The Galveston County Daily News

TEXAS CITY — Vandals attacked the new Texas City Police Department substation in West Texas City early Wednesday morning.

The glass door and windows of the Park Avenue City Hall Annex building across from Carver Park were smashed between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. The crime was discovered by a patrol officer as poll workers arrived to open the early voting site in the building.

Police department spokesman Sgt. Joe Stanton said the vandals used several large rocks in an attempt to break out the windows. Because the windows are made with security glass, the vandals did not get into the building, police said.

Damage was estimated at $2,500, Stanton said.

The front door was repaired by 9 a.m. Voting was not disrupted, Galveston County elections coordinator Douglas Godinich said.

The attack comes two weeks after the police department opened the substation in the building. Texas City Police Chief Robert Burby said the substation is at the center of his department’s community policing efforts in West Texas City.

“I didn’t expect them to do this so quick,” Burby said of the attack on the substation. “I knew they would try something.

“If someone would do this to a police station, these are the people we need to try and find.”

Burby said he suspects the attack was a message from the criminal element in the community that doesn’t appreciate an increased police presence. The chief also questioned the attackers’ common sense.

“A rational crook, if there is such a thing, knows that this sort of thing is going to draw an unnecessary amount of heat,” Burby said. “They have got to know we are not going to take this sitting down. We are the symbol of public safety.”

So Burby sent a message of his own when he ordered extra patrol officers and the department’s Field Investigative Team to increase enforcement in the area. Burby said, too, that while nobody had been arrested, residents in the community had given police several solid leads.

“The people in the community are mad about this, too,” he said. “They’re real mad.”

West Texas City has one of the highest crime rates in the city and has become a new focus by Burby to crack down on street-level crimes. As of Oct. 10, police had responded to 9,997 calls for service in the area this year, including 196 instances of burglary or criminal mischief, which includes vandalism.