid year before she can even come up for parole, you’d think Par would go ahead and move into real life and get the FREE body cams.

No body cams to NOT RECORD ONE WOMAN. Christonacupcake, he thinks he’s fooling us.

Par is justice for some, you got money, Par’s your baby boy. You are a poor person a nobody, well, you get “good government”.

Par also is too chickenshit to do a debate, what a joke.

Of course, I’m FOR AGUIRRE, and happy as hell we have a CHOICE FOR ONCE.

H

By Tommy Witherspoon

Published: May. 16, 2023 at 5:03 PM CDT|Updated: 58 minutes ago

WACO, Texas (KWTX) – As a U.S. Department of State contractor, Jeff Aguirre worked with a team to train Afghan National Police officers and to create a police command structure in war-torn Afghanistan before joining a United Nations team to help rebuild poverty-stricken Haiti.

Now, Aguirre, a former McLennan County Sheriff’s Office investigator, says he wants to bring his law enforcement and team-building experience back to the sheriff’s office to give it the leadership he says is sorely lacking under McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara.

Aguirre, 50, a Texas Anti-gang Unit investigator for the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office, announced his candidacy for McLennan County sheriff at a campaign event Tuesday evening at the Karem Shrine near Speegleville.

“People have reached out to me from inside the walls of the sheriff’s department as well as from across the community, and with my experience and background, I believe I am a good fit for the sheriff of McLennan County,” Aguirre said. “Some of the concerns people have in these conversations, I think, are valid. And that is that Parnell will be 78 after this election. People are concerned with his age and his health and what happens if he is ever unable to fulfill his role.”

Aguirre and McNamara will square off in the March 2024 Republican primary, with McNamara, who has been dubbed “America’s Sheriff” by local party members, seeking his fourth term as sheriff.

The 77-year-old McNamara was a longtime deputy U.S. marshal, as were his father and brother. He was the inspiration for Jeff Bridges’ Oscar-nominated role as a Texas Ranger in the film “Hell or High Water.” McNamara’s cousin, Taylor Sheridan, wrote the screenplay and has gone on to other major successes as the creator of the Yellowstone television series.

Sheridan was a special guest at a March fund-raising event for the sheriff, giving McNamara, arguably one of the most popular elected officials in the county, a major edge in the campaign war chest department.

Aguirre knows he has his work cut out for him but says he feels more than ready for the challenge of managing the department’s 500 employees and $53 million budget.

“America doesn’t have a sheriff,” Aguirre said. “We tend to put a lot of stock as a society into people’s celebrity. We need an experienced, viable option. I understand what I am up against. I understand that people consider his name to be giant. But I’m OK with this fight.

“I know it’s going to be an uphill climb. I know what I’m up against. I’m excited for the challenge. I am a man of faith. I believe I am going to be OK in this. I have never told anybody God promised me a victory. I think God promised me a race, and if the lessons I need to learn are in that race, then I’ll learn them. If they are in the victory, I’ll take that, too.”

As for McNamara, he didn’t coin the “America’s Sheriff” sobriquet, but he hasn’t tried to suppress others from using the moniker, either.

“I’m just the sheriff of McLennan County, and I am just proud to be the people’s sheriff in McLennan County,” McNamara said. “I’m not going to say anything about (Aguirre’s comments). “I’m just going to continue to do the good job we are doing for the county and to do everything we can to keep our citizens safe and ride herd on the lawless. I am just so proud to be our citizens’ voice in law enforcement.”

Aguirre grew up in South Waco and lived there before moving to Valley Mills with his mother to start his high school years. After graduation, he attended McLennan Community College before going to work at the McLennan County Jail in 1995.

He graduated from the policy academy and worked for the Hewitt Police Department for eight years.

While working in Hewitt, Aguirre became part of a multi-jurisdictional drug task force. When the grant funds dried up for the task force, Aguirre went to work from 2006 to 2010 for a State Department contractor as an international police liaison officer embedded with the military in Afghanistan.

Aguirre said his team was charged with creating a command structure, along with personnel, finance, human resources and criminal intelligence departments.

“There were guys from all over the country coming together, and it was the perfect combination of people,” Aguirre said. “Once the State Department saw what we did, they moved us all as a unit, which hadn’t happened before, and dropped us in Kabul, where we created the Kabul Capital Police Command. Sitting with the chief in Kabul, Afghanistan, means inheriting 5 million people and 11,000 police officers in a war zone with all the problems that come with that.

“And that is before you throw in a multi, multi-million dollar budget. We did really well creating that. It’s the model for police departments across the country now,” Aguirre said. “One of the things that makes me feel I am right for this job is we created that in a war zone, with a language barrier, a culture barrier, a religious barrier, and we were still effective in communicating our point and achieving success. There is a lot to be said for that.”

Aguirre next went to Haiti from 2010 to 2013 as part of a State Department contractor loaned out to the United Nations to help rebuild Haiti, which was racked with poverty, political unrest, disease, floods and earthquakes.”We went there with the idea of standing up police departments and changing their view from a Napoleonic style of rule to a more democratic style,” Aguirre said. “It was a challenge because a lot of that change was not as necessary on the police level as it was on the justice system level.”

Aguirre came home in 2013 and rejoined the sheriff’s department, becoming a founding member of McNamara’s newly organized crime unit.

“We did a lot of great work,” Aguirre said. “We were tasked with combatting the narcotics trade in this area. Our focus was dismantling criminal enterprises, and we were good at it. Unfortunately, the founding members after 10 years are not there anymore.”

He left the sheriff’s office in July 2022 and went to work as an investigator in former DA Barry Johnson’s office. When Josh Tetens defeated Johnson, Aguirre stayed on, working with his wife, Amber, who was a 25-year sheriff’s office employee before going to work as a DA’s office investigator.

Aguirre laments the dozens of former colleagues who he said left the sheriff’s office because of conflicts or dissatisfaction with how things were being operated.

“Having been on the inside, I think the sheriff’s department is lacking in leadership,” Aguirre said. “It is easy to see what goes on on the outside because it’s what goes on on the outside that gets in the news. It’s the inner working, the strife, the conflict and the retirements and the people who walked away that you don’t see.

“Over the last seven or eight years, most of the people who have walked away have gotten back into law enforcement. They didn’t walk away because they wanted to. They walked away because they had to,” Aguirre said.

Aguirre said the sheriff’s office has moved backward in its retention of valuable deputies, jailers and others, adding that the jail is woefully understaffed and the county suffers when it spends valuable resources to train employees only to lose them to other agencies.

“Parnell was my friend for two decades,” Aguirre said. “He has surrounded himself with people who have taken advantage of his trust and his loyalty. He has had bad advice. This is not a campaign against Parnell as much as it is a campaign against the people around him. There is no meritocracy in the building. If you want something, you become somebody’s buddy, you ask for it and you get it. It’s the good ol’ boy system in overdrive.

“We need leadership. We need somebody around those men and women to teach them, to guide them, to lead them and get them to stay. We can’t continue to keep paying money for people to get classes and go to schools and to become better police officers only to have them go somewhere else,” Aguirre said.

Aguirre said it is “inexcusable” and “unthinkable” that the sheriff’s office still does not have officer-worn body cameras, adding that McLennan County is one of the few agencies in Texas whose deputies don’t have them.

McNamara said that while he is not opposed to body cams for his officers, every deputy’s vehicle is equipped with dash cams and officers have a device on their uniforms that records audio.

“The state has not mandated body cams, that I am aware of, and we are in complete compliance with regulations,” McNamara said.

McNamara acknowledged that there were 50 vacancies in jail staffing a year ago, but said they are hiring as quickly as they can. Currently, there are 21 positions that need to be filled, he said.

“We are in total compliance as far as staffing is concerned and the jail was recently certified in April and we were in total compliance with the State Jail Standards Commission,” McNamara said.

McNamara defeated former Chief Deputy Randy Plemons and former Waco Police Lt. Patrick Swanton in his first two elections, while running unopposed for his third term. He participated in robust debates in his first two campaigns, but said he likely will decline Aguirre’s offer for a public debate.

“There is nothing to debate,” McNamara said. “My record stands on its own and I am proud of what we have done. There is no sense in that.”

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