Ryan Byrd

In March of 2022, I was promoted to the position of Corporal within the Walker County Sheriffs Office. I have primarily been tasked with training new hires within our department, which entails making sure they are familiar with our departmental policy, our report writing expectations and ensuring they can perform day to day functions within the patrol division.

As a Corporal, I also act in a support role to my Patrol Sergeant. This includes various tasks throughout a day and night shift, in which he may delegate to me, to may ensure get accomplished. These tasks include public relation events, providing additional scene security to calls and acting as an OIC (Officer in Charge).

Usually, in an OIC role, the Sergeant may be taking a vacation or holiday, which would leave myself as an acting supervisor. This role entails, first and foremost, making sure District deputies are taking calls and reports as needed, responding as a backup Deputy to priority calls. Sometimes, this role requires me to man a district and act as a district Deputy and an OIC. When in this position, I always place myself in district two. This allows me to handle the largest district in Walker County for calls of service and to also be the closest responding Deputy to our other two districts.

I have prided myself in this role as an FTO, (Field Training Officer). This role is the most crucial to this department in my opinion. As Corporals, we are the primary trainers for new hires within our department. This is complex, because in this role, we may train a new hire with zero police experience and then transition to someone with 18 years of experience. In my opinion, this a position of adjusting on the fly, because it requires a level of patience, understanding of the PPO's experience and skill level and the willingness to meet them at them in the middle.

On Decemeber 02, 2019, I began my FTO process at the Walker County Sheriffs Office. As someone who had zero law enforcement experience, I was provided with great field training officers, who provided me with a wealth of knowledge and experience. While knowledge and experience was appreciated, I was also provided patience due to my lack of experience.

My third night in unformed FTO, while in observation, I was involved in a call, most officers dread. An officer involved shooting. While observing, myself and my FTO, responded to a person with a weapon call on Wood Farm Road. I watched a man, point a gun at myself and my new founded co-workers and in return the actor was struck with gunfire. A humbling but very eye opening experience into my new career into law enforcement. I watched my co-workers, who were threatened by a firearm, now turn into people who were saving the persons life, who recently threatened them.

Through this experience, I observed Walker County CID respond do their jobs prior to releasing the scene to the Texas Rangers.

In September of 2021, I responded to a scene, in which myself and my coworkers, were not only fired upon, but returned fire, eliminarting a threat. In this instance, I did return fire and was investigated by the Texas Rangers. I was able to observe the way Rangers investigated this scene along with a couple of our local DPS Troopers.

In August of 2016, I was hired at the Walker County Sheriffs Office Jail Division. I was tasked with day to day operations of maintaining jail security, jail policy and safety of inmates and other correctional officers.

While adhering to jail standards, meals were fed, recreation was offered and inmate behavior was supervised. Because of this, I was awarded the opportunity to be responsible for over seeing the disciplinary hearings for inmates that violated jail rules and regulations. This position, required maintaining logs for the annual jail commission review, assuring disciplinary officers under me were operating within jail standards and making sure offending inmates were being held to their disciplinary loss of privileges. Understanding the difference between rights and privileges, was important in this position. It allowed myself and other detention officers, to segregate inmates who were violent and who had repetitively violated jail policy, to eliminate commissary, visitation and television privileges, while allowing them their allotted time of recretation, church and mail distribution.

In August of 2019, I enrolled myself into a Police academy located in Lufkin, Texas. I maintained myself fulltime employment at the Jail while attending a full time police academy. I successfully completed the Police academy and transferred to the Patrol Division of the Walker County Sheriffs Office.

I was hired to Sigma Cubed (previously Apex Hi-point) in 2011. Sigma Cubed is an oil and gas service that provides seismic and geophysical data, to assist in the hydraulic fracturing for discovery of new oil and natural gas reservoirs.

I began this job as a field hand. My primary function, was the deployment of fiber optics between wire-line trucks and the deployment of geophones into lives wells. This job, was an around the clock job. If geophones went down, we were deployed to fix our tool string at all hours of the night, in an effort to provide our client with a better product.

After a better understanding of what service we provided, I was promoted to Field Supervisor. This entailed, running and supervising a crew of 10-16 members. Approximately 5-8 for day shift and choosing a night time Supervisor for night shift as well. Tasks included rigging in safely, trouble shooting any errors in our equipment and conducting daily safety meetings.

Throughout my employment with Sigma Cubed, I was afforded the opportunity to travel to China four times. While in China, I was tasked with providing real time seismic updates. This included overseeing a Chinese crew, who had never provided real time seismic updates to their client. I am proud to say, I over saw the first four hydraulically fractured wells for Shell China, that offered real time seismic date.

This opportunity, afforded my company many more client in China and around the world. All jobs were completed safely without incident.

I was hired in 2011 as the primary builder for a new prototype for Bruker Optics, called the MS-90. As a young man with very little job experience, fresh out of high school and experience in soldering and small electronics, I was tasked with the building, testing and deployment of this new instrument. Approximately 20 units were sold, but the market versus price was sustainable. This unit, was supposed to be a breakthrough in the NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) industry, but due to being top heavy, several units were destroyed in shipping, due to poor design.

Due to no market, I was on the verge of being let go from Bruker Optics. On the day I was to be let go, I was offered a position in the Raman Spectroscopy department building the main product lines. I worked along side their primary builder named John Burney. Myself and John, were tasked with building the three main product lines for Bruker Optics.

At the time, the three main product lines were the Senterra, Sentinal and the new RAM. I was tasked with assembly of the outer units of the products, as well as the electronics inside. Including a multitude of lasers that were inside of the instrument. These products, are similar to the TruNarc that the Walker County Sheriffs Office utilizes, but on a much larger scale.

Due to drug use, John Burney was let go from his position and I was the sole builder for these instruments worldwide. While in this position, I was offered a job with Sigma Cubed. My direct Supervisor offered my a $1 an hour raise to stay, but I declined his offer. Since this, all production for Bruker Optics has been outsourced to other Countries and is no longer american made.