The city of Yazoo City hired a new police chief last week with the appointment of veteran officer Patrick Jaco, who has served as the interim police chief since last October.
The Board of Mayor and Aldermen appointed Jaco during a special call meeting on Dec. 30. Alderman Jammie McCoy cast the sole opposing vote.
“My goals for the department are the same from the first day I started,” Jaco said. “We are here to serve the community.”
Jaco has served in a variety of law enforcement roles with his position at the Yazoo City Police Department holding a special place in his heart. His reason is quite simple.
“There is no place like home,” Jaco said, in a previous interview with The Herald. “When I returned here, I just picked up where I had left off. And I have no plans of going anywhere else. I am home.”
Jaco graduated from Yazoo City High School, where he was very active in football and JROTC. But it was on the football field where he found his niche. Under former high school football coach Tony Woolfolk, he continued his football career at the local high school for four years.
“But the late Coach Kyle Wallace really pushed me,” Jaco said. “I was unsure what I was going to do after high school, and he got me into the tryouts for Holmes Community College’s football team. Thanks to him, I was able to get a football scholarship.”
Jaco was unsure of what he wanted to pursue as a career. In his early 20s, former veteran officers Eric Snow and Jessie Fry knew him very well and always suggested a career in law enforcement.
“They kept asking me if wanted to become a police officer,” he said. “They didn’t realize I wasn’t 21 years old because of my size. But when I turned 22 years old, I decided to apply at the Yazoo City Police Department. It was then that I was hired and became an officer.”
In fact, Jaco said he is taking some lessons from Snow and Fry to incorporate into the current department.
“We have to improve the department,” he said. “It’s no secret that our department is shorthanded. But we are working to get officers, both certified and uncertified. We have just hired a handful of recruits who are in the training process. I would like to do what Chief Snow and Fry did with me and Artis Harris after they recruited us. They built the department up from scratch, and they did it through training. They trained us into the officers we are today. I want to continue that method.”
Jaco said he is a firm believer in community policing. He especially enjoys interacting with the community and the youth.
“I take pride in that because I care the community that I serve,” he said. “Being in Yazoo City, it is my home. That makes what I do even better.”
Jaco said he approaches every call, citation, arrest and response with politeness and respect for all involved.
“I have had a few come up to me after I have had to arrest them and thank me,” he said. “When I am thanked for serving, I enjoy that. At the end of the day, I get satisfaction from removing a potential threat off the streets. I want to make my home, my community, safer. That is what is so important about this job.”
