WFPD Police Chief to Retire from Army Reserves after Nearly 32 Years of Service
By: Ann Arnold
Updated: December 28, 2012
Manuel Borrego always wanted to be a police officer, but at 18 he was too young to apply, so he decided to try and become another kind officer in the military and enlisted in the Marines in 1978.
He served there until 1981 and the next year was hired by the Wichita Falls Police Department. He served with the Texas National Guard for 4 years and joined the Army reserve in 88, all the while working as a Wichita Falls Police Officer.
"It was just changing one uniform to the other for me," he said.
He says it's wasn't hard serving dual roles because his employers and family were always very supportive. But a few years ago, things started changing on the military side.
"When the war started, it no longer became a one weekend a month two weeks a year, especially at my rank of Command Sergeant Major," Borrego said.
In 2009, he was deployed to Afghanistan.
He told us, "We were training the Afghan national army to be self-sufficient so they could protect their own country and we could come home. It was a very difficult task, but one I believed in and one we needed to do as a nation."
A few months ago, he was tapped by the city of Wichita Falls to serve as Police Chief-a job he'd always dreamed of and he knew it was time to step down from his military career of nearly 32 years.
"I felt like I attained all my goals in the military. I attained a rank I never thought i'd acheive as command sergeant major, I got to go defend our country in another part of the world. I trained up troops. So I feel like I did everything I wanted to do and now it's time to focus on this police department and move it to that next level," he said.
Borrego will officially retire from the Army Reserves on December 31st.
