SAN ANTONIO – Clifford Dorn, president of the nonprofit Operation Safe Shield is from San Antonio, so he says it’s natural that he would step into the community to help law enforcement in his community stay safe.
Since the organization’s inception they have fundraised enough money to equip over 100 vehicles with bullet resistant side windows and windshields, but most of those have been in the Brazos Valley area.
“I think it’s 115 cars in the Brazos Valley. So, we have seven counties up there. So we’ve done the Brazos Valley and Fayette County. We did a couple for them, and we’ve all done it through fundraising abilities,” he said.
Texas legislature passed a bill to equip Department of Public Safety vehicles with bullet resistant protection on the vehicles, but other law enforcement agencies don’t fall under that. Some cities like San Antonio have funds set aside to begin equipping patrol cars. But Dorn says smaller agencies don’t have that kind of flexibility on the budget, and that’s where his organization steps in.
“We’re trying to equip all the cars in the 25 departments around, Bexar County, all the smaller departments like here at Live Oak, where they don’t have those kind of budgets that they can go in if they only have to do five cars, that’s still almost $50,000 for them. They don’t have those kind of excess funds,” he said.
The upgrades to the vehicles cost about $9,000 each. Dorn is hoping the community in Bexar County will step up when they begin fundraising in the fall.
“The least I could do is make sure that they’re protected when they come to save me. If I’m being attacked out here and they come running up on them. I don’t want the perp to turn around and shoot them. And so I want them to be protected,” he said.