The Austin Police Department said Wednesday it has launched an internal affairs investigation into one of its officers following an apparent road rage incident in Garland that went viral.
Amanda Witherspoon was driving her vehicle on the Interstate 30 service road when she encountered an off-duty Austin police officer. Footage of the encounter appears to show the officer shouting profanities at Witherspoon after she did not allow him to cross over into her lane.
The officer then allegedly struck Witherspoon’s vehicle, prompting her to move into another lane. Witherspoon said she recorded the incident for insurance purposes, reported WFAA.
The Austin Police Department released a statement about the incident. While it did not reveal the name of the individual in question, it did acknowledge that the man was an officer from the department.
“Our Department holds its officers to the highest standards of professionalism and accountability, both on and off duty,” APD said. “These actions do not reflect our Department’s values and an Internal Affairs investigation has been initiated.”
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, APD has been suffering from a serious staffing shortage, not entirely dissimilar to that being endured by the Dallas Police Department. The latter is short roughly 900 officers. A report recommends a city the size of Dallas needs about 4,000 to sufficiently maintain public safety.
Witherspoon said she hopes that the APD officer will face some sort of consequences for his actions.
“To me, if you just can’t handle life in traffic, you probably should not be a police officer,” said Witherspoon, per WFAA. “Because he’s supposed to be a peace officer and he’s supposed to serve and protect, and he’s out here harassing and tormenting people because he didn’t plan ahead.”
Social media users have since commented on the situation, denouncing the officer and the department and recommending that APD remedies the problem quickly.
“Usually I question snippets of a video because [of] lack of context, but there is no defense of this behavior. APD is short-staffed as is, but apparently needs to be shorter,” posted one social media user.
Another appeared to use the incident to make light of recent policy changes, suggesting that the woman should have called 311. APD recently drew attention after posting on social media that victims of “jugging” robberies should call 311 instead of 911.
“There’s less and less and less resources to go out and do the job,” said Austin Police Association President Thomas Villarreal, speaking with Fox News. “I’ve got detectives who are pulled away from their caseload to just help answer 911 calls because we just don’t have the resources to adequately police the city.”
