Austin Hits All-Time Homicide High

Austin has been one of the safest big cities in America for decades before mayor Steve Adler and the hard-left city council voted to turn Austin into a giant camp for drug-addicted transients in 2019, and then cut police funding in 2020. Now, with more than three months left in the year, Austin homicides have hit an all-time high with 60 murders:

Austin early Sunday recorded its 60th homicide, a grim tally that is now more slayings in a year than the city has seen in the six decades the Police Department has kept count.

The latest two killings were reported minutes apart. At 2:20 a.m., police officers responded to a call about gunfire at the El Nocturno Night Club, located at 7601 N. Lamar Blvd., just south of U.S. 183 in central Austin. When they arrived, they found a man who had been shot several times. Witnesses told police that they had heard an argument moments earlier.

About six minutes later, officers responded to a reported stabbing at Sixth and Nueces streets downtown. They found an injured man who later died. Police officials Sunday did not immediately release further details about the incidents, including the identities of victims and suspects.

The 60th case marks a 25% increase in homicides so far in 2021, compared with all of 2020 when the Police Department logged 48 violent deaths. Interim Chief Joe Chacon said he fears the 2021 tally will continue to go up with three-and-a-half months left in the year.

The previous peak was 59 homicides in 1984. The 2021 number is up 71% from 2018:

The Austin City Council cut a larger percentage from its police budget in 2020 than nearly any city in the country. They slashed $150 million from the Austin Police Department’s budget, roughly 34 percent of the agency’s $434 million total budget, Law Officer reported.

Now the State Capitol of Texas is reeling in murders at a historic pace after the city experienced two more homicides early Sunday morning.

Snip.

There were 48 homicides in Austin in 2020, 38 in 2019 and 35 in 2018, KXAN reported. This marks a 71 percent increase in the homicide rate from three years ago, and there are still more than 3.5 months left in 2021. Citizens wonder how high it will go.

“This is indefensible,” a local resident told Law Officer. “(Mayor Steve) Adler and his band of merry men should all be thrown out of office. … I’m done. I love this city but I’m moving to the suburbs where this stupidity doesn’t occur.”

Higher crime rates in Austin are a direct results of a homeless policy that lured more transients to Austin, of police budgets that were cut so more taxpayer money could be diverted to leftwing activists, and of a Soros-backed county DA that has installed a revolving door to put dangerous criminals back on Austin’s streets without prosecuting them.

Proposition B and state action are slowly eliminating the sprawling transient camps, and the police refunding petition aims to restore adequate APD staffing. Whether Garza can be forced to do his job remains to be seen, but Austin will continue to experience high crime rates until all three of those problems are addressed.

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4 Responses to “Austin Hits All-Time Homicide High”

  1. Brian says:

    Austin and Asheville NC two artistic communities turned to crap by the defund the police movement.

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  3. […] I covered Austin’s record murder rate here. […]

  4. […] Garza’s tenure has been a boon to felons seeking to continue their criminal activity while out on bond, but a disaster for law-abiding Austinites, especially those who don’t want to be murdered. […]

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