Faith and family are Todd Radford’s armor, and as Lakeway’s new police chief, he has set about forging stronger shields in the department to protect its residents.

With the support of City Manager Steve Jones and city council members who swore him in at Monday night’s regular council meeting, Radford, 42, said his mission is to further the professionalism and training at the department while being mindful of the department’s budget.
He plans to implement community programs and create new career opportunities for officers.
“I’m excited about our future with this agency and community as we move forward,” said Radford, who is a Lakeway resident.
As much as he will push his department to improve, one of his guiding tenets is to better himself.
The 21-year veteran of law enforcement was a senior deputy sheriff for Travis County when he was 18 years old, an associate training specialist at Texas A&M University and sergeant investigator-training coordinator at the Texas Attorney General’s Office before serving as a lieutenant at the Lakeway Police Department since February 2007.
He is working toward a doctorate in psychology with a specialization in organizational leadership and holds a master’s degree in strategic leadership and bachelor’s degree in criminal justice administration.
“I have an innate desire to be better than I was yesterday. I tell our staff, if we are not constantly getting better we are stagnant,” Radford said.
The police chief has a passion not only for leading but also teaching. He travels around the country to conduct leadership courses for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Austin Police Department and Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
He also serves as a Sunday school teacher of 4-, 5- and 6-year-olds at Lake Hills Church in Bee Cave.
“Teaching is my hobby,” he said, adding that he enjoys spending time with his family that includes wife, Rita, and sons Taylor, 17, and Kelby, 16, and working out and running.
Radford credits his parents for instilling this drive at an early age.
“My mom and my dad both ingrained in me that anything worth having is worth working for. I’ve always held onto that belief,” he said.
They moved several times when his father, who served in the Air Force, was stationed in Colorado, Austin, Oslo, Norway and Austin again.
“Norway was cold and dark. It was nice to move back to Austin,” he said.
As an 18-year-old working at then-Robert Mueller Municipal Airport, Radford met another influential figure in his life.
Airport Police Chief Ken Cox provided the ideal role model for a teen-ager who had always been interested in serving the public.
“He was very polished. He was very professional. He really emulated what it meant to be a public servant,” Radford said.
Cox saw his potential and offered to sponsor him through police academy.
After graduating, Radford got a job offer from Sheriff Doyne Bailey at the Travis County Sheriff’s Office to be a deputy sheriff where he served for 10 years.
The events of Sept. 11, 2001, changed all Americans’ lives, and they radically altered Radford’s law enforcement career as well.
At the time he was a trainer with the National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center at Texas A&M University, but the message his agency was attempting to get out wasn’t really sinking in before the terrorist attacks.
He and other trainers had been traveling around the country to conduct threat risk and vulnerability assessments for major U.S. cities, which opened his eyes wide open.
“I was just shocked at how vulnerable they were, but at that time we hadn’t had an attack” on American soil for nearly 60 years, he said.
Radford described the mentality as similar to the stop-sign theory that a dangerous intersection doesn’t warrant a stop sign or traffic light until a fatal accident occurs there.
Shortly thereafter, their audiences were more receptive to eliminating their vulnerabilities.
“There was a new sense of awareness. People took what we were teaching and offering a lot more seriously,” Radford said. “It changed their perspective a little bit. All of a sudden we were not untouchable.”
As he traveled around the country and met numerous police and fire department chiefs, EMS officials, mayors and city managers, the idea of becoming a police chief took root.
“I enjoyed that crowd and that level of thought — the requirement to have a vision to see big-picture problems and how to solve them,” Radford said. “That’s when it really started a spark in me [that being a chief of police] is something I want to do.”
He said former Police Chief Gordon Bowers hired him as a lieutenant in February 2007 after Radford taught an ALERRT active shooter course for the department the year before.
Radford started the job knowing that he would be one of the successors Bowers would groom to be a potential successor after he retired, but he said he didn’t go about the job with his mind on climbing up the career ladder. Rather, he said he worked to improve the department as a whole.
“I didn’t really put much thought toward being chief,” he said. “My focus was on making the agency better, trying to professionalize it and make it more efficient and more effective.”
Bowers challenged him by allowing Radford to take on more responsibility and leadership roles in the department, he said.
That experience combined with his positions in local, county, state and federal law enforcement will benefit the police department and the community, he said.
“The understanding of all four levels and how they work together and separately and vast number of people I’ve met over this 21-year career has been very helpful for me and for the department,” Radford said. “I’ve been very blessed to do a lot of things that most cops don’t get to do.”