IN FOCUS: The Longview Police Department's work to address homelessness
LONGVIEW, Texas (KETK) – In this edition of East Texas In Focus, KETK's Nolan Hoffman continued his conversation with the Chief of the Longview Police Department Anthony Boone about addressing homelessness in the city, along with training and hiring staff.
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Boone started the second part of his conversation with Nolan by discussing the department's training and hiring procedures. When Boone started as chief in the summer of 2022, the department had 25 vacancies but now they have only one open position.
'I think over the last couple of years, we have really attracted people that are tied to service and want to help and want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. That has really helped our staffing levels. I am very proud to have just one vacancy,' Boone said.
For Boone, the Longview Police Department's hiring standards are different than other departments. That means their tests are more personal so they can make sure they get the right person for the job.
'Our standards are a little bit different than the rest of the world. So, right off the bat, after somebody comes in and does their initial testing and there's a physical test and a written test, we give them a packet that's probably about 40 pages thick of basically their whole life story. So it gets very personal, very quick,' Boone said. 'We also have psychological exams that are required through the state but we also go beyond that. We do polygraph examinations, a very in-depth background investigation, which goes much deeper than just a reference check for most other jobs. And so just the the length of the process, that alone eliminates some people from even wanting to go through it.'
Boone said if around ten people show for one test only around one of those ten people will be hired. He also credited their training success to their new police academy which they started during the COVID-19 pandemic as a collaboration with Kilgore College.
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Then Nolan and Boone's conversation turned to the subject of the unhoused population in Longview and the work Longview PD does with them every day.
'Dealing with unhoused individuals, that's something that probably we deal with every day,' Boone said. 'Sometimes we have people that end up either sleeping somewhere or they're they're at a location where that business owner may not want them. So that will create a what we call a criminal trespass call, where they want us to come out there and then remove that that person from the location.'
According to Boone, some of these calls will be dealt with by patrol officers but they also have a Police Outreach Services Team (POST) that started in 2018. Boone said that in 2024 alone the two person team was able to place 95 unhoused people into housing or rehabilitation.
Along with getting people into housing, they've also been able to help people get back home after getting stuck in Longview.
'Sometimes folks, they've come to Longview for, maybe initially it was for a job, maybe it was along the way they followed somebody else and they've just gotten stuck here, and we've had 41 individuals that we're able to send back to wherever home was,' Boone said. 'Now on that we don't just put somebody on a bus and send them to wherever, but we actually contact family on the other side and make sure that there's a family member, a friend, somebody that's willing and ready to receive them when they get get back to home.'
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Boone also discussed their ID program where they can help people who've lost their identification get new state ID documents.
'Sometimes we've learned that these individuals, they're eligible to receive benefits, but they've lost their ID along the way,' Boone said. 'If we can prove who they are and we can help them get a state ID, that's the first step to then let them get their Social Security card again.'
While Boone hopes their work is helping to decrease the homeless population in the area he also stressed that this is an issue all across the country.
'I hope that helps decrease it in our area, but I do think that it will continue to be an issue. I think, until we figure out how to tackle mental health as a society and solve our drug abuse issues, I think we will continue to see some of these trends,' Boone said. 'I do definitely believe it's a much larger problem than just law enforcement. I just think law enforcement's received the bulk of 'hey y'all, y'all take care of this.' But this is definitely a community problem, this is as a society problem. And we're all gonna have to put our heads together and may have to spend some money together to figure out how to to really make this work and truly help people.'
In the full second half of their conversation in the video above, Nolan and Boone spoke about the department's community outreach efforts and Boone's hopes for the city. To view the first half of their conversation, click here for last week's episode of East Texas In Focus.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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