HUTTO - The new chief of police in Hutto, Jeffery Yarbarough, plans to embrace the community, the people and the opportunity to strengthen law enforcement.
Originally from Nacogdoches, Yarbarough believes there is a plethora of opportunity in Hutto.
“You have challenges everywhere. People can look at challenges as deterrents or you can look at challenges as opportunities to overcome,” he said.
When asked why Hutto, Yarbrough said the community values their police.
“You say what you say because you don’t see what I see,” said Yarbrough. “When you come to Hutto, what you see is a community, to this day in my career, is unlike any community. I look at it as a community of opportunity.”
One of the opportunities he sees is officers who want a chief to come and bring stability, direction and an opportunity for them to build, grow and develop their confidence, and to give them the freedom to be public servants.
“Coming here, I realized Hutto needed a police chief, but I needed Hutto too,” said Yarbrough. “It is an opportunity for to come in and contribute to such an organization.”
He said officers have a “light and a desire” to do more, but sometimes they may not have had the freedom to do more. Yarbrough said he wants to invest in things that interest the officers.
“If you support or invest in what people like, want to do and desire to do, they will do a lot more than you could ever imagine,” he said.
Yarbrough believes he is a transformational and servant leader.
“As a transformational leader, I’m a visionary,” he said. “I go in and I access an organization and I see what the strengths are, what opportunities exist to close any gaps that historically exist. And what opportunities exist to build the individual capacity of each employee or staff, recognize the needs of the community and how we can best align on a track that gets us to meeting those needs.”
He said everyone is different, which means they have different needs and expectations.
“When you care enough to care, and you step back and say, ‘I can be the police, and the letter of the law says this. Or, I can be a peace officer and find these other options and resources to help people.’ So, when they overcome the issues they are facing, they can look back and say, ‘I’m so glad that officer intervened in the way that they did.’”
Yarbrough is in his 27th year of law enforcement and comes from a family of officers, including his father, brother and cousins. His father was the first to become an officer, which influenced Yarbrough’s decision.
“He laid the foundation,” Yarbrough said about his father. “He said, ‘If you don’t do better than your dad or you mom as kids, then you’ve failed.’”
His father always encouraged his family members to continue to progress in their field.
“He was the foundation to see that life is so much bigger than what we thought life was, and the world was so much bigger than the small town we grew up in,” said Yarbrough.
