Mertzon Hires 27-Year-Old Chief to Head New Police Department

For the first time since the town was established as a post office in 1908, the city of Mertzon is now home to a police department, brought about by a spike in population and an increase in oilfield traffic.

The department, headed by 27-year-old officer-gone-chief Ethan Farmer, is currently in a state of limbo as they await an agency number from the state, but the young chief and the city’s council are feverishly working toward submitting the documentation necessary to make the Mertzon PD official.

Growing up in Africa, the son of missionaries, Ethan Farmer found out about the job through the church. He had lived in Zaire for several years as a child until war and the threat of rebel fighters moved his family home to Florida. After a year in Florida, Farmer’s family relocated back to Africa in Tanzania, where he lived until he was 13.

“It was a different way to grow up,” he said. “It made you appreciate a lot of things. Like a said, electricity was something that we—in Zaire, we never had it. It was a mud wall, leaf roof hut. If you wanted hot water, they literally like boiled it and dropped it in the gravity-fed system for a shower, which was like a hose with a nozzle on the end.”

Now 27, Farmer’s family has settled back stateside in San Angelo, where his father is one of the pastors at the Christian Church. When a Mertzon city council member said they were looking to found a police department, father passed on the news to son.

“I grew up in San Angelo since I was about 13 and I had been looking for another department to get on with, mainly due to the pay that was in Ballinger,” Farmer said. “When I started in Ballinger, I was making $10.20 an hour, which is pretty crazy.”

Farmer started his career in law enforcement at the age of 21 with the San Angelo Police Department. After three years with the SAPD he decided it was time for a change and moved to Ballinger, where he had been hired on as a patrolman and spent the next three years.

He said he wanted to try something small and the change was good: during his tenure with the department, Farmer was recognized for narcotics enforcement and joined the National Guard, just like the small-town chief.

“Even with their small department, I was gone for almost over a year for all of the different training and stuff that I had while I was there and they made it work with the six guys they had,” Farmer said. “They covered shifts and did overtime and allowed me to pursue the military stuff.”

Military has always been a passion for Farmer, who hopes to one day work with wounded warriors as a physical therapist. He currently has three military occupational specialties himself—infantry, military police and combat medic—and has an EMT certification he believes is vital to his role as chief in a small town.

“There’s been plenty of wrecks I’ve showed up on where—brutal. I mean, things you probably would never want to see in your life. And I’m like, ‘ma’am, just hold on. I mean, put some pressure on it. The ambulance is on its way,’” Farmer said. “Sometimes you’re out in the county and it takes 10 minutes for them to get there and this lady might bleed out…”

As a member of the National Guard, Farmer’s unit is located in Dallas and training takes place once a month—usually on a weekend—for three to five days, he said. He’s also a full-time student at Angelo State University working toward a bachelor’s in Homeland Security and Kinesiology, and is a reserve officer for the Ballinger Police Department.

The balancing act has become a matter of prioritizing, he said, recalling days spent before the television and behind game controls.

“I would say I don’t have a personal life,” he said. “I’m very, very work driven. Ever since I came out of military training, I just realized that I wasted a lot time as a civilian. I used to play video games all the time, and watch TV three to five hours a day…I just—something in me just got re-programmed, I guess, after I got out of the military training and I just realize that I was wasting a lot of my time.”

The revelation, Farmer said, came roughly two and a half years ago, while he was employed at the Ballinger Police Department. The head of a one-man department in Mertzon now, Farmer says his ability to tend to all of his duties will be highly reliant on his own time management and the understanding and support of those around him.

“Basically, I’ll be here every day I don’t go to class,” he said, noting he has three days of classes each week. The remaining four days he’ll likely work 10-hour shifts, but will still be “available” even when he’s not actually available.

“I’ll be on call, so to speak,” Farmer explained. “If it’s a critical incident or something like that, then I’ve already discussed with my professors and everything and they said if something like that does happen just get a memorandum from the mayor…and they would excuse the absence.”

Farmer has worked out a similar system with regard to his military training, which can at times consume weeks. When he’s unavailable, the Irion County Sheriff will respond to his calls as he has been, Farmer said.

“Without a good working relationship between the city of Mertzon’s police department and the sheriff’s office, I don’t think this would be very practical because there’s no way I could cover it,” he said. “No way. Not by myself.”

Building a Department

Mertzon Mayor Carol Shaw explained that the community has been in talks about establishing a police department for several years, and finally got the ball rolling roughly four months ago.

“We have so much more traffic because of the increased oil activity,” Shaw said. “Bigger trucks, our side streets are just being demolished from the activity…they run stop signs, they speed through town, things like that…the sheriff’s office…pretty much has their hands full trying to police the whole county.”

Shaw said the oil boom as also spurred growth, including the addition of at least 10 new RV parks with nine to 10 spaces apiece, a new Mertzon and Harvest Inn and a Family Dollar, the local shopping outlet for Mertzonians.

Shaw stated that at the last census in 2010, the population was reported as 781, which she felt was underreported. Now, estimates are going as high as 1,200-1,400, she said.

The rapidly growing town is need of more law enforcement, Shaw said, got serious about creating a department in 2014. The task has been arduous, she said, and has included an extensive amount of research and legal documentation.

After Farmer was hired, his first task became sifting through the mounds of paperwork a municipality must submit to the state in order to receive an agency number, and ironing out the rough rubric.

“I have to give the state so many different pieces of documentation and paperwork,” Farmer explained, “a line-item budget, make sure that our insurance coverage is going to cover police liability, a policy for the department…make sure that the storage lockers as far as evidence is actually certified…

So far, Farmer said, he’s managed to submit everything to the state within the first two weeks aside from a dispatch agreement with the Irion County Sheriff’s Office, who will take and forward the town’s emergency calls.

Until the state provides him a department number, however, Farmer will not be able to patrol in a police capacity in Mertzon. Instead, Shaw stated, he’ll get started monitoring code compliance, another of the tasks the city had in mind when they began contemplating establishing a police department.

“We do not want the reputation of being a place that just gives tickets,” Shaw said. “We want to be helpful to our community and contribute to the health and safety of our citizens.”

Selected from a pool of two applicants, Farmer is currently the only officer employed by the city of Mertzon, but there is a plan to grow the department to up to four patrolmen along with the Chief.

“I think we’re talking around four [officers], but a lot of this stuff is going to come down to funding, of course…” he said. “If we get at least four, then we would be able to at least have several officers that could come out during the week and especially on the days that I’m not here to work some of that in as well.”

The Mertzon Police Department set up is being modeled after Miles, who established their department roughly five years ago and has a part-time chief and a handful of reserve officers.

“I’ve been talking to [the chief of Miles PD] directly, especially about the budget and stuff because there was nothing that was in place when I came in,” he said. “I looked at the sizes of the cities, and he’s also geologically [sic] in kind of the same area. He’s been very, very helpful.”

Aspirations

After graduation from ASU, Farmer intends to apply to the physical therapy graduate program, and would ultimately like to earn his doctorate.

Noting the hostility toward law enforcement percolating in the nation, Farmer said he doesn’t know if he’d like to stay in the field, but admitted it wasn’t his long-term aspiration.

“I really don’t know what will happen in the future, to be honest,” he said. “I know I’ll be here probably until I at least finish my bachelor’s, maybe even longer than that depending on if I get into PT school or not, but I want to have another option to fall back on. I’d like to work with wounded warriors, wounded vets.”

With six years of law enforcement already on his resume and now a chief title, Farmer will be poised to continue his career after graduation, if he chooses. The decision, he said, is being left up to God, and while he loves being an officer, his perception of the job has changed dramatically since his first year as a rookie.

“When I first got into law enforcement, I thought, ‘ok, I’m going to go out there and run around and be superman,’” he said. “I’ve realized, since being in law enforcement, we’re a reactionary force. Bad things happen, people call the police, you show up four or five minutes later and it’s very, very rare that you can prevent a crime from occurring…so my goal coming in here is to better educate the public.”

Farmer is an NRA instructor, and would like to hold classes to educate the citizens of Mertzon on handling guns and personal protection from a legal standpoint.

“People have a very delusional thought that police officers are going to save them in the heat of the moment. They really do,” Farmer said. “…if somebody’s breaking into your house and you call law enforcement—especially in a small community like this—there may not even be somebody on duty.”

Although he has many plans for the job he took on roughly three weeks ago, uncertainty looms as to how long he’ll be able to stay in Mertzon. Regarding any fears from the city’s side on whether Farmer will be able to establish a solid enough foundation in the next couple of years to enable a smooth transition if he does move on, Farmer said it’s a subject he and the city haven’t really discussed.

“Tomorrow’s never guaranteed,” he said, “in any aspect of life…It’s in God’s hands. There’s no other way to put it. I’ll do as good of a job as I can, exceed the expectations like I have in just about everything in the last three years…”