SPOTLight VILLARREAL WINS CHESHIRE AWARD Villarreal was chosen by the TXTA
Safety Management Council’s executive com- mittee to receive this year’s C.H. Cheshire Award. The award is given to a current or retired law enforcement officer for promoting safer Texas highways. Lance Shillingburg, TXTA senior vice
Villarreal
BY STEVE BRAWNER Contributing Writer
As manager of the Texas Department of
Public Safety’s Motor Carrier Bureau head- quarters at Austin, Captain Omar Villarreal takes seriously his relationship with the motor carrier industry and his responsibility to Texas drivers. The bureau is comprised of the Motor
Carrier Safety Section and the Motor Carrier Compliance and Audit Section. Villarreal is in charge of overseeing the bureau’s compliance review program and the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Service training unit, which trains DPS and other law enforcement person- nel regarding federal regulations. The position puts him in charge of about 50 in-house staff members and 81 field investigators. The compliance reviews are used to
determine a carrier’s CSA score. Asked if that responsibility weighs heavily on him, he said, “Everything wears very heavily on me. From the training component to the compliance review component, it all has a lot of weight because absolutely everything we do has an impact on industry and the safety of the motoring public.”
20 Issue 3, Fall 2016
president of membership, safety and educa- tion, said the award is based on Villarreal’s years of helping motor carriers work through regulatory issues. Villarreal sees his role as helping the
motor carrier industry be as safe as possible rather than simply acting as a punitive agen- cy. After a compliance review, if a motor car- rier takes corrective action and requests an appeal, the bureau will reduce the adminis- trative action. He sees education as a big part of the bureau’s purpose. He encourages motor carriers to build a rapport with their local sergeants. “We want to make sure that they’re
doing it right, but we want to help them get there by providing them the adequate and cor- rect information to run a safe company,” he said.
When a carrier registers as an interstate
carrier, the DPS conducts a safety audit as mandated by the federal government. No such review is mandated for intrastate haulers, but his agency will perform training for them at a carrier’s request. He said he’s asked at TXTA events what
the industry can do to improve. “Our response to them is from your per-
spective, there’s really not a whole lot more that you can do because you are here,” he said. “You have interest in bettering yourselves. You are in tune with issues that are out there. You want to build a rapport with enforcement in
this state. It’s the guys that aren’t here that are the problem.” Villarreal, who is bilingual, was raised in
Los Fresnos about 20 minutes from South Padre Island and never considered working in law enforcement while growing up. After grad- uating from the University of Texas in 1993, he worked as a felony case manager for the Cameron County adult probation department. After three years, he said he “kind of
decided that I was tired of babysitting adults for the judicial system and wanted to pursue something else.” His brother, a police officer in Bryan, encouraged him to consider joining him on the force and then to join the DPS, which had recently lifted a hiring freeze. He joined the DPS in 1996 and was
assigned to the Highway Patrol Service in Brownsville. In 2002, he transferred into the License & Weight Service. His career has taken him to Laredo, back to Brownsville, and then to El Paso and Austin. In 2009, he promoted to captain in McAllen and later transferred to manage the Motor Carrier Bureau in 2011. “I guess you can say of all the personnel
that we have, I think I kind of have the distinc- tion of serving in every capacity in every one of the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement bor- der districts that we have along the border: Brownsville, Laredo and El Paso,” he said. Outside of the office, Villarreal said he
enjoys hunting and fishing. “It’s all about being in the outdoors,” he
said, “not necessarily the catch or the kill. … For somebody who spends as much time as I do inside of state buildings and my office, any time to be out in the fresh air is an enjoyable time, whether it’s … fishing, hunting or even cutting my grass.” R
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