Crimes against children in Lubbock and Lubbock County – which have been growing the past few years – now go to a new law enforcement task force after it was unanimously approved by County Commissioners Monday morning.
“It’s going to be based on juvenile crimes – going after those offenders that are targeting our juvenile population of this county,” Jordan Roberts, assistant chief deputy for the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Department, told commissioners.
Joint work can begin immediately, according to Sergeant Robert Braden, primary supervisor of the new Lubbock Crimes Against Children Unit (LCACU).
“The way we’re trying to do this is ‘all hands on deck,’” Braden said to LubbockLights.com.
County Judge Curtis Parrish told LubbockLights.com, “We hear these very worst-case scenario stories of children. And I think this shows that the city and the county are taking this very, very serious.”
Crimes against children trend in Lubbock
Child victims age 10 or under, year reported:
2021 – 324
2022 – 360
2023 – 366
2024 – 389
2025 – 405
Click here to see the source material from the Lubbock Police Department.
The five-year trend for crimes against children is up – an increase of 25 percent from 2021 through 2025, according to the Lubbock Police Department. The first five months of this year were down compared to last year.
LPD provided numbers for child victims under the age of 10 based on the year the crime was reported, not committed. However, the unit will investigate crimes where the victim is up to age 17, including:
- Physical and sexual abuse of children.
- Child deaths if the cause is unknown (There’s a provision for the Lubbock Metropolitan Special Crimes Unit to take the lead in homicide and suspicious death cases).
- Missing, endangered or abducted children (The LCACU will determine if the Amber Alert criteria have been met).
- Crimes of special circumstances, meaning complex or sensitive crimes where specialized skills are necessary.
Patterned after previous success
The city and county “mutual aid” agreement creates the new unit as a joint task force with power to investigate cases throughout Lubbock County, patterned after both the Metropolitan Unit and the Texas Anti-Gang Unit (TAG).
Braden said, “When they started the Metro Major Crimes Unit probably five or six years ago, they saw that they had success with that with clearance rates and the ability to coordinate all the resources within Lubbock County.”
The clearance or success rate of homicide investigations was 100 percent in 2024, according to LPD spokesperson Kasie Davis.
“That in and of itself, 100 percent clearance of murder, that’s unheard of,” Davis told LubbockLights.com.
The goal is to replicate those results in the Crimes Against Children Unit. And the goal is not far away. Last year, even before the new unit, LPD solved 99 percent of crimes against children under the age of 10.
When asked how the idea came about, Davis said, “This was a conversation between Sheriff Kelly Rowe, District Attorney Sunshine Stanek and Chief of Police Seth Herman.”
Both Parrish and Braden said the cost is negligible – already built into the city and county budgets. The county will furnish space at 916 Main Street, computers, furnishings and one deputy. Braden said LPD will furnish five officers.
Special expertise
It takes a special skill to interview potential suspects in child abuse cases, Braden said.
“You kind of go at that interview a little bit different. You use a lot more empathy and different things like that because people don’t want to talk about the worst thing that they’ve ever done in their lives,” Braden said.
The unit will start off with professional relationship already in place – sexual assault nurse examiners (SANE) at local hospitals, investigators at Children’s Protective Services, Child Advocacy Center of the South Plains and Voice of Hope (advocates for victims of sexual abuse).
The unit will have its own polygrapher and the deputy in the unit is an FBI task force officer. He’ll be able to do forensic retrieval of smart phone data without going to a special lab.
“Every two weeks, all of us different agencies come together and we go over the cases,” Braden said.
“We can make sure that we are doing everything that we can for that child,” Braden said – which means medical care, counseling and prosecuting the perpetrator.
