Episode 2

Connecting Ascension (00:00)
Welcome to Connecting Ascension, a Chamber podcast. I'm Michael Bonfani and we're grateful and excited that you've chosen to listen in. Our podcast is dedicated to strengthening community relationships by providing a platform for our local commerce and community leaders to share their unique stories. Before we dive in, we'd like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Ascension Parish Government for their invaluable partnership with the Chamber. Their support continues to be instrumental in advancing our mission to cultivate overall community prosperity.
Your chamber works to champion relationships for the good of each chamber member and ultimately for the good of the community. We're proud to foster connections between businesses, industry, governmental agencies, community leaders, and local nonprofit organizations for the individual and collective prosperity. Together, we thrive. There are many ways to get value from your chamber membership by engaging and participating in chamber events and programs.
Be sure to visit the Chamber website using the QR code or the link provided. Additionally, stay up to date on the great work of Ascension Parish Government. You can find information about activities, progress on projects, upcoming meetings, and much more using the QR code or link provided.
Sheriff Background (01:13)
Bobby Weber was sworn into the office of sheriff in January of 2019. Sheriff Weber joined the U.S. Army while still in high school. He volunteered as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He participated in Operation Urgent Fury in 1983, landing reinforcements on the shores of Grenada and rescuing captured American medical students. Sheriff Weber began his career with the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office in 1985 as a patrolman.
For 16 years, he served as warden of the Ascension Parish Jail. For six years, he served as chief of criminal operations and then chief deputy, managing a $40 million budget and nearly 350 deputies. Sheriff Weber is a member of the Knights of Columbus at St. Mark Catholic Church. He is also a member of the East Ascension Rotary Club, American Legion Post 81, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3693.
and the FBI National Academy Association. He served on the board of the Ascension Council on Aging, and he is a past board member of the Ascension Chamber of Commerce. Sheriff Weber and his wife Karen have been married for 39 years, and they reside in Gonzales today.
Thank you so much for coming on. Well, it's great to be here with both of you and I'm glad to see the Chamber doing a program like this and I think it's going to be very informative for our community.
Yeah, we're excited to be able to question our local leaders like yourself and get to know you a little better and understand, you know, who's the person behind the uniform and who's the face of our community basically. So can you tell us a little bit about your background, where you come from, what was childhood like for you? Well, I was raised right here in Ascension Parish. It's a place where I will always call home, no doubt. Since second grade, I was here and grew up here.
and went to high school here at East Ascension High School. But I always felt like there was a need to serve my community. soon after high school, actually in 11th grade, back then in the 80s, you could actually join the military while you were a junior in high school. And I did that. So I knew where I was gonna go after graduation. And I did, I served one tour in the military, met my wife in high school and it was...
It's been a good run for me in my career here at the Sheriff's Office. Soon after I got out of the military, I joined the Sheriff's Office. Sheriff Tritico took a chance on me, and that was it. I stuck. I stuck with the Sheriff's Office. This was going to be my job. This was going to be my career. I wanted to serve the people of Ascension Parish, and it's been a good run. So what kind of led you to want to join the military? What was your calling there? You know, I think I always had the calling. At least I could remember from
my early days in high school, just the need to serve my country and just be thankful for the things that we have and the freedom that we enjoy. I never planned on it being a career in the military, but I knew I wanted to serve at least one tour and I did that. Always knowing that I was coming home, I was gonna get out and be back here in Ascension Parish. Maybe they called me a mama's boy, but I wanted to be here, right? So I did that and I had a great opportunity to serve with the 82nd Airborne Division.
with Operation Urgent Fury where we was able to get those medical students out of Grenada and overthrow that communist government right in our backyard. So that was a lot of great experience for me. And six months before I got out of the military, I came home on leave. I put my application in with the state police, the Gonzalez Police Department and the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office. And I said, anyone that picks me up, anyone that takes a chance on me, you have me for life, okay? And so Sheriff Tritico, the...
Thank goodness. He called me one day and said, listen, we have a patrol position open. Would you be interested? And I said, yes, sir, I would. And that was nearly 40 years ago. So I kept my end of the bargain. stuck with my career in law enforcement with the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office. Awesome. And so let's kind of maybe focus on that early days, the early career. What allowed you to, know, a lot of times people are moving from jobs to job.
kept you focused and kept you going on with the sheriff's department? Well, I'll say this. And I meant it when I said it, that if somebody gives me a chance that I was gonna stick with it. And I knew there would be good days and bad days, good years and bad years, but I wasn't gonna let some outside element maybe dictate my career. It was gonna be my career. I was gonna get through it the best way I could. I would get up every morning.
pin on my badge, put on my uniform, and just go out and serve the people of Ascension Parish, knowing that a career is a long time, and there would be ups and downs. And that's some of the lessons we try to instill in some of our younger deputies. And you we live in a fast-paced world, and there is a lot of movement going on. But I say, look, stick with a career. It's gonna be tough in those early days, but a career is long, and there'll be hills, and there'll be valleys, but you can get through those. Yeah. Is that kinda what you try and talk to the younger?
Deputies today. yeah all the time. It's just you know stick with your career one of our biggest challenges in law enforcement now is recruiting and We have to focus on retention Yeah, getting deputies here getting them trained up giving them the right equipment giving them the right resources that they didn't need to do the job give them great benefits But always try to remind them that this is your career. It's a rewarding career. You love what you're doing Here's what ten years look like. Here's what 15 20 years looks like
because it's such a fast-paced world. And you see now, even with our younger deputies, they change careers a lot. And we try to just keep them focused on our retention program, keeping them here in Ascension Parish. Now, Sheriff, so when you were getting into law enforcement in your early days, what did it look like? What was a day-to-day like back then compared to what it is now? Well, I say this. You probably patrolled the same way, right? You would patrol the streets the same way.
But the technology has changed so much. It's just a game changer in law enforcement. And I'm sure we'll talk about that later on in the interview where that may take us. Deputies now are doing so much more with technology than I ever dreamed of doing in my patrol car in 1985. The knowledge that our deputies have are so much more knowledge now than I needed or required when I was patrolling back in the day.
We are solving crimes now, our deputies are solving crimes now that I never dreamed of being able to solve as a patrolman when I was patrolling in 1985. And that's basically, first of all, the deputies are smart, they're well-trained, and they can use the technology that's given to them in a way that helps us solve crime. getting those young deputies here, always telling them like it was for me, the challenges that maybe we had, and deputies still face it today, but not as much.
is how do you get through this early part of your career financially? Because it's tough. Deputies don't make a lot of money now. They didn't make a great deal of money then. So that was the challenge because it was a rewarding career. You wanted to do it, but you and your wife and your family had to figure out, okay, how are you going to be frugal enough to get through this career? Maybe work in extra detail, but if there's something in your heart to serve and you want to serve and protect our community, it'll come. Stick with us for a while. It'll be a great, rewarding career. And you'll make it. You'll get through.
the good times and the bad times. Did you have any role models or mentors through your years in the department, who those people were, maybe what they taught you? Yes, we all do, right? Yeah, we all do. And of course, everybody's gonna say their parents, and they should if they had a great relationship with their parents. My dad was tough, so I didn't have a great relationship with him when I was a kid growing up.
and maybe I shouldn't have because he was always a hardworking man and if he instilled in me and my brothers just an unbelievable strong work ethic. It's like you're gonna go to work, you're gonna have to work and go to work for the company. Don't go to work for your paycheck, go to work for the company. Get up early, come home late, just work and he instilled that. I didn't appreciate it then, I appreciate it now but I I'd appreciate that then because there was not probably a day in my life that I didn't have a job because two days after high school I was in boot camp. I tell people,
that my senior trip was boot camp in the military. When I got out of the military on a Thursday, drove home from North Carolina, Monday I was working. So there was no, and he wouldn't want it no other way, right? And I understand and appreciate the significance of it now. My high school football coaches, my, these were men that would just get everything out of a young man, a young kid playing football. could make you do things you never dreamed you could do.
And these were, you know, I was a young kid, 17, 16 years old playing football in high school and hanging around coaches. And these were men. And that was significant. And I'm still really close with some of my high school football coaches today because those men were the ones that shaped the yellow mine to do things, to face things and face challenges that you didn't think you could overcome, but those coaches would help you do it. I was in the military. I was so fortunate. I was assigned to our headquarters battery.
which I was in combat arms, which was artillery. But because I was elected platoon leader in basic training, I got assigned to headquarters battery. And my job was to take care of the plot maps, put frequencies in radios, get a full bird colonel and a command sergeant major. Those were some of the highest ranks in the military to get them where they needed to go that day. So I was an aid to camp to two men. So can you imagine the...
21 year old for three and a half years. I went to work with men, professional men. And so that was a lesson in leadership just by osmosis, just by being with them and taking care of them and watching their leadership principles. I think that helped me in my career later on without a doubt. Yeah, absolutely. And as far as, I mean, you mentioned some challenges faced over the years. Is there anything that really stands out to you as far as, you know, challenges that you faced that really shaped
who you are as a person today? Yes, there were so many challenges. First of all, it was the financial challenge, but I think some of the decisions that I made early in my career when I was 22, the biggest decision was asking my high school sweetheart to marry me. And miraculously, she said yes. And I knew I had to have a job to do that. So I was with the sheriff's office just a few months before I asked her and we started together. And I think that was important for me because getting married early,
it just kind of forced you to grow up. It forces you to take on responsibility and having that person by your side where two become one and somebody that you can bounce off ideas, somebody you could talk about frustrations with, somebody that you can enjoy life with and just go through this career. Cause this has been every part of her career as has been mine. And that was, and again, that was nearly 40 years ago. And so that was, that was significant. The challenges.
Back then, it was not having maybe the resources that we have now. But then I always thought the challenges could always be overcome by just sticking with it. We've seen and you've seen our parish grow so much over the last 30, 40 years. That has been some of the challenges. How was our country sheriff's office gonna keep up with the tremendous growth that Ascension Parish has seen over the last several decades?
I don't know if that was a good answer to your question, but that was some of the challenges, Yeah, absolutely. Let's now maybe change gears. me get into the current role. As sheriff, obviously it encompasses a lot, right? But maybe what are the most rewarding parts of your current role and what gets you up and excited in the morning?
Well, it's easy to motivate me. know, when I, now that I'm sheriff and I'm so blessed and humbled to serve the folks of our community as sheriff, the things that are rewarding to me, that motivates me is again, taking a department now that has grown, taking a sheriff's office that has grown and watching the development of our staff, of our young deputies out there, watching them grow into their careers, watching them get promoted from sergeant to staff sergeant to lieutenant.
That's really rewarding to me and that's really motivating to me because I see myself sometimes in the young deputies who's working at the jail or who's working in patrol, who's working detectives just advance in their careers. The other thing that motivates me, that gets me excited, and I get this more than people would think, I get a lot of letters from the community congratulating a deputy on a job well done, whether it was stopping them on side of the road, helping them fix their tire or helping them in a situation that they thought they couldn't get out of.
That's rewarding when I get letters from the community complimenting the deputies and then watching the deputies grow. So that's very, very rewarding for me. So it doesn't take much to motivate me and it doesn't take much to make me happy, but that does. And our department continues to grow. And being a sheriff, it's rewarding for me to have the resources and thank goodness we live in Ascension Parish, which is a growing, booming.
of Paris that I could offer our deputies good training, good equipment, good resources and decent pay to stay right here and serve the people of Ascension Parish. Now Sheriff, as far as, I mean, you've mentioned your leadership experiences and how you really promote leadership within your team and we can see it in your deputies for sure. How, I guess, how have you
instill the leadership? What does the communication look like? Are there specific leadership skills that you're looking for or trying to instill in your team as far as whether it's communication or teamwork or anything like that? What does that look like for you and your team? It doesn't happen overnight, Katie. You know, it's a culture that you have to build within your organization. We have had the fortunate opportunity to have some long tenured sheriffs in Ascension Parish. And you started
years earlier to build the leadership principles and the leadership traits and the ability to go out and serve in the community, to teach deputies not to wear their badge too heavy. Listen, here's what we have to do. We know we have to train our deputies. You have to train them almost so well that they're dangerous. It's an odd thing to say, But they've got protect us, okay? And there are some situations out there where you want that deputy to have the skills necessary to protect us.
But then you also have to train them that you know what, you keep your sword and your sheath until you don't have to. You serve the community. But have the skills, have the training necessary to protect your community. And that builds leadership. You know, as a sheriff, I always said this and I've learned this, that the higher you go up in rank, the shorter your job description is. But your responsibilities increase so much. So what I have to do for this department, I have to provide the leadership.
I have to get elected because I'm an elected official and I have to provide the leadership for this agency. And you think I do it alone? Obviously I don't, right? I have an unbelievable senior command staff. And one of the keys I think that's helped us is almost every one of my senior command staff, field staff and division commanders grew up in this agency. Those are the ones that stuck, right? Those are the ones we talk, get through this career. So when you grow up in this agency,
After about 25, 30 years, such as me with almost 40, you kind of learn how to do this job. I always say I'll be a better sheriff in my second term than I was in my first because I've grown in the job as a sheriff. So we have to provide that. Now communication, you said this, and that's some of my biggest frustration because when you talk to young deputy, it's always, you know, we don't communicate enough or we don't know what's going on at headquarters and we don't know what's going on here. And in this day and age, it seemed like communication would be the easiest thing to do.
But it's still a challenge is to get information through that chain of command, up the chain and down the chain to make everybody feel like they're a valued member of our sheriff's office. So that is some of the challenges that we face. But I get up every morning knowing I have to provide leadership. And I have to make sure that I don't do anything stupid. Okay? I don't want to embarrass my deputies. I don't want to embarrass the citizens of essential care. So I got to come in here and try to do the best I can.
Although I know I'm probably gonna make a mistake today. Somewhere along the way I'm gonna make a mistake, but it's been a good run for me in my career, and I think it's been a great run for Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office, being able to keep up with the growth of our parish. Yeah, and outside of the Sheriff's Office, you're so involved in the community. mean, mentioned Knights of Columbus, we mentioned Rotary. I know that you're the event chair for the Ascension Cattle Barons Fall for the American Cancer Society. With me, I really enjoyed working with you. Can you tell me a little bit more about
your community involvement, know, what really calls you to be involved in the community? And is there anything specific that you look for in these partnerships? Yeah, so we feel, and again, 40 years into my career as sheriff and from probably day one, we've always had some community involvement. We call it community policing. Community policing is so vitally important to us. And we can do it now in a big way. And we do do it.
in a big way in the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office. I mentioned earlier that if you can take care of your deputies and you can train them to protect, and we know that's set and they're conserved, you could take more time to be engaged in your community. And we do programs all the time. We like to say we put community outreach on steroids. It's just like we do it. I have a whole division dedicated to community outreach and community policing. We own a park.
Sheriffs don't own parks, but we took, and the parts of the community that needed us the most, we took a piece of land and built a park out of it, built the study commons out of it, and we're getting ready for our Booing the Badge, here's Halloween time, right? So in 2016, we invented that. The places that were flooded in the historical flood of 2016 didn't have anywhere to go trick or treat. So we took a school, working with the school, and said, you know what, we're gonna ask vendors, ask our community to come out, and we're gonna set up a trick or treat.
Haunted house right there at the school. It was so big when you would never get out of it. know, when the badge has become a big thing and right behind that we're getting ready for Christmas crusade. Our Christmas crusade is one of our premier events where we're to help five, 600 kids who otherwise wouldn't have the Christmas that me and you had when we were kids. So that's important to us. Being engaged in the community is so important. It's such an honor to work with you on the cattleman's cattle baron's ball because
who hadn't been affected by cancer, right? So the American Cancer Society, my mother, she passed away of cancer, my dad had cancer, and to be a part of that and seeing what the American Cancer Society can do right here in our own community is gonna be fun. And I look forward to going to that ball and seeing you there. Yeah, so there's so much in community. And you know, I don't ever separate it from my professional job here as sheriff. I think they go hand in hand.
And being involved with the Rotary Club, my Knights of Columbus, the Chamber, we see, it's an old cliche, right? It takes the village and it truly does. It takes all of us together to work to help our community grow. Here's my philosophy as a sheriff when it comes to community policing. We take care of kids, okay? We take care of kids, especially those with special needs. Love our kids with special needs and we do programs for them throughout the year. Then we take care of our seniors.
and we call it the SALT program, Seniors Allotment Together. Love our senior citizen. And then I will do almost anything for veterans groups, know, the people who went out and served our country. So that's kind of where we're focusing. We can do so much in those areas. But the rest of us, like you and you and me, we should get up every morning and go to work, right? I will do everything we can to protect you, protect your property, but we go to work. When you become a senior citizen, sheriff's officer will be there for you. When you're a kid, sheriff's officer will be there.
do it all the great community police and stuff that we should do. But that's some of the most rewarding things of our career when we can do those type of things in the community. It's not always putting bad people in jail. That should be done. And we do that well. But watching our community grow and watching kids develop, that's really, really fun. And you know, there's a big push now and I'm honored to be a part of it is early childhood education, especially in parts of the community that need it the most and working with the
partnerships, which are so important, partnership, partnerships, partnership with parish government, with the city of Donaldsville, with the library, okay, with the industry, big and small, who see what you're doing in community policing and said, you know what, I think they're doing it right and we wanna be a part of it and we wanna help. Absolutely. And so, you know, one of the things we like to kind of end with and we wanna know what do you see, where do you see Ascension Parish in 10 years? 10 years from now.
What's your vision of Ascension Parish? Well, I don't think the growth is gonna slow down. I think we'll continue to grow. it's gonna be so important for us to try to grow as smartly as possible. Because we're experiencing the effects of the tremendous growth we had, right? I mean, who hasn't been caught in traffic? Who hasn't seen the infrastructure issues that we have? And I would say our Parish government officials are trying diligently to make sure
Our sewer system is up and running. We have fresh water. Our roads are getting better. But you know what? I travel a lot. every progressive city I go to, every growing city I go to faces the same problem. They all have traffic. They all have challenges. And so do we. The backside of that, if we had no challenges and we would have no businesses here and we'd have... It would be like it was 25 years ago, but that's not the case. We are so fortunate in a century.
Ascension Parish. I don't see us slowing down on our growth, but I do think the growth is gonna shift. It's gotta shift probably south a little more, maybe some to the west bank. think industries no doubt here to stay, and I still think there'll be growth there, which will support big businesses and small business and provide a lot of jobs for the folks coming to Ascension. Because they're still coming, right? People wanna live here. First of all, for our unbelievable school system, they wanna come to Ascension Parish.
They wanna raise their kids here. They wanna send their kids to school here. They wanna worship here and they want Ascension Parish to be home. And I think we have a lot to offer and we will continue to have a lot to offer. So 10 years from now, Ascension Parish will be doing fine. It's just, I hope we have the plan and I wanna be a part of that for the smart growth that we're going to have. And in law enforcement, it will continue to be the basics of doing law enforcement. So that stays the same, right?
It's the old gum shoe detective, it's that trolling on the road, rolling his windows down, watching those neighborhoods. But that technology is gonna continue to change. I don't know where artificial intelligence is gonna take us in law enforcement. It's just gonna be a wild ride to see where that goes. It's already helping us now. So it's gonna be fun. I still have a little gas in my tank, so I'll be around for a little while longer, but one day I'm gonna wanna retire. And my commitment is to retire.
right here in Ascension Parish. I may go travel a little bit, but I'm coming home. And I'm gonna still wanna be a part of our community in some way. Because I think if you retire, tell you this, y'all so young, but I'll tell you this, if you retire and you don't have a purpose in life, you're gonna fail at retirement. And you don't wanna fail at retirement. So stay involved in your community. Yeah. It's awesome. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for being here with us today, Shera. Is there anything before we wrap up completely that we didn't touch on that maybe you'd wanna talk about real quick or something that...
you you'd like to share with our viewers. Well, mean, y'all would add to some of this also. I don't even know what I would say. I would always I want to say to our community that Ascension Parish has challenges, that Ascension Parish has opportunities. It's a great place to live. One of the things I did recently and I would maybe offer this to some of our young deputies or young people in the community or maybe even older people in the community.
Something significant I did was separate myself from social media. And that has been a game changer for me because I used to live by alerts on my phone or the Facebook pages that we all have and reading people's comments, which can be so negative sometime and your phone always going off because I had 15 alerts. And as a sheriff, I thought I needed that. Okay. But recently I disconnected. I turned off most of my alerts. So I'm only getting alerts from the sheriff's office.
Now, if we have a hurricane bearing down on us, will turn on some heart attack alerts. And I backed away from social media and started spending more time with family and friends. That helped, because I didn't really know how much it would. So that was important to me to do that. And it's important to be involved in your community. So I'll tell young couples who want to stay here, you can't be involved in your community from the seat of a lazy boy. You got to get out of the community. I'll tell our young deputies this all the time.
You know, I don't know if I could convince Putin not to create any more nuclear weapons, or I don't know if I could stop the Israeli war right now, but I can paint a park bench, right? I could do something local in my community to make my community better. And that's where it starts on those small things. And we've done that in so many ways, and this community offers us so many opportunities to be involved in our community. It's just because...
Because if you ingrain yourself in community, you're going to appreciate it more. One of the rules that we have at the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office was you have to live here to work here, which is kind of a rule that's gone away in some agencies. But I don't want to let go of that rule yet. I want you to live in the community that you police. I want you to live in a community that you work in and that you serve in. So I don't know. I might have not answered your question, I'll just. thank you. We can end it whenever you're ready. Thank you, First was fantastic. We appreciate it. We appreciate it.
having you on. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Well, thank you. I really enjoyed it. Awesome.
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Connecting Ascension (28:24)
Thank you for joining us today on Connecting Ascension, a Chamber podcast. We hope you found our discussion enlightening and valuable. A special thank you to the Ascension Parish Chamber and the Ascension Parish Government for their continued support and commitment to our community. You can always check out their upcoming events on the QR codes or the links provided. We encourage you to stay engaged and connected with us as we strive to bring you more insights and stories from the heart of Ascension Parish.
Until next time, remember, together we thrive.