City names first female police chief
Elgin gives top job to Lisa Womack: Lifelong Texan with more than 13 years experience will join force in August

By Nathaniel Zimmer
The Courier News

The city named its first female police chief Monday, handing the department's top job to Lisa Womack, the chief of police in Sugar Land, Texas, a booming Houston suburb of about 71,000.

Womack, 39, replaces William Miller, who retired in February after a half-dozen years as chief.

Prior to arriving in Sugar Land last year, Womack spent 12 years with the police department in Arlington, Texas, a diverse city of about 330,000 whose population grew by more than 70,000 in the 1990s.

There, Womack, a lifelong Texan, ascended through the ranks in rapid fashion.

She joined the department in 1992 after spending four years as an administrative assistant working on special projects in the city manager's office in Hurst, Texas. She was made a sergeant in 1996, a lieutenant in 2000 and a deputy chief in 2001.

She took over as chief in Sugar Land in April 2004.

"Lisa has outstanding credentials and has been enormously effective in all of her previous law enforcement positions," Elgin City Manager Femi Folarin said in a written statement. "We believe she will have a very positive impact here in Elgin."

Sugar Land has rapid growth and a substantial minority population in common with Elgin.

The city's population has exploded from less than 9,000 in 1980 to an estimated nearly 71,000 today. More than a third of its residents are Asian, according to the latest U.S. Census statistics, while more than a third of Elgin residents are Hispanic.

Womack said that when she arrives in Elgin in mid-August, she will be bringing with her "a lot of experience dealing with the very issues that Elgin has * the rapid growth as well as balancing the ... established and the new."

While the incomes of Elgin and Arlington residents are roughly comparable, Sugar Land is substantially wealthier than both.

In 2000, median household income in Elgin was less than $53,000. In Sugar Land * which often has been in the news recently because it is the hometown of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay * median household income was nearly $82,000.

Womack held two different deputy chief jobs while in Arlington, she said.

She first served as deputy chief for community services, a position that put her in charge of personnel, recruiting, school services, crime prevention and the department's in-house training academy for new officers.

She later was deputy chief in charge of the department's western district. In that post, she oversaw 120 officers and detectives who provided service to some 160,000 people.

Womack received a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Texas Woman's University in 1987 and a master's in public administration from the University of North Texas in 1989.

Rather than arriving in Elgin with a pre-determined list of priorities, Womack said she plans to spend time listening and learning after she takes over from Interim Police Chief Robert Beeter.

"My style has been and will continue to be to get there, meet the staff and take a period of time to truly assess what the issues are," she said. "There's value in tradition."