 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome. I'm Renee Camper, the deputy chief over North Command in the patrol bureau. Uh I'd like to I'd like to thank you all for being here today for the grand opening of the Fort Worth Police Department's new North Patrol Division facility. I'd like to now introduce the Fort Worth Police Department's chaplain Dean Nichols for the invocation. Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, Lord, we come to you with thanksgiving and praise as you tell us to. Lord, we thank you for your watch care over us and Father, your blessings unto us. Father, we're gathered here uh Lord this morning to dedicate a building a building that will be used to serve this community. Oh, Father, how appropriate that it would be built across from a house of worship and this a house of service. Heavenly Father, we just ask that your hand of blessing would be upon the men and women who work out of this building that Father, as they understand that they are your ministers of justice, Father, that you are to serve that they are to serve this community and Father to enforce the laws, Lord, with kindness, compassion, but nevertheless, Lord, the laws will be enforced and Father, we just ask for your divine protection over this house of service and over this community. Father, you've also told us in your word that unless you watch over the city, the policemen works but in vain and so Father, it is our prayer that you would watch over this community as only you could do. Father, we thank you for the foresight of the men and women who saw fit to build this building and we ask your blessings upon them as well. Bless this service, Father, as we continue to dedicate a building that will be used by your ministers of justice. Fortune Jesus name we pray. Amen. Thank you, Chaplain Nichols. Now, if everyone would rise and face the flag, we'll have our Fort Worth Honor Guard and the presentation of colors. Thank you, Captain Elgin. That was beautiful. Now, you may all be seated and the pop and drum core is going to play for us. Thank you guys. That was spectacular as usual. We have another round of applause for them. Okay, today we formally celebrate the grand opening of the new patrol facility here to serve the communities and businesses of North Fort Worth. First, however, we have a number of people in attendance today that I would like to recognize. First, we have the city manager, David Cook, city council members including Kerry Moon, Dennis Singleton, Carlos Flores. We have assistant city managers, Valerie Washington, Jay Chapa, Susan Alanis, Forest Police Chief, Joel Fitzgerald. We have Fort Worth assistant chief, Charlie Ramirez, acting assistant chief, Ty Hadsall. We also have an attendance, Tarrant County Sheriff, Bill Weyburn, his assistant, Craig Driscoll. Okay, let me see. The facility design and build team including Kevin Drake. Where are you Kevin? Michael Lineball, John Crossley, and others with FBI builders, Kevin Pointus, and the other GFF architect staff, Code Blue volunteers, representatives of the area neighborhood associations, and others in the community. And finally, the many other city staff that has worked hard on this project to organize this event. Thank you. At this time I'd like to ask council member Moon to come to the podium. Howdy. Welcome to the far north to our city staff, my fellow council members, many neighborhood leaders, members of the press, and Forest Finest. We are we welcome you with open arms and thank you for all you do to serve our our community. At my feet is a cinder block holding the podium from against the wind. I don't know if you're gonna ask your cinder block. I'll just keep both hands on my notes here in case I in case I have to go chasing my notes. I was glad to see Chief Fitzgerald here not wearing his Villanova hat. He's got a sweater. He's got a sweater. He's got him. He's had a pretty good run. He's had two championships with Villanova, his Philadelphia Eagles, and then now Fort Worth Six Patrol Division. This project is a huge step for Fort Worth. The funding of this project came from our Crime Control Prevention District. As a city of Fort Worth, you as a public vote to fund a half of your sales tax penny, a half a penny of sales tax we receive to our CCPD, and that money was used to fund this district. This facility creates a permanent police presence to serve local businesses and residents in the many surrounding neighborhoods and other nearby communities. Because of this facility, we will see more police in our area, approximately 140 patrol officers, detectives, and neighborhood police officers will use this facility on a daily basis. Response times had been a little high in North Fort Worth and this facility will help to reduce those times. Having a city-owned police facility accessible to us to visit when needed as well as accessible to the community needs with this community room is a huge milestone for our area. This facility will also serve as a command center for new and active citizen control volunteers. Local residents have been extremely supportive leaders of this project and I want to thank the community leaders and members of the many neighborhood association and co-blue volunteers have dedicated time to make this facility a reality. Please accept our thanks for your involvement, participation, and support. Thank you. This new station will also serve as a home to its very own revolving art display which will provide family events and art activities that are inspired by the rotating art pieces. Our first art piece is a painting by Jim Woodson called Resolved Coalescing Continuum. This painting is a part of the Fort Worth Police Public Art Community Legacy Collection and will be on display at the North Patrol Division for two years as the first in a new initiative that will bring different artworks to the station for the community to enjoy. We think it's pretty clear that this facility will be far more than just another police station and we want to specifically thank the fourth PD, officers, civilians, city staff, GFF architects, and FBI builders for their instrumental work in making this project happen. The architects have a great deal of experience designing police facilities and I believe this facility is top-notch for Fort Worth. In the event a cat-five hurricane comes through the far north, I'll come here okay, we look forward to the many new components the new police station will bring for our growing north. Officers, thank you for your service to our community and welcome to your new home. With that, there you go, told you I was gonna lose one. With that I'd like to introduce, we've got two, I've got two great council members here that my district's boundaries share their boundaries and you can always be proud of how your government officials work together to serve you and the first person to introduce is Councilman Dennis Singleton. He's absolutely right about the wind today. What a great crowd. The chaplain said something to me about with a crowd this big we can't pass up the opportunity so with those ushers with the baskets please come forward we're gonna we're gonna pay for this building pretty damn quick I'll tell you that. I want to tell you that this is the perfect template for a division headquarters, this building and we're going to use this template to build other division headquarters like this throughout the city. This is this is it will work perfectly. Kerry has outlined what it does for the neighborhoods. I'm not going to do that they said the comments was the direction to put in there a few comments about what this does for your neighborhood. It's more important to me right now that I cover just a little bit of history on how we got here. How we we selected this site. Why did we do this? Why did we do that? This started back about two the later part of 2011-2012 and we had some meetings. We had some meetings with Danny Scarth was the district four council guy at that time and we had some very earnest discussions here and we couldn't have done it without Scarth but we couldn't have done it without guys like Mike Berry and Russell Lachlan that that put together the team that said we're going to find a way to get this done. We're going to find a way to get it done. We don't know what financing yet. Let's just find a location. So we hammered that out and then chief Halstead put together with Danny Garcia who was the assistant chief and there was a civilian civilian well he was a a staff worker Joe Commissars that David Cook's taxied over from budget to help the police out and that in fact kicked off the financing aspects of this. I have notes that date back to meetings in February 2012 and we were discussing exactly how how this was going to lay out the proximity one mile to the interstates all that sort of thing that that the police and and the experts put together. Scarth and I just listened and added the political butt kicking to get it down the road here a little bit I guess but everybody had input into the location and the financing partnerships and what was key and integral to all that discussion was Hillwood Company and the Perot family and early on so I want to thank them for that this I'm looking at the attendance list here the agenda for a meeting that that Mike Berry handed to us back in this was in August of 2014 but it had a whole agenda with police division understanding and expanded partnership facilities. Early on the county was going to put a few offices in here and well we kind of worked through that and other things but this has as Cary said tremendous meeting space tremendous public interaction space tremendous places where you and your groups can meet and most importantly there's a police presence in this community north of 820 a home a barracks if you will I use that term too often I guess but the creativity where there was there was some the financial creativity early on there was discussion about using the TIF money certificates of obligation all sorts of thing but we finally had enough money with the help of David Cook and his staff to to use ccpd money and that by far is the best money so don't be generous when I pass that basket here in a minute or so the size of this building it started out with 20,000 square feet now it's over 40 and we've got space here not only space to expand but parking and and a vista and training areas things like that this is this building has great forethought in utility we have some early drawings from Bennett and those guys that I pulled in early just to give us a kind of a sketchy type of thing but this process and we during the process we normally had the the experts pull it together but we had Code Blue and neighborhood associations come together Rusty and his crew out there at North Fort Worth Alliance Code Blue members all of those people came together gave us some input gave us some hey we're gonna we'd like to see this we'd want to see that it it was a real joint effort and that in itself makes Fort Worth what it is so thank you very much for having me today to recognize a couple of guys but one guy that that's not here that I do want to recognize was Danny Scarth and he was tremendous in the early discussions on this building and the early impetus to kick that can down the road so thanks very much for having us enjoy this breezy day notice that my hair is not blowing around as some of you are thanks very much councilman floris good morning everyone well I hope that everyone is feeling as excited as I am as my council colleagues are as the police are and everyone who is here in attendance because this is a very special day indeed it is you know in ancient times before setting off on a journey you had your ship ready and rigged and you set your sails and you waited for the wind well I think today needless to say we have plenty of wind and that wind is captured by our sails so as we set off in this journey for the new north patrol division it leaves for us something in our minds that we can look forward to lots of great things from our police department and the expected level of service and dedication that our police want to deliver to all of us as citizens of Fort Worth so let me say some points that I think have already been covered by the previous speakers but I think bear worth noting again this new twenty three thousand square foot facility will serve some primary needs and will offer the following it'll serve as a headquarters for the north division commander captains lieutenants sergeants detectives officers civilian staff etc who will be here to serve us it will enhance public safety which is extremely important to myself and to the city council it will eventually reduce response times which is an ongoing challenge for a growing city and provide that presence that I spoke of community partnerships also very important it's been said already that citizens alike and citizens on patrol were very integral in making this day happen in making this facility behind me exist so all that bears noting so in closing I want to thank on behalf of my council colleagues mayor price city manager david cook j chop assistant city managers let's see where are they i'm looking for them susanna lease I saw valerie washington earlier there were several that could not be here and i'm sure that they would want to be but they're busy at work for us commander neil notes you have deputy chief camper who's here you have chief it's gerald sheriff raybourne thank you for being here ccbd staff which i said hi to earlier thank you for making this possible the code move volunteers that i already mentioned and of course the fpi general contractors gff architects and their design group fortworth public art i thought i saw martha peter somewhere in the back thank you martha for beautifying this facility for us and everyone else who made it possible thank you for the bottom of my heart so let's set sail and set a great course for this new north patrol division thank you next we have valerie washington good morning and thanks for being here with us today so it's great being here in fort worth we have such a vibrant community we've talked in the city about our economic development plan we've talked about connecting with communities and neighborhoods and that really brings us here today to economic development community we live in or we work in a city where police officers are comfortable being vocal they express concerns about not being able to respond to citizens in this area we also live in a community where citizens are vocal and that's a healthy sign that citizens let us know that they wanted a better level of service from the police department so back in 2016 the mayor and council were responsive to those concerns and and heard everyone out here when they purchased the former ranch land that really got us here today i do want to say before i go on i want to thank property management steve cook and glenn baylog they were huge in getting us here and working with the police department and making sure that the design was going to meet the standards for the police department and the community so i appreciate that but i really am here to introduce chief joel Fitzgerald when we hired him it was very important that he focus on community policing and that's where his heart is he wants to focus on the community he wants to be a part of the community and so i want to introduce chief joel Fitzgerald so he can talk about this facility and how it fits in with his strategic mission and better connections between the community and the police department chief thank you miss varshison what a wonderful day for the opening of our newest facility i couldn't ask for better we have our citizens our volunteers people that you know really push this project forward sorry thank you people that really push this project forward and the folks that go unseen where's becky mcgibson and our finance staff we mentioned glambay log and we mentioned steve cook but let's mention our our city police department finance staff that work behind the scenes to make this happen can we give them a round of applause as well thank you very much thank you um there's also a couple other things i know we didn't mention our tcu assistant chief robert rangelis here robert welcome and and let me say this perhaps our oldest person in attendance today is here and i it's her birthday so miss eola elgin is here uh she is the mother of captain elgin who sang our national anthem today so miss elgin thank you and happy 89th birthday that's man this opening truly means a lot to so many and it transcends uh where we live it transcends so really everything else going on in the city right now we understand that north of 820 years ago how many police cars that we have work in this area does anybody know two absolutely so we go from two to over a hundred people that'll be working in this area now we also have our sheriff here and i'll tell you sheriff that our doors are open i know you have staff working in this area and it would only serve us even more and serve the city here in this part of the county to know that your sheriffs have a place that they can i'm sorry your deputies excuse me have a place that they can come as well and process paper or do the things that they need to do so our doors are open to them as well for the reasons that i've mentioned and more this is such an important opportunity for the city of sport we're to position ourselves well in particular this police department for the expansion in the growth that's going on here in north division we uh we really took a good hard look at the operational needs that we have here and the needs of the community have been things that we we've listened to i all of our code blue staff knows how you know dedicated we've been towards listening and incorporating some of the things that they talked about that we need in this facility to make it work for north division so i thank you for your support i thank you for for pushing you know back in 2011 up until the time i got here you talked to me about making sure that this was actually a reality and i know that your support as well as those from our city management staff and our city council people made this project a reality you deserve the type of coverage that we're going to provide in this area and with the staff i have in place with neil nokes and captain elgent you're really looking at a great and bright future out here as far as policing is concerned so the facility actually purchasing it and outfitting it is you know just one step in the right direction now we need to use it we need to make sure our citizens come in and use the public areas that we have have your meetings there let's expand the level of community policing work we do here our code blue and cops volunteers this will be a base of operations for you get out there and and i challenge my folks as well to ensure that we you know engage citizens to the point where we get so many volunteers that we have meetings here every day i want to ensure that this facility is used not only for the police officers that are going to work here and out of this location every day but our volunteers that come in and really want to see this area stay as safe as it's been as it's been uh you will do a lot to drive what happens in north division this building is an anchor now let's make sure that we make the proper use of it to you know keep ourselves at a point where you've enjoyed us a certain level of confidence in the crime that goes on in this area you know that things have expansion of the city and growth in the city brings a certain degree of criminal activity but just by the showing the day the level of dedication that we have up in north division gives us a bright outlook more so than just having a building we have a great volunteer base that will ensure that we are well positioned to handle whatever comes with the group growth and urban sprawl we see in this city so again thank you to our volunteers thank you to the community members that made this a reality thank you to our city council folks our city management and our city staff that work diligently on this a year ago today we talked about groundbreaking and we and we really said we get this up in a hurry we did it and it happened because of you it didn't happen because i pushed or anyone else pushed but you so we promise that this investment in our community will go a long way to determine how happy you are and how safe you feel in the city of Fort Worth thank you i'll introduce to you the person that i affectionately call king of the north commander neil nokes i hope that everyone here realizes that as of today we're all connected in some way we're all now part of the history of this facility by being here today to show your commitment not only to making this facility what's it what it's intended to be but by being here to show your commitment to this partnership this community policing partnership between the forward police department your elected leaders our business leaders and our communities we're all part of the legacy that this building will leave one day we're all part of the story now the most exciting thing about the story is that it has not yet been written from today forward we determine what the story is we determine what our own legacy will be and i can tell you right now we will do it together about a month ago i was at the retirement celebration for retiring forward fire department chief rudy jackson there were a lot of great speakers there some of those speakers are here today one of the speakers was former fort worth mayor mike moncreef and in his speech he said something and as soon as he said it i said you know i'm going to steal that one day and i'm going to use that in the speech myself today's that day i thought it was so good i wrote it down in the back of the program so i wouldn't forget it and speaking about how amazing fort worth is how unique fort worth is mr moncreef explained it this way he said the people who live here define fort worth the people who live here define fort worth i'm going to expand on that a little bit i say the people who live here define north fort worth and please understand fort worth is one big family we're all part of the forward family but after serving a city and its citizens for 18 years i've noticed that every side of town brings brings its own flavor to fort worth and it's that diversity that makes this city so amazing so again the people who live here define north fort worth the people who work here define north fort worth our business leaders our educators our healthcare workers our volunteers and we are extremely excited today to officially say the fort worth police department lives here too and we're proud that we're going to be able to be a part of helping you define our north fort work so thank you for that opportunity a couple of things about this building thank you we're talking about the future but something i thought it was really interesting about the design of this building gf did really well with the construction is they looked at our past our history if you notice this is only part of the facility it's much larger but it's based on what you might see in the stockyards or at the stock show our traditional western heritage something i'm extremely excited about is on the inside we have a very open concept this building is a one-stop shop instead of having multiple facilities throughout north division where you go one place for one service another place for another service every service you need north division is right here in this facility and it's a very open concept that fosters communication between everybody in the building and we're very excited about that we can't wait to show you the tour afterwards but what i what i hope you will remember as amazing as this facility is the facility can't do the work on its own my father's a Baptist preacher and i remember for hearing from when i was a kid the building is not the church pastor what is the church it's the people the same thing is true with this facility as amazing as it is and it is absolutely amazing we have to make sure this building turns out to be what it was intended to be so what what will our legacy be i don't know none of us do that hasn't been written yet but that is up to us to decide that legacy is up to us to define and as i said before we will absolutely do it together and i thank you for that thank you very much next i want to introduce three gentlemen without these gentlemen we would not be here today they did a lot of work behind the scenes to make this happen starting about a decade ago they put a lot of time into this and actually we're gonna have a young lady step up here with us too if she will these three gentlemen we have the president of the summerfields neighborhood association lance griggs please come up lance and as he said his better quarter judy come up please and stand with him we have the president of pit six here in fort worth randy acosta step up please and the president of the north forward the lines rusty fuller now we've asked that each of these gentlemen say something about what this building means to me and how they saw all this come together over the years rusty if you will we'll start with you please you know i'm i'm so overcome that it's this is going to be hard for me to deliver we live in the best big little city in the country and the reason i can say that is because three of us went to councilman shangleton and councilman scarth and said let's get this thing going you know we'd heard a lot about the fact that that uh that there was discussions but we said we got to make it real and sure enough the people that you've heard about today the staff of this city is so good and so invented and has such great initiative that we stand here today looking at what i believe to be the most important building that has been built in the north four worth of north four worth area i want to thank councilman scarth councilman shangleton councilman moon and councilman espino who are all in in the office at the time councilman floris has inherited us and god bless him unfortunately the mayor is not here today and she had some she was going to be here but she had something come up that dragged her down to austin but without the leadership of this council without the police department that we have this all wouldn't be possible so thank you very very much folks and thank you ccpd for the money you donated to make sure that this thing happened welcome to the north four worth area kind of want to echo what uh rusty said you know we first moved out here it was nothing but cows and open fields and in fact all the extra patrolling that we used to get from the police department they used to call it sleepy hollow because nothing happened up here and as i was driving home the other night i looked over and the cranes were gone the construction fence was gone the mounds of dirt were gone and it's on a neat parking lot with trees and i thought later when i was thinking about i said you know what a great city we live in because as you start to look at some of the stats and look at newspapers you know four worth is getting up with the big boys the big cities growth population jobs just name it but yet it's still got that small town feel where a group of citizens could sit down with city leaders and they'd listen to us and hear about the concerns and as has been stated so eloquently by our previous speakers all that work that went into this building and it's just amazing and i'm just very thankful to be a part of this so thank you i'm lance griggs i'd like to echo what the guys just said rusty and randy have been very very important to making all this happen uh i moved out here in 1989 in summerfields there was nothing north of summerfields boulevard i drive down i-35 now and i'm just in awe i couldn't believe things grew this place i got a lot of people to think and i want to try and be brief although y'all that know me know that's very difficult for me uh first randy and rusty i really appreciated uh when we finally decided we've been hearing for years yeah we need a sector out here but it was mostly yeah we need that we'll get to it eventually we finally decided we just needed to get the neighborhood associations out here together and sit down with the leaders and say okay we've heard the promises now let's start doing something to take the action and it finally happened and everyone responded so admirably it was it was really really special uh kind of like to uh thank councilman shingleton he and councilman scarth i remember our first meeting when we sat down with shingleton scarth and uh chief holstead at the time and they actually agreed and committed that we would work to get this sector and i think the date we shot for was sometime in 2018 and i think we did pretty good folks congratulations uh but Dennis uh you recognized it you and danny both and y'all y'all stayed the course and you you pushed for it and didn't let anything stop it and that is very very special uh carrie you've now come on and by the way carrie uh when you're built like me you don't need a c-men block okay uh basically carrie uh you you came on you worked closely with us you didn't let the issue die you kept going worked the funding along with the entire city council and uh the whole council the ccpd was instrumental in making this happen city staff uh i just want to give you all a big heartfelt thank you this this building means a lot to me i started pushing for this in 2005 this has been my my windmill if you want to take it to don cahody this is a lot better looking windmill but seeing this behind me right now just makes me want to cry it's really good i also want to really thank chief holstead and his command staff when we first got going on this he basically brought in the planners and got everything and really really got it off the ground and that's that's good i also want to thank uh uh chief Fitzgerald and the current staff they were very dogged they didn't let anything stand in their way they made it happen and i also want to thank them for putting up with about four years of badgering from me uh i appreciate that uh but just i'd like to thank really the ccpd and the city council in general we ran into some hurdles we ran into some funding issues and you all resolved every one of them and in a very efficient and and orderly manner and i appreciate that more than anything else i want to thank our sworn officers for all they do for us for what they lay on the line for us you are appreciated and i really thank you very much and and lastly i want to thank people that don't get enough credit uh i want to thank the citizens of fort worth and especially north fort worth finally here in the last couple of three years we'll let our voices be heard we started voting folks in local elections and that makes a difference you don't realize how important that is uh congratulations our voice is finally getting heard in the city council and things like this result when you let that happen uh really this this is the way representative democracy is supposed to work and it worked and i thank you and you all make me very proud to call this city my home and i thank you very much thank you gentlemen thank you very much now before i introduce kevin draig with fbi builders i did want to thank just a few people quickly myself uh fbi was great to work with gff architects they did a great design and had a great build of this facility we appreciate it very much and on a city level with the property management department jim diesel and mike mollum thank you for not choking me out all the times that you wanted to i appreciate it very much they worked with us very well and with research and planning becky mcgibson was with us the entire way she was a very critical part of this and then personally i want to thank captain lindard elgin and where's amy girdis i think amy put in more hours than anyone else to make sure that this transition went well so thank you very much and i'm going to introduce kevin draig with fbi builders good morning ladies and gentlemen thank you all for being here what an amazing opportunity the good lord blessed us with 365 days ago today i'd like to thank uh the workers and people in the staff the city of fort worth that without their help none of this would be possible not that we had all trials and tribulations due through this 365 days when we overcame each and every one of them i'd like to thank gff and kent pontius and their staff and also the city of fort worth and the fort worth police department there's also three other gentlemen i'd like to thank because without them none of this would be possible john crossley our project superintendent who was not able to be here today because i'm already got him off working on something else steve turner who's here in the audience he's our assistant superintendent on this project and Todd zumbar standing over here on my right without these guys and their tenacity this project wouldn't been completed on time thank you very much for the opportunity and deputy chief kimber back to the podium please okay ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for coming we're coming to the conclusion of our ceremony this morning and at this time we're going to have a ribbon cutting right behind us and the city manager assistant city managers council members the chief assistant chiefs deputy chiefs in attendance community members you know who you are if you will come forward now for the ribbon cutting as soon as that is over we're going to open the building and ask you to join us for refreshments and tours of the building thank you yes all right somebody's going to get a countdown all my media is ready media is ready yes somebody's going to get a loud countdown one two three