PUBLIC SAFETY
Hometown law officers maximize resources
Even as several crime categories saw drops in Taylor and Hutto in 2025, funding challenges have the cities’ police departments seeking creative strategies to make the most of their resources while manpower remains an issue.
In addition, the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office is using more high-tech tools to take a bite out of crime.
With populations of 14,661 and 17,872 respectively, Hutto and Taylor are small cities with limited budgets. The revenue the towns bring in has to fund all municipal services, including the police departments.
In addition, being part of the greater Austin area with more than 2.4 million people creates larger challenges as East Williamson County law enforcement deals with homegrown offenders as well as roving criminal activity from other towns.
“The resources that we have as a city are not unlimited. With our requests to meet the growing demands of the community, we have to be measured in what we ask for and the timing of that because if we go and we get everything, that’s taking something from some other department,” said Hutto Police Chief Jeffrey Yarbrough.
Yarbrough and Taylor’s interim Police Chief Joseph Branson both say the need for more patrol officers is increasing as the area population grows, but in the meantime they are finding other solutions to keep their communities safe.
Taylor is employing more cameras that are tied directly into the police station, enabling constant monitoring of potential hot spots for drug use and vandalism. The city is also enacting a vacant building ordinance that will help in fire prevention as well as reduce the potential for criminal activity.
The city is also pushing a new ordinance that limits loitering and vagrancy downtown. Meanwhile, Hutto is increasing from one drone pilot to four, in order to have more coverage for an aerial program Yarbrough said has been an effective means to add more “eyes” to watch for crime. He has reworked shift coverage and patrol sectors to maintain a consistent police presence throughout town, he added.
Yarbrough has also been able to create additional staff positions to free up patrol officers from non-patrol functions. The department has added a court compliance accreditation manager to take over gathering data needed for trials and a crisis intervention officer to assist when an enforcement-trained person is needed for situations involving people with mental illness or diminished capacity.
Both chiefs say the relationship between officers and the community is an important factor. Hutto has several programs that put officers out on the streets, and Yarbrough himself frequently meets with new businesses.
Taylor has a downtown foot patrol that helps establish a visible presence.
“We’ve had great results from that, getting to personally know our downtown business owners, shoppers and residents that visit downtown. That’s been a really good program for us,” Branson said.
POOLINGRESOURCES
Williamson County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Noel Johnson said the county sees many of the same types of crime trends as the cities do, and the local agencies frequently work together.
“We have a very strong working relationship with our city partners,” Johnson said. “In some of the smaller communities we really rely on them and they rely on us for assistance, especially on the east side of the county. Areas like Granger and Thrall and Bartlett are much smaller departments, much more limited. So we rely on them to support us and to back us up and we try to be there for them in any way that we can as well.”
WCSO included city law-enforcement agencies on several proactive initiatives in 2025 targeting trending crimes.
The Criminal Investigation Department conducted package-theft operations during the holidays, construction-theft operations in areas with a lot of development activity, vehicle-burglary operations and “antijugging” operations focused on a couple of banks that had seen a high number of customers targeted.
Johnson said jugging is a dangerous crime that has grown in the past few years. It involves thieves watching to see when a person comes out of a bank with an envelope holding money or important documents. They then follow the person to their next destination, and if the victim leaves the envelope in the car the thieves break in and steal it. People often leave their valuables in the car if their next stop is a business. If they go directly home, the burglars then know where they live and that they might have cash.
The Flock Safety license-plate readers that are used on main transportation corridors across the county have led to additional opportunities for different agencies to work together as they look for or track the progress of a suspect vehicle. Though controversial in the eyes of privacy advocates, many residential neighborhoods have now installed license-plate readers that can be monitored by WCSO as well.
“It’s been a game changer,” Johnson said. “We are covering almost 1,000 square miles and serving over 300,000 people in the unincorporated areas of the county, and many times working with anywhere from nine to 15 deputies on duty at a time. With the numbers of call-ins that we have, we definitely are working hard to make sure that we’re meeting those needs.”
According to demographic figures, Williamson County is one of the fastest-growing in the nation, and new industries including data centers and the multibilliondollar Samsung Austin Semiconductor are fueling much of the population expansion, which likely will lead to more calls for first responders.
CRIMEBYTHENUMBERS
Offenses tracked by the Texas Department of Public Safety Uniform Crime Reporting System show that countywide, reported crimes decreased from 2024 to 2025.
For the Sheriff’s Office, total incidents dipped from 4,524 to 3,967.
Most offense categories saw declines, except for a slight rise in fraud, animal cruelty and obscene material cases. Burglary, larceny and vehicle theft saw significant decreases of more than 20%. Murder/ non-negligent homicide in the county increased 118% from 11 to 24 cases in 2025.
Manslaughter by negligence increased from one incident in 2024 to five in 2025.
WCSO cleared 871 of the 3,967 cases, with some open episodes still being investigated.
In Taylor, the Police Department handled 6% fewer incidents, dropping from 824 in 2024 to 775 in 2025. Most of the decrease was in crimes against property, shrinking from 509 to 413 with a significant lower tally in larceny and theft offenses.
However, crimes against persons rated higher in 2025, jumping from 239 to 267 reports. The city saw an increase in assault offenses and in forcible sex offenses.
Drug arrests also increased in 2025, from 61 to 79. Taylor PD cleared 244 of 775 total incidents in 2025.
In Hutto, there was an almost 16% nosedive in criminal incidents, falling from 1052 in 2024 to 885 in 2025.
The biggest decreases were in drug offenses, larceny, theft and burglary. Vandalism and fraud saw small increases. Crimes against persons also rose slightly, from 223 to 234 incidents.
Hutto officers cleared 223 of 885 total incidents.
The majority of criminal arrests involve male suspects, with 75% of those arrested by the Sheriff’s Office being men.
In Hutto, 71.4% are male. In Taylor, 75.2% are male.
ACTIVISTS:FEDERALINITIATIVES FREEZINGOUTVICTIMS
Some industry officials, activists and pundits in the media have questioned whether there truly has been a drop in offenses.
Immigration status and deportations in Texas have affected how residents view law enforcement. Some crime victims are not calling for police help due to a fear of deportation, pro-immigration advocates argue.
Yarbrough and Branson clarified that immigration is a federal issue, not a municipal one, and their officers are not asking those they encounter for their immigration status.
“We don’t want anybody in our community to feel like they’re extremely vulnerable and they don’t have any confidence in reporting an incident because HPD is going to inquire about their immigration status,” Yarbrough said. “That is not what HPD or most police departments focus on. We focus on helping the victim, holding the person who committed the crime accountable and providing the support and resources to those people to get them through the crisis.”
As of late January, neither Hutto nor Taylor worked directly with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, but the dynamic is changing quickly.
In January, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis updated the city’s policies to allow Austin officers to follow their own discretion on whether and when to contact ICE.
The Legislature passed a law in 2025 that requires all counties with a jail, including Williamson, to enter into an agreement to work with ICE. The state also requires local police departments to support federal immigration operations when requested.
“The Taylor Police Department is not assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement with immigrationenforcement activities,” Branson said. “TPD would only provide assistance to ICE if requested during an emergency, and only in the same manner we would assist any law-enforcement agency facing an immediate public safety concern. Public safety depends on open communication and cooperation between residents and law enforcement, and we are committed to maintaining that trust.”
BUILDINGABETTERFORCE
Hutto and Taylor are both in need of additional officers to answer the public’s expectations of “responsive public safety,” but in reality both departments are running out of room.
The Taylor Police Department is shoehorned into an old beer distribution facility. Hutto operates from the former City Hall. Taylor has some officers working in a converted storage container. Yarbrough recently split his own office in half to create additional room.
Both departments require more space for officers and the technology that comes with modern policing, and that relief is on the horizon.
Hutto is in the early design phase of what will likely be a $57 million Justice Center to house the Police Department and the Municipal Court. Taylor will break ground this year on a $53 million Justice Center that will incorporate a new City Hall as well as the Police Department and Municipal Court.
Williamson County is also planning to build a new Justice Complex to hold its expanding Sheriff’s Office operations, as well as a new county jail facility and the district courts.
“Our community is growing. Our staffing is growing but it’s not growing at a pace that catches up. It’s growing at a pace that we as a community can manage when it comes to the many different needs of a community like this,” Yarbrough said. “At the end of the day, we serve our community. They don’t serve us, we serve them. So we have to be responsive to their needs.”
More information on crime statistics can be found at txucr.nibrs.com/Report/CrimeTrends.
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