Cottonwood Shores Police Sgt. Eddie McCoy won a Locals Love Us Favorite Law Enforcement award. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
Nearing retirement, Eddie McCoy and wife Jodi visited the Highland Lakes for a vacation — and decided they didn’t want to leave. He’s now a sergeant for the Cottonwood Shores Police Department and just won a 2022 Locals Love Us Favorite Law Enforcement award, voted on by The Picayune Magazine readers and KBEY 103.9 FM Radio Picayune listeners.
“I was actually quite surprised,” he said of the award. “It was quite a shock. I’ve never won anything.”
The McCoys lived most of their lives in Gatesville.
"We came here for a vacation and fell in love with the area,” he said. “I looked for a job.”
McCoy has been in law enforcement for 26 years, including the past 3½ years in Cottonwood Shores.
He began his career in the Coryell County Sheriff's Office as a jailer before working two years in the Robinson Police Department while attending the police academy at Central Texas College. He finished his degree at Temple College.
After graduation, he spent 15 years with the Crawford Police Department, where he worked his way up to chief, a position he held for 5½ years.
"It was a small town," he said of Crawford. "It was about 20 miles away from where I grew up. When I was in high school, we were in Crawford a lot. It was a nice place to hang out."
While he was chief, two public servants finished their service: former President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush. The Bushes moved to Crawford, something McCoy said he can’t “talk much about.”
Once retired, he sold cars for about three years before a friend was elected Coryell County sheriff “and talked me into” returning to law enforcement.
“I didn’t pick law enforcement as a career; it picked me,” he said. “When I was in high school, I had friends in law enforcement who said, ‘You’d love it.’ But I kept putting it off. I was making good money working the family business. Then, I gave in. It gets in your blood.”
As for why he thinks he won the Locals Love Us award, McCoy said it’s because he “tries to show everybody respect.”
“I try to be nice, even if I have to arrest them,” he said. “If you treat people with respect and kindness, they’re going to respond with that 95 percent of the time. If you treat people with respect, it comes back.”
editor@thepicayune.com
