Building excellence

Retiring TRWD lieutenant speaks on impact, future of law enforcement division

In recent decades, Tarrant Regional Water District’s Law Enforcement Division has grown and branched out, improving the agency’s efficiency and ensuring the safety of local water resources, like Eagle Mountain Lake and those who use it.

Lt. Randall Cocke is one of the many dedicated public servants who have shaped the department into what it is today. While he retired from his full-time position in November, he remains a part-time employee to guide TRWD through its transition.

Randall began his employment with the district in 1995 as a general repair technician. By 2005, he had attended the Tarrant County College Police Officer Academy and transferred to the district’s Law Enforcement Division as a patrol officer.

“My family were always in public safety,” Cocke said. “I had a father and brother, both at Fort Worth Fire Department. My dad was a battalion chief there for almost 30 years, so it was kind of a natural fit just to move over into public safety. In my early days, it’s not something I looked at, doing law enforcement, but once I got into it, it seemed like it was a great fit for me. It allowed me to help people and actually make a difference.”

TRWD’s Law Enforcement Division Chief David Geary said Cocke’s leadership abilities and constant desire to improve facilitated his promotion to sergeant in 2009 and lieutenant by 2014.

“He was the driving force behind the scenes that trans-formed the Law Enforcement Division into the highly regarded professional agency of today,” Geary said. “His drive and thirst for knowledge coupled with his ability and demand for excellence not only created a great staff but the policies and procedures to support it. His leadership helped to build every aspect of what is now a fully functional multi-talented group dedicated to excellence and service.”

Geary credits Cocke with the creation of its recovery dive team, the establishment of the TRWD Communication and Dispatch Center, integration of the computer-aided dispatch system and the implementation of emergency watercraft training.

Geary said, “his leadership ability, integrity and overall masterful skillset,” were Cocke’s greatest contributions to TRWD. “He set the bar for excellence.”

In the past, Cocke said, TRWD was reliant on other agencies, groups and individuals to complete certain tasks and always behind the bell curve when it came to getting responses that it needed. Over the course of his career, Cocke decided that if he couldn’t get the results he wanted, it was better if his own agency could do these jobs itself.

“With anything, if you actually take ownership of a program, you get to actually benefit the most from it,” Cocke said. “We were on the water all the time and if we had to wait on divers to make recoveries or look for evidence, we wait a half a day or a day, or maybe two days to get that accomplished. It’s mission effective, really. So, we came up with the idea to just do it ourselves. It’s the same with the dispatch center. That was probably one of my biggest goals before I retired, was to create a fully functioning communication center. We had services from other departments and you don’t get full service if you don’t own the program.”

Cocke said seeing the communications center realized was one of his career’s two biggest accomplishments. The center started from scratch and took years of planning to achieve. With his time at TRWD now coming to an end, Cocke said he feels secure in its future.

“We hired a really good group of people,” Cocke said. “It was time, and it felt right to hand the torch over. The people that came up, especially Vicki and Chris, are perfect for the job. They know what they’re doing, which always helps and they’re responsible, they’re motivated. If I really, truly had to pick one of my best accomplishments, it’s really not the programs that I started, it’s the people that I hired and hopefully motivated and mentored.”

One of the things that Cocke loved most about his job was getting to spend most of his days outdoors and having the freedom to explore and patrol such a large jurisdiction by foot, bike, all-terrain-vehicle and boat. Once his part-time role is over, Cocke looks forward to being back outdoors, hunting, hiking and fishing.

Cocke stressed that he couldn’t have done it without the 30 years of guidance and leadership from his chief.

“You don’t see a lot of agencies that have chiefs that last as long as they do. If you look at any municipality, they go through chiefs every five or seven years and we’ve had one for close to 30 years now. You don’t see that very often. So, it’s a credit to David on being a good person first, and a great chief and a great friend.”