The Potter County Commissioners Court approved a memorandum of understanding with the Sheriff’s App, an app that allows a sheriff’s office to receive tips, send public safety push notifications, and share inmate listings and mugshots with the public. 

A screenshot from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office app, which was developed by The Sheriff App.

The app is free for the county and the public because of an agreement between the app’s developers and the Sheriff’s Association of Texas, according to Scott Giles, chief deputy of the Potter County Sheriff’s Office.

“It also has features such as our jail roster, and we’re hoping to be able to put mugshots up on the app,” Giles said. “It’s a little bit more difficult than you would think, but we think we can accomplish that.” 

Giles said a public-facing mugshot platform would be particularly helpful for the office, as it doesn’t currently have an automatic way to share mugshots with the public. 

“There’s a lot of interest in mugshots, and today we don’t have any public-facing platform for mugshots, so we’re relegated to a daily written open record request procedure, and our clerks receive multiple open record requests for mugshots on a daily basis from a variety of different requesters,” Giles said. 

The app wouldn’t replace the sheriff’s office’s social media, according to Giles, but would act as a more robust way to share information that isn’t easily accessible to the public through the sheriff’s office’s current platforms.

The Sheriff’s Office doesn’t yet have a timeline for when the app will be available for public use. 

Lubbock Medical Examiner Services Agreement

The Court also approved an interlocal agreement with Lubbock County for medical examining services. 

Jason Herring, the 47th District Attorney, said that the agreement would both save the county money and ensure that the DA’s office receives the qualifications of the forensic pathologist who performs an autopsy. 

The DA’s office previously had an agreement with Dr. Thomas Richard Parsons at South Plains Forensic Pathology. The agreement moved to Dr. Luisa Florez at Texas Panhandle Forensics after Parsons retired in 2025. 

“There was always kind of a gentleman’s agreement in place that when either Dr. Parsons or Dr. Flores brought in a new forensic pathologist, that before they touched our business or those cases that are going through the prosecutor’s office, they would provide the CV and all the qualifications for that doc before those autopsies were performed,” Herring said. 

The DA’s office did not have a written agreement with Texas Panhandle Forensics to provide the qualifications of the doctor performing an autopsy, Herring said. New doctors were being hired, and the DA’s office would only find out once it received the autopsy report. Autopsies at Texas Panhandle Forensics are also priced based on the state of the body. 

“What it costs them to do an autopsy, no matter what the decedent’s status is, it’s now a fixed price instead of an escalator,” Herring said. 

The commissioners approved the agreement unanimously. 

Potter County District Courts Parking Lot

The commissioners received a certificate of substantial completion for the Potter County District Courts Building parking lot. The certificate allows the county to open the parking lot for public use. 

The lot is on the site of the old district court’s building at 350 SE Sixth Ave. 

Construction workers work on the parking lot next to the Potter County Courts Building on May 11, 2026. (Amarillo Tribune photo/ Phoebe Terry)

“The next step is going to be obviously final completion, where we sign off completely and everybody walks away from it and is completed,” Chris Serna, the Potter County Facilities Maintenance Director, said. 

The language on the signs that will be placed in the parking lot still needs to be finalized, according to Serna. 

“Due to legal wording of the signage, it has to include a towing company number. So until we go through with the committee and the RFP to get a contractor in place, there’s really no usable phone number to put on those things yet,” Serna said.

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