Walking through the school, it’s like any other day. Then, as he makes his daily rounds, a call comes in on his walkie talkie with unexpected news: Put the school on lockdown– it’s not a drill. Sergeant Neil DeWolfe swiftly jumps into action as he joins the rest of the Lindale ISD police department to investigate.
DeWolfe is the police officer for the high school. He has served in law enforcement for over two decades.
“The most important part of my job is keeping everyone safe,” DeWolfe said. “My job’s sole purpose is to make sure that the students can come here and go to school in a safe environment and not have to worry about any issues of their safety.”
DeWolfe decided to become an officer at an early age. In order to achieve his dream career, he had to go through a police academy and continue his education in two year cycles.
“We rely on our training,” Dewolfe said. “We have continuous education that never stops and then our officers build with experience as well so that it all incorporates into how we do our job.”
He first started off in Austin for Travis county as a senior deputy in a felony warrant unit. However, he later transferred to Lindale in 2015 due to his wife’s job in the medical field.
“Lindale is a smaller town than Austin but there has been a lot of interesting stuff here as well,” DeWolfe said. “We border around a larger city like Tyler, so we get a little bit of everything here.”
DeWolfe has been serving the district for over 20 years. For the first time in a few years, all the Lindale ISD schools went under a lockdown last spring after a prank call was made.
“As the public now knows we had a prank that came in when someone made claims about someone threatening the safety of the students over at one of our campuses,” DeWolfe said. “Our main priority in this type of situation is to keep the children safe as well as staff members.”
To protect everyone in situations like this, six officers are spread out between each campus. The local police department will then respond.
“Having an officer already there on site, and then myself and Chief King we were able to arrive in less than a minute,” DeWolfe said. “Within seconds we were on that campus helping with the search.”
Other officers from the other campuses came together to assist in the situation. In addition, different agencies like the fire department also came together to make sure there were no more threats.
“We have a lot of officers that have children in the school district, so it’s close at home for all of us,” DeWolfe said. “Our job as officers is to ensure that everyone is kept safe.”
DeWolfe plans to continue his education in law enforcement due to the frequent changes in the system. He then plans to retire to spend more time with his family.
“I want to finish off strong but maybe come back and do something else for the school district,” DeWolfe said. “I really love the school district because it’s been wonderful for me and my family, so I want to continue in that if I can in some way.”
