{"id":371609,"date":"2026-07-13T21:09:43","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T21:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/371609\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T21:09:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T21:09:43","slug":"potter-county-commissioners-court-approves-new-sheriffs-office-app-and-medical-examiners-office-agreement-with-lubbock-amarillo-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/371609\/","title":{"rendered":"Potter County Commissioners\u2019 Court approves new sheriff\u2019s office app and medical examiner\u2019s office agreement with Lubbock : Amarillo Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Potter County Commissioners Court approved a memorandum of understanding<\/a> with the Sheriff\u2019s App, an app that allows a sheriff\u2019s office to receive tips, send public safety push notifications, and share inmate listings and mugshots with the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"A screenshot from the Montgomery County Sheriff\u2019s Office app, which was developed by The Sheriff App. <\/p>\n

The app is free for the county and the public because of an agreement between the app\u2019s developers and the Sheriff\u2019s Association of Texas, according to Scott Giles, chief deputy of the Potter County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt also has features such as our jail roster, and we\u2019re hoping to be able to put mugshots up on the app,\u201d Giles said. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit more difficult than you would think, but we think we can accomplish that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Giles said a public-facing mugshot platform would be particularly helpful for the office, as it doesn\u2019t currently have an automatic way to share mugshots with the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of interest in mugshots, and today we don\u2019t have any public-facing platform for mugshots, so we\u2019re 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,\u201d Giles said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The app wouldn\u2019t replace the sheriff\u2019s office\u2019s social media, according to Giles, but would act as a more robust way to share information that isn\u2019t easily accessible to the public through the sheriff\u2019s office\u2019s current platforms.<\/p>\n

The Sheriff\u2019s Office doesn\u2019t yet have a timeline for when the app will be available for public use.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lubbock Medical Examiner Services Agreement<\/p>\n

The Court also approved an interlocal agreement with Lubbock County for medical examining services.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jason Herring, the 47th District Attorney, said that the agreement would both save the county money and ensure that the DA\u2019s office receives the qualifications of the forensic pathologist who performs an autopsy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The DA\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was always kind of a gentleman\u2019s 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\u2019s office, they would provide the CV and all the qualifications for that doc before those autopsies were performed,\u201d Herring said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The DA\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat it costs them to do an autopsy, no matter what the decedent\u2019s status is, it\u2019s now a fixed price instead of an escalator,\u201d Herring said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The commissioners approved the agreement unanimously.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Potter County District Courts Parking Lot<\/p>\n

The commissioners received a certificate of substantial completion for the Potter County District Courts Building parking lot<\/a>. The certificate allows the county to open the parking lot for public use.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The lot is on the site of the old district court\u2019s building at 350 SE Sixth Ave.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

\u201cThe next step is going to be obviously final completion, where we sign off completely and everybody walks away from it and is completed,\u201d Chris Serna, the Potter County Facilities Maintenance Director, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The language on the signs that will be placed in the parking lot still needs to be finalized, according to Serna.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDue 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\u2019s really no usable phone number to put on those things yet,\u201d Serna said.<\/p>\n

The Amarillo Tribune is our community\u2019s first non-profit, community-funded digital news organization. Our donors and board members believe that local news is a pillar of our democracy and, as community members, might advocate for other causes and be mentioned in our coverage.<\/p>\n

We are transparent about who donates to us. Please find a list of our donors here,<\/a> and of our board members here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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You’ve read Amarillo Tribune articles this month! Thank you for relying on us for your local news.\u00a0Please help us keep local news free for all by donating today!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Potter County Commissioners Court approved a memorandum of understanding with the Sheriff\u2019s App, an app that allows…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2648,3598,125388,125389,168,170,169],"class_list":["post-371609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-amarillo","tag-amarillo-news","tag-amarillo-newspaper","tag-city-of-amarillo","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}