Texas, Amarillo | featured news

The Amarillo Police Department has eliminated their 4th shift in order to better utilize its officers.
APD Chief Ed Drain said a lack of full coverage of the city’s 23 beats was an obvious issue to him, which was supported by data in a June consultant’s report about the department’s functionality. KRW Associates was hired by the city to examine the department, and in June –— shortly before former APD Chief Paul Taylor retired — they delivered to city leaders a white paper titled “Comprehensive Review and Action Plan for the Amarillo Police Department.”

Xcel Energy has joined more than 80 utility companies across the nation and Canada for North American Utilities United Against Scams Day in an effort to protect customers from long-running scams.
On Wednesday, the gas and electric companies kicked off a week-long campaign, providing information to customers on suspected scam activity.
Pat Boland, customer policy and assistance manager at Xcel Energy, said while it may be difficult to identify scammers, raising awareness can put an end to their illegal operations.

A $300,000 grant to teach other medical organizations how to increase breast cancer screenings has been awarded to the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center’s Breast Center of Excellence.
The dissemination grant, which comes from the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, will fund the Breast Center of Excellence’s creation of an online database, medical curriculum and a project director’s guide to community outreach, said program director Dr. Rakhshanda Layeequr Rahman.

About 200 middle and high school girls are expected to participate in this year’s annual Women in Science Endeavors workshops this weekend.
Three workshops will be held throughout the morning at Amarillo College in Parcells Hall, Warren Hall and the Science Lab building on Saturday morning. The workshops will be led by women who are working in science and technical fields, and it is sponsored by several groups including Xcel Energy.
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The Amarillo Economic Development Committee’s Board of Directors met Thursday in a second effort to decide on the organization’s next president.
Again, no verdict was reached after Thursday’s two-hour meeting, most of which took place in executive session, AEDC interim president Doug Nelson said. The AEDC hopes to settle on one of four candidates selected by Jorgenson Consulting by the end of the year.
“I’m still hopeful that our consultant will bring the Board of Directors a candidate that they are able to all agree upon and move forward with,” Nelson said.

Amarillo Independent School District announced Thursday that its appeal to Texas Education Agency regarding the changing of North Heights Alternative School’s accountability rating was successful.
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As an African-American girl growing up in Amarillo, Francetta Mitchell Crow said watching police officers drive past her in patrol cars evoked a strong emotion.
“I had a feeling of pride and safety,” Crow said.
But today, with images of violence between law enforcement and minority groups flooding the media, she said her emotions are quite different.
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Just one day after Interim City Manager Terry Childers vacated his job here, cleaning out his desk and leaving town before sundown Wednesday, the man Childers replaced — Jarrett Atkinson — was named the new city manager in Lubbock, a community that’s 20.3 percent bigger than Amarillo.
Lubbock’s City Council passed a unanimous resolution Thursday officially naming Atkinson to the post.
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Jordan and Billy Wells’ faces reddened with tears Thursday morning in a Randall County courtroom. The brothers, ages 15 and 8, grinned, cried and held each other tightly after Judge John Board finalized an adoption by their grandparents, Marvin and Elaine Wells.
“They’re ours — they always have been,” said Elaine. “They’re pretty dang awesome kids.”
And so were the other happy-yet-tearful, faces, young and old, scattered throughout several Canyon courtrooms; each just had a legal stamp of approval placed on their family trees.

Brian Mosley knows the power of the medium that has become his profession.
He knows it firsthand — from a DVD that he and his wife Julie saw about 15 years ago in a Bible study class for newlyweds. On the DVD was the story of a married couple serving special needs adults.
The focus was still on marriage skills, but Mosley saw something else in that young couple’s story.
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