HUNTER DWORACZYK
GEORGETOWN — A longtime member of law enforcement in the Taylor area is set to retire.
Williamson County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Matt Kreidel is having a retirement ceremony Wednesday, Jan. 17 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Georgetown.
Kreidel has served in law enforcement locally for 35 years.
“It’s been a really, really good experience,” Kreidel said. “Very humbling. It went by very fast now that I think about it … it’s been an honor to serve. I know that I met a lot of great people in Williamson County and the Taylor area.”
Kreidel started his career in the Taylor Police Department, where he said he worked for about seven years.
He then worked as a reserve officer for the city of Thrall’s police department for about two years while he worked a job in the electrical field.
Kreidel began working for the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office after his time at Thrall, which would prove to be his longest stint.
The retiring officer has been with the Sheriff’s Office for 27 years. He’s been a D.A.R.E. deputy there since 2007.
D.A.R.E., which stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, was founded in 1983 and has been implemented in thousands of schools throughout the U.S. and many other countries. Police officers lead a series of classroom lessons that teaches children from kindergarten through 12th grade how to resist peer pressure and live productive drug and violence-free lives.
The county’s D.A.R.E. program mainly deals with students in fifth and sixth grade, with Kreidel going into classrooms at Taylor Independent School District, Thrall Independent School District and Coupland Independent School District for 10 lessons.
“The D.A.R.E. program does talk about tobacco and alcohol, but that’s about as bad as it gets as far as talking about the different types of drugs and things,” Kreidel said. “It also has some building lessons in there. It talks about peer pressure and how to be able to recognize it and deal with it. We’ve had lessons on stress, being able to recognize that as well.”
Kreidel said one of the best parts of the program is that it puts an officer in the classroom.
He said unless a student has a member of law enforcement in their family, they do not have many opportunities to ask questions to officers.
“It lets them become a little more comfortable with law enforcement around and to see them in a different light,” Kreidel said. “I think it’s important because it allows them to bring the topics up at home whereas otherwise I don’t think they would talk about that around the dinner table.”
