Cleveland’s Chief Broussard: Nearly 40 years behind the badge and ‘still having fun’

Spend a little time around Cleveland Police Chief Darrel Broussard and one thing becomes apparent pretty quickly: He likes people.

He likes talking to them in restaurants, visiting with young people, checking on old friends and stopping to listen when someone flags him down because they have a problem. He is known for his easy smile and calm manner, and even after nearly 40 years in law enforcement, he still talks about police work largely in terms of helping people.

But there is another side of Broussard that those who have worked around him through the years have seen. When a situation turns dangerous, he does not tend to stand back.

During his long career, Broussard has walked into situations involving armed people, worked horrific crashes and murder scenes, and put himself at risk to protect others. In one more recent incident at the Cleveland Municipal Airport, a man armed with a rifle was threatening to take his own life.

Broussard got down on the ground and crawled up behind him to wrest away the rifle from the distressed man. The situation ended without the man using the weapon on himself.

It is the kind of story Broussard tells without making himself the hero of it. Instead, he talks about the fear police officers sometimes experience in those moments and the responsibility they accept when they put on the badge.

“There’s many times they’re real frightened too or have fear,” Broussard said. “But we have taken the oath to serve and to protect others.”

That combination of courage, compassion and an ability to talk to people has shaped Broussard’s career with the Cleveland Police Department, where he has served as a beloved and much-respected chief for the past 14 years.

Cleveland is not simply where Broussard works. It is home. Broussard grew up in Cleveland’s Precinct 20 area, the middle of three sons born to Charles Broussard Sr. and Gloria Broussard. His parents moved to Cleveland in the early 1960s and raised their family here.

His father was a coach and principal at the former Douglas School, Cleveland’s black school before integration, and his mother worked for the school district as a teacher’s aide.

Broussard was among the last kindergarten classes to attend the Douglas campus before attending Southside as Cleveland ISD integrated its schools. He remembers a close-knit Cleveland where children grew up knowing not only their neighbors, but their neighbors’ parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and usually their nicknames.

“I really believe that if it wasn’t for some of those people, I wouldn’t be the person I am today or have the type of heart that I have today for this community,” Broussard said.

His own nickname is Pete — a name that has absolutely nothing to do with Darrel Broussard.

“It’s nowhere in my name,” he said with a laugh.

His older brother, Charles Henry Broussard Jr., is better known as “Spanky,” while younger brother Roderick is known by many as “Coach Rod.” Both of his brothers followed their father’s path into education and coaching. Broussard took a different route.

Looking back, there were clues about where he might end up. As a boy, Broussard said he thought about becoming either a firefighter or police officer. Whenever a police car, fire truck or ambulance came through the neighborhood, he would take off on his bicycle, making his own siren noises as he pedaled.

“I could pump my bicycle real fast,” he said with a chuckle.

Broussard graduated from Cleveland High School in 1981 and attended Lamar University on a football scholarship. While working summer jobs in the Beaumont-Port Arthur-Orange area, he spent time around police officers and became more interested in law enforcement.

After college, he worked for the late Liberty County Pct. 3 Commissioner Melvin Hunt, whom Broussard credits as one of the important influences in his life. Hunt introduced him to then-Liberty County Sheriff Sonny Applebe, who also is now deceased.

Applebe sponsored Broussard through the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Academy and gave him a job in the Liberty County jail while he attended. After graduating, Broussard became a patrol deputy.

His field training officer was Earl McFarland, the longtime Liberty County lawman whose name is now on the San Jacinto River bridge south of Cleveland. McFarland was killed on May 21, 1990, when a tractor trailer ran over the top of his cruiser while he was escorting a group of Vietnam veterans in a march from Cleveland to Houston for Memorial Day celebrations.

Broussard patrolled areas including Rye, Romayor and Dolen, learning parts of Liberty County that the Cleveland kid had not known particularly well before. Still, Cleveland remained home.

When Broussard stopped by the Cleveland Police Department, then-Chief Harley Lovings and Ike Hines (who later went on to become chief) would ask him why he did not come work for them.

“Why don’t you come back home?” Broussard remembers them saying. “This is your home.”

On May 7, 1987, Broussard joined the Cleveland Police Department as a patrol officer. He never left. Over the years, he worked his way through the ranks. Rick Foxworth promoted him to sergeant in 1990 and encouraged him to continue moving forward. Broussard eventually became captain and, in 2012, police chief.

One lesson followed him through all of those positions: Treat people fairly. That was especially important for a young police officer working in the same town where he grew up. Broussard knew many of the people he encountered. Some had grown up with him. Others knew his parents or brothers.

Occasionally, someone thought knowing Pete meant a ticket or arrest should disappear. Broussard had to make it clear that was not how it worked.

“There was right and there was wrong, and there was the law,” he said.

But Broussard also learned that enforcing the law did not mean every situation had to be escalated or every mistake had to receive the harshest possible response. Sometimes, especially with young people, talking to their parents or grandparents could accomplish more than writing a ticket.

Broussard describes it as the difference between the “letter of the law” and the “spirit of the law,” a lesson he learned in part from Hines.

He remembers benefiting from that kind of discretion himself as a young man. An officer who caught him spinning his tires could have written him a ticket. Instead, the officer might tell his father. For Broussard, that was probably worse.

“They showed me some grace and mercy,” he said.

He has tried to extend that same grace when circumstances allow.

“The gift of being able to talk to people fairly, de-escalate situations instead of escalating them, has always been something I’ve taken pride in,” Broussard said. “You don’t start off hollering and screaming. You take it from a level of how you would love to be treated or talked to and not talked down to.”

That approach has earned Broussard something that cannot simply be pinned onto a uniform: trust. He remembers people he had arrested stepping forward during later encounters to reassure someone else.

“Broussard’s going to treat you fair,” they would say. “Just do what he tells you.”

Others have returned years after an arrest just to see him. At first, Broussard admitted, he sometimes wondered what they wanted. Then they would tell him that something had changed after their encounter with him. Some never got into trouble again. Some went on to become teachers, coaches, corrections officers and police officers.

“That has been one of the highlights in my life that has kept me going and wanting to serve the community,” he said.

There have also been calls Broussard wishes he could forget. He remembers fatal crashes involving young people. He remembers homicide victims and families he knew personally. He remembers abused children and cases where young people he had watched grow up made decisions that changed or ended lives.

Sometimes driving past a particular place is enough to bring it all back.

“You never really lose the thought of those,” Broussard said.

He believes that is one reason mental health support for police officers matters. Officers can leave a scene, but that does not necessarily mean the scene leaves them. Broussard also misses some things about the Cleveland of years ago, particularly the way officers interacted with young people.

On Friday and Saturday nights, teenagers cruised town and gathered at places such as the old Meekins parking lot, where The Sanctuary Church now stands. They might make a trip to Sonic or Jack in the Box before circling back around.

Officers knew where the kids were. They could pull up, talk with them and remind them not to race or do something foolish. They might check a pickup bed for alcohol and send somebody home before a bad decision became something much worse.

“We’ve kind of lost that,” Broussard said. “That hurts me too, because now I don’t know where a lot of these young people hang out.”

He still looks for those opportunities to reach them. Broussard recalls recently encountering a ninth-grade boy who was crying over something happening in his life. Broussard stopped and talked to him.

“It’s okay for a man to cry,” he told him. “We’re going to deal with this situation. You’re going to be stronger and bigger. You’re going to build from that.”

To Broussard, that is police work, too.

“People just need encouragement,” he said. “That’s the best part of my job.”

At 14 years into his tenure as chief, Broussard has not become someone who spends his days tucked away in an office.

“Patrol is my heart,” he said.

He still gets out on the streets. He directs traffic. He works parades and community events. He stops at restaurants and talks with people, and people talk to him. They recognize his truck and flag him down. They approach him while he is eating because there is something they have been meaning to tell him.

Broussard keeps a small notepad handy to write things down. When asked if he is ever off duty, he said, “Not really.”

He would not have it differently.

“I love getting out, meeting with people and keeping my hand on the pulse of the community,” Broussard said.

His role as chief also means trying to prepare another generation of officers for careers that could last long after his own ends. He stresses integrity, honesty and fairness. If an officer does not have the evidence to support a case, Broussard said, the answer is to keep investigating — not to try to make something fit.

“Ethics is a big thing. Your morals are a big thing as a law enforcement officer, and it’s something you can’t get back if you lose them,” he said.

He has watched officers who once worked under him move on to leadership positions elsewhere, including Kevin Potter, now chief of the New Caney ISD Police Department. Broussard enjoys seeing them succeed.

He also reminds younger officers who are eager to become sergeants, captains or chiefs that there are no shortcuts.

“You’ve got to earn it,” he said. “You’ve got to learn it.”

Broussard has watched plenty of other things change since 1987. Body cameras, in-car cameras, DNA testing, digital evidence and cellphone videos have transformed police work. The Cleveland he patrols has changed, too, with more people, more businesses and a lot more traffic.

His family and faith have been constants through those years. Broussard and his wife, Liz, have been married 42 years and have two children, Ashley and Lance.

He also remains a member of Galilee Baptist Church, the same church where his mother made sure he and his brothers attended Sunday school and Vacation Bible School as children. Today, Broussard serves there as a deacon.

After nearly 40 years in law enforcement and 14 years as Cleveland’s police chief, Broussard is not ready anytime soon to walk away. People ask him about retirement all the time.

Broussard has a simple response.

“I’m still having fun,” he said.

To hear the full interview with Chief Broussard for the Bluebonnet News Headlines and Heartlines podcast, click the link below: