Forest Hill swore in a new police chief Tuesday, naming David Hernandez as the top law enforcement officer in the city.
Hernandez has more than 26 years of law enforcement experience, City Manager Venus Wehle said at the City Council meeting Tuesday. She said he most recently worked as an investigator for the county district court and spent 20 years as an officer in El Paso.
Hernandez told the Star-Telegram on Thursday he’s excited to be in this new position and has been impressed by the officers in Forest Hill. He’s been riding along with them on patrol, both day and night shifts, and has had one-on-one conversations with them to learn about the department and what the officers there need.
Hernandez replaces Eddie Burns, who was fired in February . City officials said Burns was fired after he violated several city policies and a survey of police employees showed they lacked confidence in his leadership. Burns said his termination was retaliatory, coming after he filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
While in El Paso, Hernandez worked in investigations and patrol and was a sergeant and crime lab director. He retired from El Paso police in 2020. His also worked for investigations for the Dallas County Public Defender’s Office and as a corrections officer for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office.
During Tuesday’s council meeting, he thanked God and said he is “deeply blessed and eager to begin this work.”
“The privilege and responsibility I’ve been entrusted to is what I hold close to my heart,” he said.
Wehle said in a statement to the Star-Telegram that Hernandez was chose because he was the best candidate among many.
“Chosen from a strong applicant pool, Chief David Hernandez brings to our Forest Hill Police Department high ethical values, extensive leadership skills, and the requisite competency to effectively serve our community,” Wehle said in the emailed statement. “He is a mentor, is engaging, and is an excellent communicator who I know will collaborate and engage his team to connect with our residents and businesses. I’m very excited for the future of our Police Department.”
Capt. Lee Sumpter, a 19-year veteran of the department, served as interim police chief from the time Burns was fired to when Hernandez was hired.
Who is David Hernandez?
Hernandez is a first generation American whose parents and brothers attended the council meeting, Hernandez said. He said his parents instilled him with work ethic and his brothers work in El Paso as firefighters. He’s been married to his wife for 27 years and has three daughters.
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Hernandez moved to Fort Worth in 2020 after one of his daughters, who decided to move to North Texas, had children. He and his wife came to the area to be closer to their grandchildren. He wasn’t ready to leave policing but was qualified to retire from the El Paso Police Department, so he took retirement there and moved to Fort Worth with plans to continue his career.
Before he retired in El Paso, Hernandez had plans to move up in the department and take on higher command positions. He felt that with his experience and his leadership style, he could benefit the community and the officers there.
He took jobs as an investigator for the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office and an investigator for the Dallas County Public Defender’s Office. That time with the public defender’s office gave him insights he knows will be useful as a police chief, like more knowledge of what evidence and testimony investigators need to make sure they arrest the right suspects and get convictions.
In his position as police chief, Hernandez said he’s spending time to get to know the community and the officers in his new department. He’s had one-on-one conversations with all the officers, learning what they like about the department, how they feel about the community and what improvements need to be made.
By riding along with officers on all shifts, Hernandez said he hopes to show early on that he is a leader who will not just sit behind a desk and ask officers to do something he won’t do himself. He’s already responded to 14 scenes in the seven days he’s been at the department and plans to continue responding with his officers to calls for police.
He decided to apply for the position after he took a class at Tarrant County College where police learned about responding to and investigating domestic and family violence. The class also touched on police leadership skills and how to grow an agency. He met some officers from Forest Hill while he was there.
His wife also worked at an elementary school in Forest Hill for a while, teaching special education. She’s now working with a different school district, but he would go there to visit her and help her set up for classes, and that gave Hernandez an opportunity to get to know the city a bit before applying.
When Burns was fired and the position of police chief opened up, it seemed obvious he should apply, Hernandez told the Star-Telegram. He wanted to work with a smaller agency, where he could know all the officers on a personal level, and felt he had the skills and a leadership style that would help the department grow and improve the experience for police in the city.
Community approach
Hernandez told the Star-Telegram that working with the community is vital to the mission of the department. Building relationships with people in the community will give officers opportunities to demonstrate how they care about the people in Forest Hill, as well as help residents recognize officers as people.
Building trust in the community will also allow the department to call on people to help with investigations, and those relationships can also create a foundation where residents know they can trust police to do their jobs with respect and empathy, Hernandez said.
At the council meeting, he appealed to the community to take an active role in community policing.
“I urge each and every one of you to be our eyes and ears in the community,” Hernandez said. “As an agency we cannot be everywhere at once, so we have to work together. Your participation is essential in this mission.”
At the end of his address, Hernandez said he is optimistic about the future of the department.
“I can tell from the bottom of my heart, we will be successful and we will win,” he said.
Burns’ termination and department troubles
In his complaint, Burns alleged age discrimination and said he was retaliated against for challenging the mayor, Stephanie Boardingham, when she asked him to “make tickets go away.”
Wehle said at the time in a statement to the Star-Telegram that Burns never faced discrimination and that his termination had nothing to do with the complaint or any interactions with Boardingham. Boardingham declined to comment.
Hernandez takes leadership of the department after years of problems . A Star-Telegram investigation showed that the department has had trouble recruiting and retaining employees. The department was plagued by allegations of discrimination, sexual harassment and poor leadership.
From January of 2022 to Feb. 8 this year, Forest Hill saw 10 officers resign and only three new officers hired. After Burns’ termination, the department had 17 officers including command staff. The city did not immediately respond to a Star-Telegram request asking if any new officers had been hired or any others had left the department.
Solutions and high hopes
Hernandez said that while the department has had issues with recruitment in the past, it’s looking like that’s over.
the new chief said he has reached out to colleges with police training programs and found applicants who have graduated but haven’t found the right department to work at yet. He’s also looking for officers who would want to transfer from other departments, which would reduce the amount of training they need and bring more experience to the department.
In the one-on-one conversations he’s had with officers in Forest Hill, Hernandez said, he’s heard about past concerns that the department was a toxic place to work. But those concerns, he said, had largely resolved before he got the job.
He’s still spending time getting to know officers and said he’ll take an interest in making sure they are doing well in their personal lives.
“I need an officer to come to work and do what is expected of him legally and professionally, but I also want him to be a better person,” Hernandez told the Star-Telegram. “A better dad, better son, better daughter, better mother, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend.”
Hernandez said he believes a lot of problems with police, such as excessive force or not doing the job right, come when those officers have struggles or trauma at home and aren’t able to process and resolve those things. He wants to know his officers well enough that he can tell if they’re bothered by something — that way he can offer help when possible and take steps like giving them a day off when they need it.
Getting more officers into the department will help relieve stress, too, he said. On Thursday, he had files of five candidates he was reviewing so he could set up interviews and get the hiring process started. The department is offering a $10,000 signing bonus and has contracted with an outside company to run background checks. The company works with around 20 other agencies in the area.
That will speed up the process and help get the department fully staffed with 28 officers and command staff. Currently, he said, he has 16 officers and two members of his command staff. That leads to police employees doing extra work and prevents them from devoting all their attention to their primary duties.
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