ODEM, Texas — On Monday the City of Odem announced that Police Chief Gerardo Ochoa retired. That's big news for the city because now they have no city police officers left; DPS and the Sheriff's Office are taking over many of those police duties.
The city council will meet Tuesday to formally accept the chief's retirement and decide what it wants to do now. Budget cuts last year left the chief as the sole city officer on the streets. Now that he's gone, a number of issues are coming up including who registered sex offenders are suppose to report to now.
The City of Odem cut everyone on its police force last year with the exception of the chief of police. Now that's he's retiring, San Patricio County Sheriff Oscar Rivera promises to patrol and respond to calls for service there.
"We have been taking care of Odem at night and on the weekends," Rivera said. "So, that's been going on for several months now. The fact is now that they lost the chief of police. We are going to be there."
He also told 3NEWS that there are 19 sex offenders in Odem who used to have to report to the police chief. The sheriff has solved that problem for now.
"We have 19 sex offenders who live in Odem," Rivera said. "You're already getting those phone calls from those sex offenders saying, 'What are we going to do, we have to register somewhere?' And so we've already taken steps to take care of that because while they're gone, the law doesn't change, they still have to report."
The sheriff said that Odem's police chief was the person other law enforcement agencies turned to for information on city criminal cases.
"If they got stolen vehicles, stolen property, wanted people in the system when agencies call over here to confirm, who do we call to confirm, " Rivera said. "There's no police department to call. There is no one to verify that this person is wanted or the property is still stolen or what the case may be, so that's another concern of mine."
Mayor Pro-Tempore Jesse Falcon backs the idea of the city hiring a new police chief along with patrol officers.
"Let's hire another police chief you know we have cars, we have an office so we don't wanna—I would say—disband it cause then we have to start at square one," Falcon said. "We're already at square five."
Odem's city council is hiring a new city administrator tonight and Falcon expects the new hire to begin a search for the next chief of police and get patrol officers back on the streets of the city.
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