Solaris Oilfield Infrastructure Plant Manager Daryl Lanaville recently presented Early Police Department with portable steel targets as a gift of appreciation for the help of an off duty officer in stopping a costly theft from the company at the beginning of this past summer.

Lanaville explained that a few EPD officers work for Solaris as security guards in their off-duty hours.  Their shifts are typically overnight 12 hour shifts and are usually pretty uneventful. 

This was not the case one night when EPD officer Michelle Sheedy was working security at Solaris.  The suspect had gotten in the shop, after somehow crawling over the fence, and was about to haul off a $4,000-5,000 plasma cutting machine, according to Lanaville.  It wasn’t clear how the suspect thought he was going to get the cutting machine over the tall fence or the large gate, but somehow Lanaville stated, “he had a plan.”

The suspect was caught as he was coming out near the main offices and was walking behind the officer’s vehicle.  Sheedy basically looked in her rear view mirror and saw the suspect walking behind the car as he tried to sneak around one of the buildings.  “She was right there waiting for him,” said Lanaville.

The company decided they to thank Early Police Department as a whole, for the officers’ willingness to work security detail for the company.

“We wanted to express our thanks, even though they are off-duty and this is extra work for them.  We wanted a way to express our thanks to the whole department for doing this for us,” said Lanaville.  “So this is what we decided to do.  This is the kind of thing that the guys practice with and being as we are steel fabricators, we figured we could figure out how to do it.”

Pictured above are Early Chief David Mercer and EPD officer Andre Smoot with Solaris Plant Manager Daryl Lanaville and Solaris employees who fabricated the targets.