South Padre Island Police Chief Claudine O’Carroll didn’t know what to fully expect heading into March’s spring break 2022 and the following Easter holiday week in April.

Both 2020 and 2021 were peculiar ones. Spring break traffic in 2020 was light to at times non-existent. A bit of a rebound occurred in 2021, with more families on the Island over the usual college-aged spring breakers who had their routines thrown off by college shutdowns.

Going into 2022, bigger crowds were predicted with the return of visiting Mexican nationals via international bridges and normal college calendars. O’Carroll worked as she always does when surges in visitors are expected. She and her force collaborated with state and federal law enforcement partners in working to beef up a police presence and boost surveillance capabilities. The chief also added seasonal officers and personnel to help with traffic control. More dispatchers were hired to help with increases in calls.  

The 2022 spring holiday and seasonal peaks have passed and O’Carroll’s assessment is that it wasn’t “a full-on spring break,” but busy enough.  

“It generally went well,” the chief said. “We didn’t have any severe critical incidents. The (tourist) numbers were better, but not what they were in previous years. There’s still some hesitancy about traveling.”

For O’Carroll, it was the latest SPI spring break and Semana Santa among the many she has experienced in her years of law enforcement on the Island. She started as a part-time police officer on the Island in 1999. From there, over a two-decade span, O’Carroll became a full-time SPI officer, a detective and patrol sergeant, a captain and on to administrative leadership. She was an interim police chief and them permanently named chief in 2019. 

“I was raised up in the ranks,” O’Carroll said.

Knowing Every Job

O’Carroll touched every level of operations in the department in taking every step up to being chief. 

There’s not a job she hasn’t done or knows about in the police department she now oversees. O’Carroll describes herself as a chief who is “very involved in all operations.”

“I like my staff to know that I’m responsive to their issues,” she said.

It’s a department that is 25 percent female, which is a stark contrast to the fact she was only the woman in her police academy class over two decades ago. Having a diverse police force is important to the chief, but does not override hiring the best candidates for jobs regardless of gender. 

“These have been challenging times for policing in recent years,” O’Carroll said. “We’ve been fortunate in that we’ve had more apply than in many places. At the end of the day, you have to ensure you’re putting the right person on the job. You owe that to the community for its safety.”

Drive To Succeed 

The National Law Enforcement Executives reports that about 300 women are chiefs of police. 

That’s only about eight percent of those who serve nationally in those roles. South Padre Island has one of those female chief executives. It’s an admirable distinction for the city. South Padre also has a chief who is an immigrant. O’Carroll immigrated to the United States from Ireland in the early 1990s.

Serving in the military or in law enforcement was an aspiration from an early age. The former wasn’t really possible for a woman in her native country at the time. Getting to the United States, she joined the U.S. Coast Guard with Corpus Christi as her first station assignment. It was where she learned how to drive and got her first driver’s license after growing up in a country where public transportation abounds. 

In 1997, she made her first drive across the Queen Isabella Memorial Bridge in what she called “my newly minted driver’s license in my newly minted car.” Arriving to serve at Coast Guard South Padre Island, she would never leave what would become her adopted home. First it was the dedicated guardsman and then a determined law enforcement officer.

“I had no choice,” she said. “I had to be up to do it in my adopted country, I wasn’t going to fail. This city has been very good to me and supportive of my career throughout.”