Dallas police chief Eddie Garcia talks retirement, success and regrets
FULL INTERVIEW: Chief Eddie Garcia on leaving Dallas
Dallas police chief Eddie Garcia shocked city leaders and members of his department by announcing his retirement from policing. Garcia is starting a new job as an assistant city manager over public safety in Austin next month. He sat down with FOX 4's Steven Dial to talk about his time in Dallas and his biggest regrets.
DALLAS - Dallas police chief Eddie Garcia will be on the job for one more month before taking a new assistant city manager job in Austin.
Garcia will oversee public safety in Austin under his old boss in Dallas, T.C. Broadnax.
The leadership shakeup comes after Garcia reached an agreement with the City of Dallas in May that would have kept him in Dallas into 2027.
Since joining the force in 2021, Garcia has been credited with bringing violent crime down in Dallas for multiple consecutive years with an analytics-based approach to tackling crime.
"We're headed in the right direction. We're not perfect, there's a lot of things we have to do better and will continue to do that, but we're certainly on the right direction," he said.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson previously described Garcia as the best police chief in the country.
Garcia says his final goal is to have the next Dallas police chief be someone internal.
"My goals here were always to reduce violent crime, increase community trust and increase police morale. The fourth one is that hopefully, the chief comes from here," he said. "If we think the department is headed in the right direction, which I truly believe, it's because of the people that are within these walls."
Garcia also thinks the Dallas Police Department is in a good position to hand the keys over while things are going well.
The chief called being in law enforcement a sprint, not a marathon and he wanted to be able to be in a position with better work-life balance.
"I've been sprinting for a while, and it would have been 33 years in February. My kids played a big role in it. They are young adults, and they are going to start families of their own and I want to be present. I wanted something with balance, because there is no balance in this job. There is no balance, that's not a word a police chief should utter in this job because there isn't. If you can find something to work hard at while able to find balance, that's something I was ready for in my next chapter," Garcia explained.
Garcia said he had been thinking about leaving the position, but that the murder of Officer Darron Burks weighed heavily on him.
Dallas police officer Darron Burks remembered at funeral service
Family and friends of Dallas police officer Darron Burks, who was shot and killed while sitting in his police cruiser, are getting an opportunity to say their final goodbyes.
The announcement of his departure from Dallas to Austin did not go how he planned.
Media reports broke the news of his retirement.
"I regret how it came out. There's no question about it. This was not the way it was supposed to be," Garcia said. "I should have done some things different because my men and women should have heard from me first."
Garcia says his biggest regret was not being able to grow the department more than it has already grown.
"I think we will get there," Garcia said.
The police chief's last day will be on November 1.