Today, I'm here with Sheriff Parnell McNamara, who is running for reelection in the March 2024 primaries. Welcome to the studio.
PARNELL: “Thank you very much for having me.”
You were born and raised here in Waco, correct?
PARNELL: “Yes. All my life.”
And you've chosen to raise your own family here and stay here. What is it about this county and this community that has kept you here all of these years?
PARNELL: “Well, my family actually came to McLennan County, to this area in the 1870s. Loved Waco, loved McLennan County, and so we all just stayed. And I went to school here, elementary school all through high school, then attended Baylor University starting in 1964. And graduated in 69 and got a degree in marketing and business management. Four months later, ended up with U.S. Marshals. And so I put in 32 and a half years with the U.S. Marshals Service and luckily was stationed all my career right here in Waco. So that was a very good thing. Now they transfer people all over the country, but my brother and I hired on the same day and both of us finished our careers right here in our community. So that was a wonderful thing. A lot of good friends here, a lot of family here have no intention of going anywhere else. We love Waco, We love McLennan County, Central Texas, and just feel very fortunate that our great grandparents decided to move to McLennan County back in the 1800s.”
What led you to get involved in law enforcement?
PARNELL: “Well, I grew up in a law enforcement family, my granddad's brother, just to give you history, Guy McNamara was a constable here, elected constable in 1902, and then he became the chief of police of Waco in 1915. And then President Roosevelt appointed him to head the United States Marshal for the whole Western district of Texas, which goes from Centerville in the East all the way to Austin, San Antonio, Del Rio, El Paso. And so Guy McNamara moved to San Antonio at that time. His brother, who was my grandfather, Emmet Parnell, he was a deputy sheriff here in 1905, and then he was deputized under another sheriff in 1916. And then he went with U.S. Marshals. And then my father, T.P. McNamara was the chief deputy sheriff here in the 1930s when he was in his early twenties, I think 21 or 22. And then he put in for 36 and a half years with the U.S. marshal. So I kind of grew up in a law enforcement family, and I actually started working in law enforcement at the age of 16, January of 1963. My father was the only marshal here, deputy U.S. marshal. And so he needed guards from time to time to help make arrests, transport prisoners, work, and court security. And so he got permission from the U.S. Department of Justice to use my brother and me as his guards. And so Mike and I worked all through high school and college as guards for U.S. Marshals, working for my dad and a deputy U.S. marshal out of Austin, Don Keller. We worked for him. So doing that all through high school and college kind of gave us, you know, a running start in law enforcement and then when two positions came open in 1970 for the Waco office. They had never been but one deputy in Waco. So when two positions came open for deputies, Mike and I were able to fill it. So for seven years of my career, from 1970 to January 1 of 78, it was my brother and my dad and me in the same office here in Waco. So very fortunate that all of us were able to stay here in Waco.”
You've held the position of sheriff since 2012.
PARNELL: “Yes, I was elected in 2012 and took over as sheriff in January of 2013. I just finished 11 years.”
So why decide to run again?
PARNELL: “I'm still in the fight. I love law enforcement. I love the people here. I love the fact that my entire career in law enforcement has been here in McLennan County. And that's not to say that I wasn't assigned to other duties in Austin, San Antonio, and then Florida and Chicago. I flew Con Air. If you ever saw that movie Con Air with Nicolas Cage, well, I flew that. That was the worst job I ever had. Because you're on an airplane with 100, 120 screaming idiots, and it's a dangerous situation. But my home base was Waco and we had 13 counties out of Waco that we handle federally. So it was about a 90 mile radius of Waco where the U.S. Marshalls in Waco took care of.”
One thing that has been brought up a lot during this election season has been your age. It's been talked about a lot in the media. What is your response to this?
PARNELL: “I have just begun to fight. I feel good. I'm in good health. You know, as far as we all know, you know, I feel very good. I don't smoke, I don't drink. I take care of myself. And, you know, there are a lot of politicians, a lot of business people that are a lot older and are still working. I'm not ready to quit. I've got a good team with the sheriff's office. We have unbelievable deputies. We have accomplished a lot in the last 11 years that I've been here, and so I'm just not ready to quit. And I've got sheriffs in marshalls, of course, Marshalls have to retire at age 57. But a lot of my marshall's buddies ran for sheriff and got sheriff. And they were, you know, in their late seventies or eighties and shoot, I feel young, you know, and I'm not going to quit. As long as people want to hire me, I'm going to be here fighting for them. And that's important to me. The government hired me as a U.S. marshal or a deputy U.S. marshal. The people hire the sheriff and the sheriff is the people's voice in law enforcement. And I've been encouraged by hundreds and thousands of people to continue the fight. Stay in there. I'm in for the good fight. That's why I'm still running. I'm not going to quit.”
What are you most proud of having achieved during your time as sheriff for the last 11 years? And if you're reelected, what would you want to change moving forward?
PARNELL: “Well, there's several things that we have initiated since we came in that were not done. We did not have a narcotics unit. The sheriff's office was not investigating drugs or narcotics. So I formed what's called an organized crime unit, which fights drugs and other other crimes, but mainly narcotics. We didn't have a fugitive apprehension and special task. That's a FAST unit, and they go after the worst of the worst. They have no set hours. They're working every single day. They go after the meanest, the most dangerous criminals. And so other counties have called on us to provide these fast guys. They will call other sheriffs or police and say, can you send the fast boys to help us track down this criminal? And that was not done, I formed that unit and I don't like to say I but in this case, I will say because I put it in motion in 2015 and we only had three, now we have six. They're deputized as U.S. marshals. They're mixed martial arts trained. They're SWAT team trained. They're the toughest guys you've ever seen. And so I'm very proud of that. Our human trafficking unit we got into when one of our detectives came to me with an idea and that had never been done. And so we have arrested over 800 child molesters, traffickers in sex related crimes since we formed that unit. We just had an operation Friday and Saturday on human trafficking. We arrested several people. We rescued two women that were being trafficked out, and we got them to the other unbound and ‘Jesus said love’ unit that can help save them. And so we're out there fighting on the front line of the human trafficking unit. Cold case. We didn't have a cold case unit looking into old murders and homicides. So we've solved about nine of them, some of them going back to the middle or early eighties, almost 40 years. Some of them were 40 years old that we have solved simply by hard core investigations. Some of them were solved with DNA, others were just solved by basic police work, never letting up. I'm really proud of those. We team up with the U.S. Marshals, Lone Star, Fugitive Task Force. We have a very good sheriff's riot response team. We have a bomb unit, an explosives tech unit. We have a K-9 that is one of six ATF trained dogs in the state that can sniff out bullets, 12 inches under the ground. It’s unbelievable. And so our bomb unit utilizes two different robots. We have a robot we can send half a mile away. We can go into a garage, open a beer cooler, pull out a green ammo can and open it up with its arms and hands. And we've used it over and over and over. So we're trying to be very proactive in protecting our citizens. And all this is part of the protect and serve oath that we take. And so I'm very proud of that. We have increased our number of helicopters. We have three helicopters. We have pilots for them. We have a marine unit. We did not have that. We have two incredible boats. One runs right at 70 miles an hour and three or four inches of water. So a jet boat, it's called a river pro. We have another boat that's a rough water boat for the bigger lakes. Those are compliments of the drug dealers. We purchase them with seizure funds and we have well, the aviation unit is, as it's called, we've upgraded a lot of equipment for our officers. We have approximately 500 employees at any one time. Our two jails, we're dealing with 1400 to 1500 inmates. So that's over 4000 meals that we're serving every day, people don't realize that. But that the logistics of providing meals for these people that are in jail, you know, it's easy to arrest them in put them in jail, but then we have to take care of them and we have to provide food and shelter in all form in the right way and make sure that we're doing it right. It's a humane way. So the logistics of operating our jail facility are very, very important. And so we take that to heart. Those are just some of the things that we've implemented that were not being done in, and I like to say we because it's not a one man show. I have a lot of help from our deputies and I want to thank our good citizens because the citizens back us up in our law enforcement effort. And that's not the way it is all up north. It's unfortunate they're throwing rocks and bottles of frozen water at the police and doing everything they can to distract them and harm them. And that's really sad. So we have wonderful, wonderful citizens here that back us up and support us and makes our job to support and protect them a lot easier.”
The human trafficking unit that has been very visible in the media, you all of your efforts in that unit. Roughly how big is the unit and what resources are you committing to it right now? Is this still a big problem and priority for you as sheriff?
PARNELL: “It's definitely a big priority for me. We're not ever going to let up. We teamed up this weekend with one of our former detectives who is an incredible investigator here in human trafficking, and that's Joe Scaramucci. Scaramucci and one of the ladies with Unbound spent several weeks in Mongolia training Mongolian police. And we go into these other countries and try to get their focus away from the individual, the woman that is being trafficked and don't victimize them twice. Go after the pimp, the trafficker, the scumbag that is putting them in this situation. So that's what they did in Mongolia when the war with Ukraine and Russia broke out. We sent our guys to Poland and they were training Polish police to recognize the traffickers. The women and kids were coming out of Ukraine into Poland. And it was very, very interesting because the Ukraine would not let the men leave because they wanted them there to fight. So it was a steady stream of women and children coming across. And they identified some of these Russian traffickers. They even got some traffickers that had gone over there from the United States to grab these people and coerce them into, you know, and eventually get them in trafficking. And so they went from Poland to Moldova. They spent some time there, teamed up with Interpol. And I'm just so proud of the job that our deputies and unbound have done worldwide. They've also been in Iraq. We've been in several other countries. We teamed up this weekend with a company called Skol Games. It's a privately owned company. They have just done an operation in Uganda, over in Africa. And so it's a worldwide effort. This human trafficking is a worldwide scourge. It's horrible. It's sickening. Women, kids, even young boys are being trafficked by these lowlife scumbags.”
What life lessons would you say you've learned that really stick out to you, that you feel makes you prepared to continue the responsibilities of the sheriff?
PARNELL: “Well, the main thing that I have learned is how the citizens rely on the sheriff's office.
Like I said before, the government hired me as a U.S. marshal, a deputy U.S. marshal. The people hire the sheriff, and the people feel like the sheriff is their voice in law enforcement. And it really is because the people hire the sheriff. That's the way I look at it. And so I have a commitment to our citizens and to our community to do the best job I can to keep them safe. I've taken a hard line on crime of all kinds. You see up north, these people getting on the interstate, blocking traffic. It's not going to happen here because they're going to jail. That is a violation of a federal law. And so it's called impeding interstate commerce. So I've talked to the U.S. attorney's office. They've agreed to prosecute people that block, you know, interstate commerce. And so we're going to arrest them. They get out on the highway, they're going to jail, and we're probably going to file federal charges on them. Rioting and looting. We don't have it here because we're going to stop it as soon as it starts.
I've gone way out on a limb. I've taken a stance against burning the American flag. And I tell people it's unfortunate. Burning uur American flag is no longer a crime except in McLennan County. You burn it here, you're going to jail for several offenses. I promise them that we're not going to stand by and let some lowlife desecrate our flag. You can't kill a mockingbird. You can't pick a bluebonnet. You can't do, you know, you can't shoot certain birds, but you can tear up our flag and set it on fire. How wrong, how wrong is that? You know, there's a lot of blood on that flag from our past wars to keep us safe. And it's a travesty. And hopefully at some point the Supreme Court will rule that desecrating our national symbol Mark, the American flag, is a crime. But here, going to jail for setting a fire without a permit, disorderly conduct, reckless endangerment, we've got all kinds of things. And so we're not going to put up with that. And we're doing everything we can to keep a lid on things. Fox News a couple of years ago was showing all the burning and looting and rioting up north. And Tucker Carlson said, let's talk about a place where there's not unrest like Waco, Texas. And I about fell out of my chair when I heard it. I thought, what a testament, not just to the sheriff's office, but to all law enforcement here. It's a combined effort. And I want to make sure that our good citizens know that this is not a one man show. It's not a one department show. It's all of us combined working together. And so it's I don't know what else to say, but we're keeping a lid on crime here as best we can. One of our slogans is, ‘your safety comes first, riding herd on the lawless.’ That's what we're doing. And so we take it to heart and we're going to continue that effort. And as long as the good citizens want to keep hiring me, and that's why I look at it, you'll hire me. And so I'm going to be in the fight and I will be doing everything I can. And I've got, right now, I started carrying a badge this past October, 53 years ago, and so I'm still carrying it.”
So aside from, you know, being hard on crime, how would you describe your leadership style?
PARNELL: “I try to be out there on the front line. I've never asked our guys to do anything that I won't do myself. I was out there with them this past weekend on their stings. We had a shootout back in on Labor Day and a guy who had shot two people tried to shoot the third one and they had to be airlifted out. It was out in the Golson area. And so I was out there on that shoot out with our guys. I try to be on the front line and unfortunately he started shooting at our guys and so they had to neutralize the threat and the guy lost his life. You don't win when you get in a shootout with the sheriff's office, any of our deputies. It's an unfortunate thing, but my leadership style, I try to set an example to be on the front line as much as I can, back our troops up. I support them. And that's the way I always did with U.S. Marshals. And I have been involved in a lot of high profile cases. And when I was with U.S. Marshals, we had a serial killer here. It was killing girls and he'd killed two little boys, been on death row and then paroled out and started killing again. So my brother and I initiated an investigation and a manhunt, was a guy named Kenneth Allan McDuff. And so we tracked him down through America's Most Wanted to Kansas City, got him arrested, And I went to Kansas City with a group of police officers, sheriffs, marshals and ran the search warrants on his apartment. We found it was like a slaughterhouse. We had knives, ropes, all kinds of things, duct tape that a killer needs to kidnap somebody and do away with them. Anyway, we brought him back. I testified, and in both of his capital murder cases, two different little girls that he had kidnaped and killed here and then witnessed his execution in 1998. So I've been on the front line of law enforcement all my career, and I'm not pulling back. They try to put me on the back line and because they don't want me getting shot or something. So anyway, don't put me on the back burner, you know, at least put me on the middle burner. But that's basically my style. Do I make everybody happy? No. Do I try? Yes, of course I do. But anyway, that's kind of my effort, my style in a nutshell.”
Going off of violent crimes, homicide offenses for the last quarter in 2023, there were seven homicides. All of them involved a firearm. How do you plan on promoting gun safety and responsibility in the community?
PARNELL: “That is a question that comes up all the time. I believe in the Second Amendment. 110%. And I'll tell you why. During the McDuff investigation, 15 women, maybe as many as 20, were all killed. They were killed with his bare hands. And one of those persons had any kind of firearm to protect themselves. He would be dead and there would be a lot of people alive. I'm for criminal control as opposed to gun control. I think if a criminal is caught with a firearm, I think he ought to get a life sentence. If he's committing a felony with a firearm, I don't think he ought to get a second chance. That's taking a hard line. But I think every law abiding citizen, emphasis on law abiding, has the right to carry a firearm to protect themselves, their family, their loved ones or the community or the citizens. And under Texas law, if you have a reason to believe your life is in danger by someone, you have a right to use deadly force with a firearm or knife or whatever you need to to use to protect yourself. And we have a stand your ground law here. You don't have to break and run from somebody that's trying to kill you. You can protect yourself. I believe that a firearm is necessary for people to be able to protect themselves. And I gave the concealed handgun class for seven years. We had over 5000 people come to our class over that period of time. We had young people, we had elderly people. We had a lady 86 years old that had been robbed and she did not want to be afraid anymore. And she took the course, got a firearm, learned how to shoot, and she felt so much better, so much more confidence just in surviving. And so, you know, people want to blame the gun. The gun doesn't jump up and do something. It's the person behind it. You don't outlaw cars because a lot of people get killed. You know, in automobile accidents. It's not the gun's fault, but a criminal with a gun needs to be dealt with very harshly, very harshly. And unfortunately, in a lot of cases, they're not. You know, they'll try to rob someone or whatever, and then they get out and, you know, on bond and they go right back to robbing. We've had that happen. These people that use a firearm in the commission of a crime or felony need to be locked up for a long, long time. And I've always taken a hard stance on it. And I'm going to stand behind that.”
What steps will you take to enhance transparency and accountability within the sheriff's office if you're reelected?
PARNELL: “Well, we have an open door policy, and I think we're kind of an open book. You know, there are a lot of things that we're working on that we can't tell the public. Our investigations and so forth. Our personnel matters, you know, through open records can be accessed. We're not trying to hide anything. And, you know, do we do everything perfectly? Of course not. Do we try? Yes. Do we make mistakes? Sure we do. But we try to learn from and not make them again. And so we try to be as transparent as we possibly can. And we will continue that.”
What is the reason behind not every officer at the sheriff's department having a body camera? I know that there are audio recordings, but not the actual image. If you're reelected, can voters expect this to change?
PARNELL: “Absolutely. And I know that that's been an issue with certain people. Every vehicle has a video camera inside that records everything going on inside the car. It has a dash cam. It records everything outside the car. Every officer has an audio recording on their body. So almost everything is being recorded. We've got, I believe, maybe six cameras now that we're testing. And so we're going to pick the best one and then we're going to see if the county commissioners will fund body cameras. And I'm not opposed to it, but it's just something we had all these other cameras. And so most every incident is being videoed except the actual video that the officer is seeing. But it was on audio. If the officer was in front of the car or inside the car, all of that is on video and it's recorded. So right now we're working on that. It's going to happen, but we're testing to see which camera system we like the best. I mean, there's a lot involved with. It's extremely expensive, but I think it's necessary. And so we're definitely going to be having body cameras for our troops.”
If the county commissioner, for whatever reason, doesn't want to fund that, would you be able to apply for grants for this?
PARNELL: “Right. We have a very good grant program, a good grant rider, and we try to get as much help as we can from grants and our bomb unit, the big high tech bomb machine that we got, that was a big portion of that was paid for with grant money. And so people see some of these the equipment that we have, the resources, most of them there's a program called a Pen 33 program, which is where we can get military surplus. So that's how we get our helicopters. The helicopters themselves do not cost the county anything, but we use those funds, those 1033 grant funds to fund our helicopters, their military OH58, which are basically build jet rangers. Then we repaint them, put the sheriff's logo on there, and they're beautiful helicopters. And so we had one of our helicopters last year on the border helping the Border Patrol and all the officers down there, the sheriff's office, they were flying the river. As soon as we get a new camera that we have, we're getting it put on the helicopter. We're going to be sending it back to the border probably at the end of January, early February. So all of those resources or most of them have been acquired through a grant program, grant money or seizure funds, compliments of the dope dealers.
So you are very open to sharing your equipment and resources with other law enforcement agencies?
PARNELL: "Absolutely, and I'm so glad you said that because we love doing that. We're at the starting gate when another sheriff's office or police department calls for a helicopter, we've got pilots we can put them up in the air. We have two bulletproof armored vehicles. We've utilized those in counties all around our helicopters have gone into 20 some odd other counties over and over. And we found a big marijuana field, 6000 marijuana plants in Robertson County, because we had the helicopter, the sheriff of Robertson County, call one after one evening and ask if we could get a helicopter down to Robertson County. And I said, absolutely, a color pilot. I said, hit the road, get that bird up in the air. Here's a sheriff. He went down with the sheriff, DPS. They flew around, found a huge marijuana field, I think 6000 plants, which is millions of dollars worth of dope. And so they seized all of that. Our helicopter came back. So we're just waiting for other agencies to ask us. And our bomb unit we have gone into, I don't know how many counties, with our bomb guys. When people find a bomb, we will go down and disarm it. We've been in Gillespie County, which is as far as Fredericksburg. We've been called over and over by ATF, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to assist them. So we have a lot of resources here. We're proud of it, but it's always available to anyone. We can't read any county line signs. We don't think, well, that's out of our country. It's in our state, it's in our country. And if we can help, we go.”
How has the sheriff's department approached Waco and McLennan County specific behavioral health needs and ensured that those with mental illness get the treatment that they need?
PARNELL: “We have a mental health unit. We're in the process of putting more officers under the mental health unit, and we take it very seriously when people have a mental breakdown or we feel like they need help, we are always there. We'll do an emergency detention order at one of the hospitals to have them evaluated and try to get them calmed down or in a better mental state. It is a very bad situation all over the country. It's really sad, but we do everything we can to help these people and we will continue. We're going to be putting more officers in our mental health unit.”
What is the turnover rate currently in the sheriff's department? And if you are reelected, how would you work to retain people in the department?
PARNELL: “It's my understanding that we have about a 10% turnover rate, which is low. If you look at any other business that has 500 employees, a turnover rate of 9 to 10%, it is very low and people leave for all kinds of reasons. You know, some of them get terminated, some of them find a better job. We just had a young man that just came on as a patrol deputy and then he got an offer for like 30 grand a year more than he's making here. So you can't blame people for going to bigger and better things. But, you know, people leave for all kinds of reasons: different location, different job, better job or whatever. And so we try everything we can to make it as comfortable in a safe place as they can work. You know, our jail, jails are never a fun place to work. I mean, it's the environment there. The people that you have to deal with daily. It's pretty rough. It's kind of like being in jail yourself and you're on furlough in the evening. Or when you get to go home, you've got to come back. But we're making some changes in the jail, I think, for the better. We have I guess it was last year, we went in and cleaned everything up. We repainted, we repainted all of the metal work, the walls. It looks like a brand new facility inside. And so we're trying to make the conditions inside the jail better for our employees. And we appreciate them so much. That's the hardest job in the sheriff's office is running the jail and that is the hardest job that our people can do is to be jailers. It's easy to make an arrest and put somebody in jail, but we've got to keep them. We've got to keep them safe in the right manner. And so that's a big effort there. Plus, you've got to feed them three meals a day. And when you have over 1400 people, you're looking at, what, over 4000 meals a day? And just the logistics of that. Our kitchen is running 24/7 practically, but our hat's off to our wonderful jail staff. They're incredible. And when I was with U.S. Marshals, we were putting people in and out all the time, and I couldn't have had a better liaison with our jail staff back then. It was just unbelievable how well they worked with the U.S. Marshals. And we have a lot of federal prisoners there now. And so that's a big deal.”
If you are reelected, what would be your main goals for your term?
PARNELL: “The main goal is to keep the heat turned up and the hammer down on the criminals and serve the citizens of our community the best we can and keep them as safe as possible. Citizens, their concern is mainly about two things, and that is their safety, the safety of their family. And that's one of our logos. Your safety comes first and riding herd on the lawless. We take a hard, hard line on crime and we're going to continue to do that. And just I think you may have noticed on every one of our cars we have in God we trust on the back, and I tell our guys when they get in that car, that's the first thing they read is in God we trust. And then right above that, we have the American flag. And so I tell them look at the American flag second, thank the Lord you live in America instead of some godforsaken country like Iraq or Bangladesh or somewhere. And then you read Sheriff. Now tell them if you don't have the Lord riding with you, you're riding alone. And I got some pushbacks when I put in God We Trust on the cars.”
So that was your idea to put [the logos] on the cars?
PARNELL: “Yes, absolutely. And so I believe it was 2015 that I put them on. So it's coming up on nine years. People said, well, we don't need a bunch of rolling churches. I said, I think we do. The more churches we got out there the better. And they said, what are you going to do if somebody peels in God we trust off? And I said, they'll do it one time, one time only and read between the lines. So we want to do everything we can just to keep our good citizens safe because we appreciate them so much and we appreciate our other law enforcement agencies from around the county in the state. We work very closely with U.S. Marshals, with the FBI, with the federal agencies, ATF. We also work very well with our surrounding police departments. And so I want to keep that liaison good and that liason going.
Is there anything else that you would like voters to know about you before they go out and cast their votes?
PARNELL: “Absolutely. I am the best man for the job and I appreciate you hiring me for the past 11 years, and I would like for y’all to hire me again. And that's the way I look at it. And I will be doing everything within my power to keep you safe and guard your pocketbook. We don't want to waste our good citizens' money, so we try to keep them as safe as we possibly can and be as frugal as we can with our expenses.”
AUTUMN: “Thank you for being here, Parnell.”
PARNELL: “You're so welcome.”