The Navasota Police Department, under leadership of new chief Mike Mize, is adding more officers, and shifting departmental staff around every day.
Giving an update at Monday’s City Council meeting, Mize first mentioned the three new officers they were permitted to hire, thanks to additional funding in the 2023 budget.
“We have one person hired, who will start this week. He is a prior law enforcement officer, with 5 years of experience, so his Field Training Officer program will be relatively short. The other opening is in patrol, we have 8 applicants, and they are not licensed, so we are determining if we want to send them to the Academy, or not,” said Mize. “Then, the last one, we are working on speaking with someone for a Criminal Investigation Division Supervisor spot.”
He says two other officers are undergoing training. They also have implemented “swing shifts,” to allow for more experienced officers to help out the newer ones.
Additionally, he says they have combined their Special Response Team forces with the Grimes County Sheriff’s Office’s team to do training twice a month.
“This month, they decided to instead, jump in patrol cars, two man units, and do traffic stops,” Mize said. “In three hours, they made 19 traffic stops, 7 citations, 1 felony arrest, and seized narcotics.”
Mize said too that their prescription drug collection site, for which they got grant funding last year, has collected 88 pounds of prescription drugs in the last 3 rounds.
