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Leading by example: Police veteran grows TSC criminal justice program

Monitor - 7/19/2018

July 19--BROWNSVILLE -- After 30 years with the Dallas Police Department, Willemina Edwards has learned more than a thing or two about what it takes to be in law enforcement.

Now she's sharing that knowledge with the cadets of the Texas Southmost College Criminal Justice Institute, where Edwards has built up the program as director for just more than one year.

For instance, women have to shake off how they have been conditioned to avoid aggressiveness and assertiveness, she said. Men struggle with psychological aspects like empathy, believing they can't show emotion and still be tough.

"We can do it, but we have to work really hard to break down the walls of training we've received throughout our lives," she said. "I know those special issues we have, and I tailor to what we have to work on -- male and female."

Edwards' own path to law enforcement was a winding one. Between her junior year of high school and junior year at the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a pre-med student, her father and two aunts passed away from heart disease.

"I was going through a phase of depression," she said. "The fact that I stayed in school and graduated was a miracle. If it was not for my having a Christian foundation, my story would have been very different."

She went on to work for the American Heart Association and considered moving on to a career in the military or FBI when she saw a newspaper job ad seeking Dallas police officers.

Throughout her career, Edwards worked in communications, narcotics, internal affairs, financial crimes and more. Though she decided to retire as a lieutenant from the police force, she looked for a chief position to take on. Edwards accepted the director position at TSC in June 2017 and found herself teaching her first cohort of cadets later that month -- and completely on her own.

Edwards built the curriculum on her own, and for about six months worked in her office until 11 p.m. each night writing lessons and teaching what she developed the next day. She created partnerships with the Brownsville Police Department and District Attorney's Office, and Edwards said she has a supportive advisory board with six local law enforcement chiefs.

Edwards even managed to pull off the grueling task of gathering documents for a Texas Commission on Law Enforcement audit by spending one week scouring five TSC locations for the documents she needed -- missing only a single page.

"I don't want to say it was overwhelming, but it was a lot," she said. "If I had not been a workaholic, I would not have been here until 11 o'clock, and a lot of things would not have been in place."

The mom of four said she and her husband travel between the Rio Grande Valley and Dallas, where her youngest daughter is visiting on her summer college break. Edwards, with support from the TSC board of trustees, has big plans for the Criminal Justice Institute. Graduates in the future and past will be able to put their coursework toward an associate of applied science degree in 2019, she said, and more scholarship opportunities are in the works. The program is acquiring more staff and technology.

"We're really excited about moving forward," she said.

nadia@brownsvilleherald.com

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(c)2018 The Monitor (McAllen, Texas)

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