With approximately a quarter of a million people residing in the City of Lubbock, the police department has the challenge of covering thousands of people in an area of over 120 square miles.

LPD has stepped up patrol over the holiday weekend. With fireworks illegal inside city limits, patrol officers have their work cut out for them.

“I love this country and I’m super excited that people can go out and celebrate the Fourth of July with their families, but at the same time I want people to do it safely,” said Officer Donovan Staggs.

Staggs said calls regarding intoxicated individuals tend to increase over holiday weekends like the 4th of July. He explained that the more serious calls for fireworks violations are dispatched in the evenings, after the sun sets.

“That’s when most of the firework calls are going come out. We’re going to see quite a few calls come out about shots fired or firework calls and what I would say is for the public to use discretion when you’re going to call,” Staggs said.

“With the amount of houses, grass, and everything, it could be a disaster if a fire was started because of [fireworks],” he added.

“We realize that people are going to be popping fireworks still against city ordinance inside the city limits, and if it’s becoming a problem over and over and you have open fireworks, you might get them taken away, but that’s on a case by case basis, so just be smart about it,” Staggs explained.

Staggs, who works the midnight shift (6:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.) primarily in the Tech Terrace neighborhood, said he noticed that he and his partner, Officer Chris Mitchell, have responded to more reports of armed robberies lately.

“There have been some robberies, some aggravated robberies recently at some of our convenient stores and we definitely have upped our surveillance of those businesses,” he explained. “There have been a few of the shots fired recently with the salon and different incidences like that, but everyone of those calls is high priority. As soon as we hear a report of that, we get there as quick as possible.”

Staggs, who joined the force in 2014, and is the son of a former LPD officer, said one of his main goals every day is to ensure the safety of anyone he encounters, and his fellow men and women in blue.

“There [are] times where there’s a situation where it doesn’t sound like it’s anything, and at the drop of a hat, things go from normal to a nightmare,” he said. “We train ourselves for those ‘what ifs’ because at the end of the day, I gotta [sic] go home to my family, and I want everybody to go home to their families safe too.”

When presented with the fact that they have a difficult job, both Staggs and Mitchell replied with the same three words: “it’s fun though.”