New police chief learns Rollingwood ropes

There’s a new police chief in town, and he hasn’t been twiddling his thumbs. So far, Rollingwood Police Chief Jason Brady has juggled protecting the community during the Austin City Limits Music Festival, welcoming residents into his office who just want to chat, getting to know local business owners and heading up the search for a criminal who led officers on a lively early morning chase through the city’s quiet streets.

“You can’t forget this community is bordering Austin, bordering very closely to the downtown portion of Austin,” said Brady, who served as captain of the Corpus Christi Police Department for the past decade. “Rollingwood has banks. Rollingwood has Bee Caves Road. Rollingwood has some affluent citizens. There’s a lot of considerations that wouldn’t (occur) in a similar size town in the middle of West Texas.”

Following the departure of former Rollingwood Police Chief Max Westbrook in September 2018, interim Chief Kristal Pompa headed the department, juggling shifts and hiring temporary officers to backfill for staffers on medical leave throughout the winter. After posting the position, the city considered 30 applicants.

Brady, touting more than 26 years in law enforcement, including participating in tactical units, running investigations, performing administrative duties and managing budgets upwards of $8 million, was sworn in as chief on Oct. 16.

The relocation meant a lifestyle change for the Brady family.

Brady’s wife, Patricia, is a respiratory therapist at CHRISTUS Spohn Health System. Together with their 19-year-old daughter, an honor student currently at Kingsville A&M, and their 15-year-old son who is in high school, all family members had to sign off on the move before Brady would consent to Rolllingwood’s job offer.

“We’re a close-knit family but big decisions like that, everyone is going to get input,” Brady said. “The whole family was on board and supportive.”

The family maintained 18 acres of “country living” in Orange Grove, a small town northwest of Corpus Christi, complete with a herd of goats and a 10-year-old home they built. They had to drive 40 miles to commute to work or even a nice restaurant, but Brady said he could come home, sit in a lawn chair and “hunt dove.”

Brady is now renting a home in Cedar Park near Vista Ridge High School. His son and wife are still residing in Orange Grove, but plan to join Brady soon.

The new high school will offer more options for his son, he said.

“In a small town, you either play football or you’re in the band,” Brady said. “(My son) was pretty excited they have chess club, robot club, a lot of things that aren’t available to him now.”

When Brady found the Rollingwood job posting on the Texas Municipal League website, he saw “an unusual community.”

“It was a very small community, a nice community, with proximity to Austin,” he said.

Born in Flint, Michigan, Brady moved around while growing up, living in Kentucky and Florida as well as Ottawa, Canada.

“Even then, I knew I wanted to go into law enforcement,” Brady said, adding that as a preteen, his passion was sparked when he watched a tactical presentation with officers propelling down ropes and police boats rifling through water.

“I thought it was a great way to help people and serve the community,” Brady said. “And, I thought, ‘Gosh, it’s just interesting—lights and sirens and catch bad guys.’ You’re kind of naive but, then, that’s what you want to do.”

After earning a degree in criminology from the University of Ottawa in 1992, he sold his beloved 1969 Pontiac GTO, bought an old paneled van that he outfitted with sleeping quarters and used the remainder of the funds from the car sale to tour the country, applying to police forces and taking examinations in cities that interested him.

“I thought, ‘Man, I don’t want to go through a process or apply to some city that I haven’t even set foot in,’” Brady said.

He had some “great adventures” throughout the road trip, staying with a Jesuit order in Louisiana and living with the random family of a retired U.S. Air Force general in Austin, he said.

After participating in a ride-along with a Corpus Christi police officer, seeing the city and its issues, Brady found his home. He was hired as a police recruit, or cadet, and became certified as a peace officer during the course of its academy. After completing the field training program, Brady was assigned a department-issued vehicle along with a beat, serving on the agency’s honor guard, special weapons and tactics team and bicycle unit.

Working his way up the ranks, Brady’s tenure included a stint at the national academy of the Federal Bureau of Investigations in Quantico, Virginia, focused on standardizing leadership training.

“I enjoyed the interaction with the community. I enjoyed taking some dangerous characters off the street. I enjoyed, probably more than anything, the camaraderie and bonding with the other officers,” he said.

During his career, Brady helped produce “Gangscope,” software that provides a database to law enforcement to manage intelligence on known and suspected gang members, with the product sold to other agencies after successfully being used by Corpus Christi’s police department. As captain, he simplified and streamlined old processes and programs for staffers at various levels.

Brady said his efforts to remove children from abusive situations as well as make narcotics arrests was “especially impactful” to him as he worked high-crime and low-income neighborhoods.

“Police work is people, and if you’re not a people person, I don’t think you’re going to like this career,” he said. “You need to get out there and you need to make contact. You need to stop in and visit. People need to know who you are, so there’s a name, it’s not just a badge, or they’re not just some merchant but that there’s a connection there.”

During his first week on the job in Rollingwood, Brady said he visited with businesses and shops in the community on foot.

He’s found that Rollingwood’s smaller police department offers a lot of challenges because it lacks the support of auxiliary personnel that larger agencies have. Although the call volume isn’t as high as it is in a big city such as Austin, he said he and his officers must wear “many hats,” sharing duties as detective, custodian of evidence and training officer.

Moving forward, Brady said he wants to “blueprint” the city’s operations plan for ACL preparedness and also focus on the department’s staffing needs, seeking additional officers to complete the nine-person force as two officers are slated to leave the agency and one has already quit the department. Staff retention is an issue that law enforcement agencies across the country face, he said. His goal is to create an environment in which officers want to stay and not leave after the city supports their training.

“This is a perfect opportunity to have a department where you know your officer, and they establish these long term relationships with their businesses and these residents,” he said. “That’s a lot on me and how my temperament is and the kinds of choices I make and the kinds of policies that I make. They’re going to look at what are the benefits, salary, retirement, and I’ve got to compete with every other chief that has the exact same issue.”