Hornbeck named new Comanche Police Department chief

David Hornbeck’s career in law enforcement has come full circle as he has returned to the place he started his career 25 years ago.

Last week, Hornbeck was named Comanche’s new police chief. He replaces Cory Faulk.

Hornbeck finds himself back in Comanche after city manager Wayne McCasland stayed true to his word and gave him a call when a position opened up.

“I had told Wayne and Cory about a year ago that I’d be interested in coming back if an opening became available,” Hornbeck said. “Wayne called me after Cory resigned and we visited. I don’t know if I was his first, second or third call, but I’m just very, very glad they gave me the opportunity to come down here and be a part of the community and come back home.”

Hornbeck is more than just an officer, he is also an active shooter instructor, a CLEET instructor and a training officer. He has more than 80 hours in mental health crisis intervention training.

“I’ve tried to take advantage of the training, to better my experience and put more tools in my belt, in order to be a better police officer and handle situations,” Hornbeck said. “My next goal is to become a firearms instructor and I hope to achieve that one of these days.”

Even though he had only been on the job a couple of days when he was interviewed, Hornbeck had some clearly defined goals in mind for the Comanche Police Department.

“I want to continue to maintain the integrity of law enforcement at the Comanche Police Department,” Horneck said. “I have a high standard of what I believe about how police officers should conduct themselves and how an officer should be an integral part of the city and to be able to enforce the law. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do every job.”

Hornbeck wants his officers to take advantage of training programs offered by the sheriff’s department and the Duncan Police Department.
 “I want to get our guys quality training to bring back to our community so that we can offer our community a well-rounded police department,” Hornbeck said. 

“I don’t want them to think they have to depend on one officer because he is the only one that will do anything. You hear that at a lot of agencies, ‘Well, I go to Officer Brown. He’s the only one that really takes care of anything around here.’ I want them to think that it doesn’t matter if it’s Chief Hornbeck or any other officer, anybody they call on here they’re going to know that we’re going to be able to take care of their problem to the best of our ability.”

Part of that strategy will be to do victim follow up.

“I do want 100 percent follow up from our officers to victims of any crime in this community,” Hornbeck said. “I think that’s the biggest detachment we have. We show up at your house, take a report and you never see us again. We will demand a three-day followup of officers with every victim. I think it’s important to keep touching base with our community and letting them know where their cases stand in the courts and what we’re able to do and what we’re not able to do. We can’t be a completely open book because there’s some things we can’t tell people, but we will be as open as we can be with our community and that helps build trust. If they don’t trust us, they don’t need us. I want to bridge that gap of trust between us and the community. That’s one of my main goals right now.”

While that is one thing he wants to be known for, there is one thing he does not want to be know for.

“I don’t want to be on the Oklahoma map for being one of the biggest speed traps,” Hornbeck said. “I don’t want Comanche to have that reputation. We need to deal with speeders because it cuts down on vehicle collisions and fatalities. That’s the reason we do it. We’ll continue to do it right, but I definitely don’t want to be categorized as an Oklahoma speed trap.”

And like with any new leadership, there will be changes.

“Anytime you get a new guy come in, there’s going to be new ideas,” Hornbeck said. “There’s going to be change, but like I told the guys when I met with them, I’m not coming in here swinging an axe and chopping people’s heads off. I want to work with the team that’s here. They’re already here. They’re established. I want to work with them and try to build a better team and see if we can’t be more proactive and more community minded.”

Hornbeck said officers will have more saturation on the streets and protecting neighborhoods.

“They will be seeing more of a police presence on the streets,” Hornbeck said. “I believe in being a proactive law enforcement officer and I told Wayne when he hired me not to expect me to ride the desk and sit in air conditioning. I’m a working man and I’m a working chief.”

That means being a personal presence in the community.

“I will be out there, I will be doing traffic stops,” Hornbeck said. “If it comes time to kick in a door, I’m kicking the door. We’re going in together. We’re a team - patch to patch. There’s no reason my guys should do all the work. I’ll be right there with them and they can have all the glory in it because I don’t care at all about that. I believe you lead by example and I want them to know I am a police officer first before the word chief ever comes into it.”

And there is a longtime motto he continues to live by.

“I’ve said it ever since I’ve held a leadership position in law enforcement - I’m your supervisor by title but don’t make me supervise you,” Hornbeck said. “We hire educated, mature individuals to do this job. There’s no reason why a chief should have to babysit their officers. I think we have good officers here at Comanche. We’re going to get a mission statement written for the police department. We’re going to adhere to it and I want these guys to be proud that they work for the Comanche Police Department just as I am proud to be here as the chief of police.”

Hornbeck’s law enforcement career has been a winding road throughout the area. He has had stints as a full-time or reserve officer in Comanche, Temple, Apache, Lawton, Lake Murray and the Stephens County Sheriff’s Department.

“I really thought at the time (2008) I’d peaked my career in law enforcement when I went to work with the sheriff’s department,” Hornbeck said. “I always had an admiration for the department. I always thought it was a really top-notch law enforcement agency. I liked their uniforms, I liked their professionalism. And, when I became a part of that, I felt pride being a part of that team.”

The deputy position lasted only about six months, however. Sheriff Jimmie Bruner, who had hired Hornbeck, decided not to run for re-election.

“A new sheriff (Wayne McKinney) was elected and me and another gentleman were the last two hired, so we were the first two to be let go,” Hornbeck said. “It was just an unfortunate victim of circumstance.”

But Hornbeck, a 1985 Comanche High School graduate, wasn’t ready to give up his law enforcement career. He got on with the Apache Police Department. 

A few years later, he got on with the Lawton Public School Police Department as a reserve police officer.

“I was told I could work ball games as a reserve police officer to make extra money,” Hornbeck said. “With a wife and three kids, extra money is always a good thing to have.”

But, he would never work a ball game.

“I’d call (the chief) and give him my days off and my availability, but I never worked a ball game,” Hornbeck said. “Two months of phone calls going back and forth, trying to work a ball game and it never happened.”

There was a significant shift when the third month came around when the police chief asked him to come on full-time for the school district in 2012. It was a blessing since it allowed him to be closer to his ailing father.

When the school police chief resigned in 2016, he was encouraged by one of the principals he worked for to apply for the chief’s position. He would be one of 11 applicants.

A couple of months later, he was asked to work a school board meeting.

“I hadn’t paid much attention to what was on the agenda, I was just there to work,” Hornbeck said. “They go into executive session and when they come out, superintendent Tom Deighan said, ‘I’d like to recommend David Hornbeck as the district police chief.”

Hornbeck was shocked, he had no idea.

He would stay with the school district for several years before moving on after COVID when new district leadership did not want to replace officers let go during the pandemic. 

He would end up in Waurika where he would eventually become the school resource officer, the last position he would hold before returning to Comanche.

“The hardest part was leaving those kids,” Hornbeck said. “The elementary kids would run up to you and give you a fist bump or a hug.”