BISHOP, Texas — As part of a new agreement between the Bishop Police Department and the federal government, one of their officers could soon be joining the ranks of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Lt. Christian Salazar is with the Special Operations Division of the Bishop police. The division aids in the collection of impounded vehicles, many of which were taken after narcotics were found.
"You look under here and you take this panel off inside the vehicle, there's a spot where they don't even have to take the vehicle apart," Salazar said. "I take that cover off and they're able to slip in bundles of either narcotics or U.S. currency."
Salazar said the fight to keep drugs off our streets is a never ending battle that hopefully is going to be made easier through a federal grant that will allow the City to add another officer to their ranks and send another one to work with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Bishop Police Chief Edward Day said that one of his officers is going to be assigned to the DEA field office and will work out of the office in Corpus Christi. In the meantime, he will hire another police officer to make sure that there's plenty of manpower on the streets in Bishop.
"It's federally funded. You have partial funding and full funding," Day said. "We've been lucky enough on this to get full HIDTA funding on it, so it's basically the City pays the salary and overtime and then it's reimbursed later on down the road."
The federal grant is called the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA). Day believes that the deal is going to help give his department a better chance at getting drug dealers off the streets.
"If you're out there peddling that poison on our streets we're going to come after you," Day said. "We're going to come after you with the full assets and resources of this department and the Nueces County District Attorney's Office, and now federally. We're going to go after your suppliers. We're going to take your assets. We're going to take your cars. We're going to take your money and if we can, we're going to take your houses."
It's expected that the Bishop City Council will sign off on the deal and then officers could be working with the DEA by the end of the month.
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