 Hi, my name is William Rumley, I'm the Court Director of the Fort Worth Municipal Court, and today we're going to spend a few minutes to learn about the City Marshals Division of the Fort Worth Municipal Court. I have with me today City Marshal Phil Swift, and so Phil, if you'll take just a few minutes and let's talk about the City Marshals. So can you explain to everyone just what is the City Marshal in Fort Worth? Well, first of all, good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. So the City Marshal's office in Fort Worth, the City Marshal's division, is a division of the municipal courts. By ordinance or primary duty is to enforce the orders of the court, generally speaking that means warrants, bringing people before the court who have missed court dates or have failed to meet other requirements of their cases. We have approximately 44 sworn law enforcement officers here at the Marshal's division. And along with our normal job of serving warrants and whatnot, we also have a Lake Patrol division, which enforces the Marine Safety Code at Lake Worth. They also patrol the parks, the surrounding area. They offer assistance to residents when they have 911 calls, and we have five deputies out there year-round. So it's a very unique thing that we do here. We also have a building security section, and their responsibilities include screening here at the PSB and also at City Hall, ensuring that everyone that comes to our facilities is safe and feels safe in that environment. They also provide the bailiffing for the courts, where they assist the judge in making sure the courts run smoothly and professionally and without disruption. The Marshal's have been around in kind of two ideations. We had them here in Fort Worth, and then they were disbanded, and then they were brought back, and we've been here ever since. So Marshal Swift, what is the difference between, say, a City Marshal and a City Fort Worth police officer? So I think at the end of the day it comes down to specialization. Both the Marshal's deputies, Deputy Marshal's and Fort Worth police officers are law enforcement officers in the state of Texas, and they're authorized to carry out all of the same duties. The Fort Worth police department specializes in the day-to-day enforcement of the penal code, traffic code, doing investigations, so on and so forth. Whereas the Marshal's division specializes in doing warrant enforcement. We use traffic enforcement as another means of contacting individuals in order to determine if they have warrants. So that's really the primary difference between them. To be frank, if you see a Marshal standing next to a police officer, you're not going to notice a difference. We were almost the same uniform, empowered to do the same things. We just both specialize in different areas of the law. Excellent. So what are some maybe unique things that you haven't talked about today that sometimes the Marshal's, or even consistently, are doing within the city? So yes, we do do a lot of things. It's fair to mention we have a bike patrol, which offers quite a bit of services kind of across the downtown area. We also take part in courts in the community and warrant forgiveness programs here at the municipal courts. We also provide security to city council meetings. Ones that take place at City Hall, as well as ones that take place other places. So anywhere where the city councils together will be there providing security for them as well. We also take part in a lot of other community projects. We were highly involved with vaccination, providing traffic direction and things of that nature. And then we also get a lot of calls for those things that may otherwise fall through the cracks. For instance, during our last big cold snap when all the power was out, we got a phone call here at my office and they asked us to go out to the library and open it up so it could be used as a warming center for the public. We were more than happy to do that. But definitely not one of those things you would think of us doing just routinely. Absolutely. So let's turn for a moment just to staff and particularly career. So if somebody was interested in becoming a city marshal, how do they do that and what does it take? So you know, I pride myself on the fact that we have a very diverse staff here at the Marshal's division. And we have people at the beginning of their careers. We have people at the end of their careers. We have people that are retired from other places, from all different backgrounds. It's really a great place to work. So currently you have to already have your T-Cole license to be a law enforcement officer and two years of experience either in the military, security or with another agency. At that point you can apply to become a deputy marshal and go through the hiring process. We are in the process and probably after the first of the year we'll have opportunities for individuals who are just starting their careers who may be working on their T-Cole license or maybe they don't have that experience where they'll be able to come in at what we'll call deputy marshal one, gain the experience they need and then move into what we'll call then the deputy marshal two position. So once you get hired here, like I said, we've got opportunities at Lake Patrol and at Warrants and Bike Patrol and Building Security and a lot of different things you can do, especially if you have an interest in the judiciary and how the courts run and kind of the other side of police work, you'll definitely get a lot of experience there with that here. Well Marshal Swift, thank you for spending a few minutes today talking about the Marshal's. What I know is the director, I appreciate the value that your team brings each and every day to the court and to the community. We have a lot of good engagement from the staff and have a really good relationship with the community. So again, thank you for spending a few minutes with us to tell folks about the Marshal's and if folks are interested in learning about a career they contact the Human Resources Department or even contact the court and then we can direct them to the right place to contact in order to start that process. So thank you again Mr. Swift and we appreciate your time today. Thank you for the opportunity.