LA MARQUE – In the City of La Marque, sufficient efforts are underway by local police officers to reduce crime in the area and focus on community oriented policies.

The city has recently issued an online statement about the Trinity Community Watch, which will begin next month. The event will be held on Thursday, July 24th, 2025 at 6:00 PM at Richard A Kirsten VFW post 8248, 901 Main St., La Marque, Texas.

In the statement, the cities police force wrote, “We need your involvement to take back our streets and make our city safe. Come and join us for a fellowship to rejuvenate partnership between your police department and community via an active community watch for your neighborhood.”

Police Chief Randall Aragon stated that this event marks the initial opening day of the service, and will consist of a kickoff meeting to establish the community watch for the area. Residents who live in the area are invited to attend, as community involvement is how the most success has been found through these programs in other areas of the city.

The “Trinity” Community Watch is intended for residents living within the geographical boundaries listed below:

• North – Ross Street
• South – City Limits
• East – Highway 3
• West – Howell Ave / I45

City of La Marque Police Chief Randall Aragon elaborated on the Trinity community watch group, explaining more about other community watches throughout the city and how they have been the reducing overall crime rates in La Marque.

“We’re very heavily into community oriented policing, which is an effort to develop a partnership with the community to work on solving problems. Each officer that works on a community watch neighborhood is assigned an area and they are held responsible for the area to work up a partnership with the community,” Chief Aragon told KGTX7.

Aragon stated that the cities goal is to have every neighborhood throughtout the city of La Marque covered by a community watch area, assuring each citizen has the opportunity to have a personal connection with a member of the police force.

“Every area has a boundary, and Trinity will be number 14. Once we complete one more, we’ll have the whole east side of our city covered with community watch areas. Then we’re going to move to the west side of the interstate, once we do two more on the West Side, we’ll have every part of our city covered with an officer working in a zone.”

The police force has recieved lots of positive feedback from citizens about their crime reduction strategies and how they have made residents feel safer in their communities.

Aragon shared, “Our citizens love it because they have officers assigned to them personally to work their area. I hold the officers responsible for keeping the crime rate down, as well as the citizens’ fear of crime down, and so far it’s really working well.”

Not only has the police force recieved positive feedback from residents, they have also been gifted many awards for their crime reduction efforts.

“We won several awards in the last few years for our community policing effort. We won a Texas Municipal League Municipal Excellence Award in 2024. And then we became an All-America City in 24, and one-third of it was because of the law enforcement strategy we had. And then we won an International City Management Award, which is an international award last year. We’re doing the right things. I mean, we could still improve, but we’re doing really well,” Chief Aragon told KGTX7.

Not only do these awards speak to the hard work that the police force is executing, but additionally do the percentages in which crime has dropped in the city of La Marque over the years.

“Over the last, 2022, 23, and 24, our violent crime rate has gone down 8%, our property crime has gone down 18%, and the overall crime, to count both of them, has gone down 17%. So we’re doing really good on crime going down. We have traditionally had a high crime rate, we still have a high crime rate, but it’s going down, and we’re working on it, and our citizens are very pleased that we’re bringing both the crime rate and the fear of crime down.”

The City of La Marque police force will continue to work towards lowering the crime rate in the coming years, with community watch programs being an important part of these efforts. As stated by Police Chief Aragon, the cities main effort is to prevent and control crime, reduce citizens’ fear of crime, and enhance the quality of life for all citizens.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons