Texas Anti-Gang Center breaks ground on new facility in Northeast Lubbock

As Lubbock crimes related to narcotics distribution and use increase year after year, local, state and federal agencies came together in 2018 to collaborate in their efforts to stop these types of crimes.

Dig Deeper: Lubbock TAG Center works to deter gang-related activity

This collaboration and its efforts can continue to grow as its leaders break ground on Thursday on the new Texas Anti-Gang Center facility in northeast Lubbock. County Judge Curtis Parrish said the new center's construction is a "giant step" toward fighting crime in Lubbock.

"We're giving them a place a house, for them to come together to to collaborate together to continue to fulfill the mission," Parrish said. "Working together city, county, state federal officers coming together, sharing information for one goal and one goal in mind only and that's to fight crime."

Situated next to the Lubbock County Detention Center, TAG Administrator Phillip Partin said the new facility's construction follows an audit of its current facility.

"We found is that upgrading our current facility or modernizing it was gonna cost about 10 times as much as what we had allocated," Partin said. "I didn't think that would be a proper use of taxpayers' money to spend millions of dollars on a leased building, that we have no long-term future."

Partin looked to Austin and was able to secure funding through the Texas Office of the Governor for the construction of the new facility, which will feature a video analytics room, a state-of-the-art SWAT-ready room, and offices for TAG agents.

Lubbock County Sheriff Kelly Rowe said the new facility is configured to account for future growth and ensure the flow of intelligence and information across the agencies.

"As agencies grow, they can assign more personnel over to the TAG. We'll have plenty of room but it is built in such a way to really help facilitate that collaboration amongst the agencies," Rowe said.

What is the Texas Anti Gang Center in Lubbock?

Lubbock County Sheriff Kelly Rowe said the idea for the center was sparked after a conversation between him and former Lubbock Police Chief Greg Stevens.

"We got to talking about what was going on in Lubbock, in Lubbock County and noting what we were dealing with primarily from a crime perspective," Rowe said. "All of our crime for the most part, always comes back to the distribution and use of narcotics."

Before the creation of TAG, Rowe said LPD, LSO and other agencies worked together in an informal capacity, but both he and Stevens agreed a more formal collaboration was needed.

Soon after, the 6th TAG center in Texas — the first one outside of the major city — was created in Lubbock. In essence, Rowe said the TAG program "helps bring together area law enforcement to confront the challenges of dealing with the high volume of narcotics that are being trafficked in" while also dealing with gang activity.

Rowe said the TAG also helps alleviate the challenges agencies saw when operating independently, such as sharing real-time information and intelligence. It also lowers the chances of another agency interfering with another agency's work.

"Sadly, as we've seen in certain cases of a blue-on-blue situation, we don't know it's two agencies working together," Rowe said. "We have that instant deconfliction and we're maximizing that to better blanket the entire community to deal with these issues."

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: TAG breaks ground on Lubbock facility to deal with narcotics, gangs