The reality of fentanyl in Taylor County: Sheriff Ricky Bishop describes the crisis
BIG COUNTRY, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) — In this week’s Big Country Politics Sunday conversation, Taylor County Sheriff Ricky Bishop discussed jail needs, the livestock assistance program, and Fentanyl in the Big Country.
Bishop was just re-elected to serve his fourth term as Taylor County Sheriff.
“It’s overwhelming. Thanks is not enough for all the votes and support donations that I got from from the public. The public believes in what we’re trying to do with the sheriff’s office with adding more employees to more salaries to the possibility of a new Sheriff’s Office, maybe some sort of remodel or something at the jail, and things that we’re trying to get done. And overwhelmingly, the public supports what we’re trying to do, and this area has been good about supporting public safety, and I think that showed,” Bishop expressed.
Taylor County voters reelect Sheriff Ricky Bishop
Bishop faced competitors Shay Bailey and Elias Carrasquillo but ultimately won by a large margin.
“It meant a lot that the public could see through the lies, the mudslinging, and different things that were taking place. I was able to show people the facts on what is truly going on, that we hold people accountable for their actions, whether they do what they do or don’t do. And that was really evident in what took place with two former employees who ran against me, and I was able to show the public proof of what was truly taking place, and they agreed with our side,” Bishop said.
Bishop shared that since he first took office in 2013, he has been pushing to add more officers due to the county’s growth.
“This depends on the funding that comes into the county. So, just to get us back to minimal staffing for patrol, I need 16 more officers. I know I’m not gonna get those 16, but the commissioners need to be aware that I need that many people just to have minimal staffing because the county is growing faster than the sheriff’s office is. Every year since I took office in 2013, I’ve been asking for more employees; we don’t always get it. By not getting those, that pushes us that much farther behind,” Bishop shared. “When you add those to patrol, you’ve got to add to our CID division. For the amount of cases that are coming in, the CPS cases, the reports that come in from the state that we have to look into, that ties up a detective for long periods of time. And then, of course, with the drug problem of adding more Narcotics Officers just so we can work better and safer.”
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Bishop added that while they are looking to expand the detention facility, there is still a way to go.
“I actually brought it up to the commissioner’s court eight years ago, on something needed to be done because we were starting to house female prisoners outside of the county. We’re still doing that today. Right now, I think we’re using two counties. At one point, we were using three different counties to house our female prisoners because we only had 118 beds for female prisoners,” Bishop explained. “I’ve also been trying to visit with some of the district judges about the possibility of expanding their dockets a little bit so we can try to get some people pushed through the system a little bit quicker. There are some people I have in jail that’s been there for three years and haven’t been to court yet for various reasons. So working with them, and then trying to work with the commissioners to try to do some type of remodel or something so we can try to get our population down a little bit, especially on the female side. It doesn’t look it from the street, but that’s an 826-bed facility. And we’re averaging 650 people in it every day.”
Bishop shared that increasing the number of beds and extending other sections can result in significant costs.
“Eight years ago, we were talking about adding on 212 beds. We were looking at roughly $14 million cost, $15 million cost at that time, it’s gonna be probably 25-30 million now with inflation and everything that’s taking place, but we need to add some office space because we’re out of office space, storage space, we need to expand our medical division a little bit more, give them more room to work, and that sort of thing. So that’s going to increase your cost,” Bishop shared. “But we’re doing the best with what we’ve got. We’re just gonna keep working with the commissioners and the judges to see what we can get done.”
Last year, the Taylor County Sheriff’s Office launched a program to help reunite farmers with their cattle.
“It actually started in South Texas; a couple of sheriff’s offices started there with the livestock fence damage program. Essentially, what it is is that we have a form for a property owner to fill out that has all their contact information, any employee information tied to it, their breed of livestock, color of livestock, any brands, air markings, anything like that. They fill out this form that we keep fully confidential that’s at the office. Then, we assign that property owner a number. We put that number on a sign, and we give the property owner that sign to hang on their fences, their gates, and wherever they need to. That way, if somebody runs through their fence, we have cattle out in that area or something, if we see that sign, we can reference that number, call back into our dispatch, find out who that property owner is, who the livestock owner is, and then have good contact information,” Bishop explained. “So we can call them and tell them that, hey, we’ve got a problem, whether there was an accident, somebody ran through their fence, or their cattle are out roaming the highway or something.
He added that this program can expand further than just livestock.
“That number that’s assigned to that individual can also be used as an extra identifying mark on any equipment or any other property they own. If it happens to come up missing, just like we always tell people, write your driver’s license number on your TVs or wherever if you don’t have serial numbers; that way, they can help us identify if it becomes stolen. Then they can document it, take pictures, add equipment, whatever. And if something comes up missing, it helps us find it,” Bishop added.
Bishop has already seen some success with the program.
“We’ve had a few cattle getting out, and it’s helped us find the owners pretty quickly. Prior to this program, we’ve had incidences where there were a lot of people just buying five acres, and they’d put a couple of cattle on it, and then they might check them once a month. Well, we had that in part of the county, and we could not find the owner of the livestock. So after 18 days, they go to public auction. About a week after these particular cattle sold, the owner showed up and said I am missing my cattle. So this will help us try to help prevent some of that and then hopefully help find any missing property with that specific number,” Bishop shared.
Protecting livestock: New program reunites Taylor County ranchers with their cattle
When it comes to illegal drugs, Bishop shared that fentanyl is very present and has become the new drug of choice in the area.
“I think seven out of 10 pills that we find there in traffic stops. There’s going to be fentanyl, some amount of fentanyl in those. At one time, years ago, heroin was the big thing. Then heroin kind of faded out, and then methamphetamine took its place. Well, now fentanyl is taking the place of meth now, and it’s extremely cheap to buy. Some of these dealers are going to the Dallas-Fort Worth area to buy one pill for $5, but they bring it back to Abilene and sell it for $20 or $25. And these people love the high that they’re getting whenever they take these pills, even to the point where the dealers are taken on themselves, and they go to other dealers to replenish their stock just here in Abilene. So, out of the sheriff’s office side, we haven’t seen a lot of deaths with those. I know in the city of Abilene, they’ve had a few from fentanyl. It’s extremely difficult to try to get back to the dealer, but we’re always going to try to get back to that dealer so we can charge them per Senate Bill Six to try to deal with as murder charges or whatever we need to,” Bishop said.
‘We anticipate more arrests’: Taylor County Law Enforcement make arrests in ‘large scale’ drug bust
Bishop said they are working diligently to get these drugs off the streets and have seen thousands of pills in the last few months.
“Our entire Narcotics Division, that’s all they do. They spend a lot of their time here in Abilene, not only in Abilene but also in our surrounding counties. I have agreements with them because Abilene is at the hub. And then, if the surrounding counties catch somebody, we can help work that, get it wrapped back to Abilene, and get back to that bigger fish that’s trying to deal with the surrounding area. It’s growing like crazy every day; I think at the end of last week, they got a dealer with about 100 pills. We’ve gotten 1000s of pills just in the last few months, and it’s not slowing down until we get something happening at the border to start slowing some things down. Things are just gonna keep ramping up here because of the high that everybody’s feeling. We’ve got to keep working diligently and doing everything we can,” Bishop said. “Not long ago, we had a big drug investigation that came to light with 17 people; most of that was strictly methamphetamine, and there was a little bit of fentanyl in that, but that investigation has not ended. It’s still going, and that investigation is not going to quit. We’re still tied in with all of our federal partners to help combat that drug problem here, and hopefully, in the next 90 days, there’s gonna be something else big come up.”
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