Garcia becomes the first Latino to lead the ninth largest police force in the country.
By Peter Simek
Published in
FrontBurner
December 23, 2020
3:05 pm
City Manager T.C. Broadnax announced today that he has chosen Eddie Garcia to be the 30th chief of the Dallas Police Department. Garcia has been the chief of the San Jose Police Department since 2016, and he will become the first Latino to lead Dallas’ police force. Garcia’s tenure in San Jose was marked by his efforts to improve the department’s relationship with the Spanish-speaking community by adding basic Spanish to the police academy curriculum, launching a Spanish language Facebook page, and increasing minority recruiting. In a release, Garcia mentions how he only spoke Spanish when he moved to San Jose as a child and eventually grew up to become that city’s top cop.
Garcia spent nearly three decades rising through the ranks of the San Jose Police Department before eventually taking over the top job there. He will succeed Hall, who was the first woman to serve a Dallas chief after she announced she’d be leaving at the end of the year following criticism from city officials over her leadership amid protests and unrest that swept the country over the summer.
Mayor Eric Johnson welcomed Garcia in a statement and called his hiring a “historic moment for Dallas.” Johnson said he looks forward to seeing the new chief’s strategies to make the city safer.