The City of Austin announced that it has ended a public safety partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety despite growing concerns over crime in the capital.
Appealing to “Austin values,” the city’s interim city manager and the mayor pulled the plug on the program, putting an end to the multi-month initiative designed to decrease crime and alleviate the massive staffing shortages faced by the Austin Police Department.
In a statement, Mayor Kirk Watson said, “From the start of this partnership with DPS, I said I wanted Austinites to feel safe and be safe. Recent events demonstrate we need to suspend the partnership with DPS.”
“The safety of our community is the primary function of City government, and we must keep trying to get it right,” he continued. “This partnership was an innovative approach to address acute staffing shortages that were years in the making.”
“However, any approach must be in sync with Austin values,” Mayor Watson concluded.
The press release noted, however, that the DPS partnership “has resulted in a decrease in violent and gun crime, fewer traffic fatalities, shorter response times to calls for assistance, and seizures of significant amounts of illicit drugs, including fentanyl and heroin.”
Nevertheless, “Austin values” apparently required the termination of the partnership.
Interim City Manager Jesús Garza explained, “Public safety is at the very core of what we do in a city government and this partnership was a practical approach as the Austin Police Department faces serious staffing challenges.”
“We have heard Mayor and Council’s concerns about recent events and agree that we must have absolute certainty that any solution we put in place maintains the trust and wellbeing of our community members and that all law enforcement officers working to keep our city safe are on the same page when it comes to policing practices,” he added.
Matt Mackowiak, the co-founder of Save Austin Now, condemned the decision, calling it a “Victory for police abolitionist and criminals. A terrible loss for public safety, APD and law abiding citizens.”
The day before the partnership ended, local media reported that a DPS officer allegedly pointed his gun at a 10-year-old boy after the child’s father told him to get out of the car and run inside their home during a traffic stop. Allegedly, the man’s car did not have proper plates and illicit CBD was discovered inside the vehicle.
The incident was widely condemned by anti-police activists.
Austin City Council Member Zohaib Qadri said, “There is 0 justification for this. Imagine if the story had ended with a trigger happy DPS trooper.”
“Had that been the case, we all would be talking about the death of a 10 year old at the hands of DPS this morning,” he claimed. “I can only speak for myself, but this partnership needs to end.”
However, Cleo Petricek, a former probation officer and a co-founder of Save Austin Now, commented that the incident would have been avoided had the child not left the vehicle.
“When you are pulled over by the police, you stay in the car until told otherwise by the police for the safety of car occupants and officers,” she explained.
Austin Police Association President Thomas Villarreal condemned the decision in a statement:
“Instead of asking DPS to look into the actions of a specific Trooper, the City allowed a one-sided, inflammatory, poorly researched news story, one purely intended to get clicks, to be treated as truth and fact.
“The City is safer when we have adequate police staffing. Based on the City of Austin’s minimum staffing projections, we are currently 500 officers short. The data presented to the City clearly and unequivocally showed that the presence of DPS made our city safer.
“This decision is just another in a long line of decisions that demonstrate to the hardworking men and women of the APD and the law-abiding citizens of Austin that public safety is not a priority in this City.
“The APA sincerely hopes that [Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon] takes this opportunity to address the public and his officers about the realities his police department is facing, the additional challenges moving forward without DPS assistance, and how he intends to resolve the staffing crisis.”
APD’s decision to end its partnership with DPS comes as business owners in downtown Austin warn that increased crime is already significantly harming the area.
Craig Stanley, the owner of several grocery stores in downtown Austin, complained, “Today what we’re seeing is a lot of drug sales and drug use just out on the street. We don’t have enough control at the street level to enforce our ordinances.”
“Open container ordinances, public intoxication, drug use. These things are happening out in the open and there is no one to enforce any of that,” Stanley said, per CBS Austin.
“We hear from customers all the time that they’ll walk to another store or go out of their way rather than come down here,” he continued. “It should be one of the safest places in the city. And I think we need to reexamine the way we’re treating this part of downtown.”
Still, some celebrated the end of the APD/DPS collaboration, with Texas Democrats’ messaging Chair Kolby Duhon saying, “After 2 weeks of slurs and threats of violence against me from right wing supporters of this partnership, the City has finally seen the light on this misguided effort.”
Similarly, Alycia Castillo added, “After a frustrating few months under new leadership, it’s a big relief to see an acknowledgment of the will of the people today.”
“We can and must innovate for public safety in ways that don’t come at the cost of Black and brown people,” she said.
In June 2019, Dallas also partnered with Texas DPS to tackle a skyrocketing number of murders. By July, the murder rate had dropped by 29%.
However, community activists denounced the work being done by DPS and DPD, claiming that it over-policed minority communities.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, a vocal supporter of strong public safety initiatives, has offered an open door to any Austin PD officers who are dissatisfied with the lack of support they receive from the city, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Johnson’s appeal came as Dallas itself struggles with a significant police shortage, lacking roughly 900 of the 4,000 officers needed to effectively police the city, according to a City document.
“Because of [the shortage], that customer service that we have long given to the city of Dallas … we just can’t do anymore. And I think we’re actually hurting our relationship with the community more than helping it by not changing to doing something different,” said Dallas Police Association President Mike Mata, per the Dallas Observer.
During the first four months of 2023, murders in Dallas were up more than 20% compared to the previous year. More up-to-date data are currently considered unreliable, allegedly due to the recent purported ransomware attack.
Note: This article was updated on July 12, 2023, at 3:22 p.m. to include additional information.