Back when DPS was patrolling the streets of Austin, crime went down. So naturally Austin City Council is ending DPS patrols because they made one person uncomfortable.
The City of Austin has suspended its recently restarted partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), established to aid the city’s struggling police department.
Announced back in March, the partnership between the Austin Police Department (APD) and the state was initiated to help APD respond to 911 calls and monitor traffic. APD has long struggled with staffing issues and saw 89 departures through the first three months of 2023, as city policy and posture toward the department were not appreciated by many rank-and-file officers.
As of March, there were 281 vacancies on top of the 150 positions eliminated in the 2020 budget cut. Due to the staffing shortage, police response times ballooned to at or nearly 10 minutes and 911 call holding times grew even larger.
At the time of the announcement, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said, “During my run for mayor, I promised we would make city government work better in providing basic services.”
“This is an example of that. It’s a common-sense, practical response to a serious need and arose out of a positive working relationship between the Capital City and the Capitol of Texas.”
A report on the partnership was released this month showing average response times in council districts dropping between 30 seconds and a minute and a half.
But after a citizen complaint alleging DPS officers pointed firearms at a father and his child, the city’s Public Safety Commission recommended the council scrap the partnership.
A citizen. One.
On the first day of the partnership, DPS officers seized 70 pounds of methamphetamine and made 14 felony arrests.
It was temporarily paused in May to shift the manpower to the border as Title 42 expired but was set to resume after the hiatus.
“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 a primary function of City government, and we must keep trying to get it right,” Watson said.
“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.”
The city’s release says that the DPS support “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.”
Councilman Chito Vela said of the announcement, “This is the right decision, especially given the events of the last few days. Policing in Austin must be aligned with our community values. Unfortunately, the type of policing we have seen by DPS is not in line with Austin’s values.”
Evidently “Austin values” are “We can’t put criminals in jail, because white supremacy.”
A source within APD said to The Texan, “It’ll get worse before it gets worse and people want to leave.”
“The activists who don’t have the residents’ or visitors’ best interest at heart are succeeding in tearing down public safety,” he added. “Until city leadership is brave enough to reject their radicalism, the dire situation will only get worse.”
Sadly, “city leadership” is in on the scam. They want as many criminals and drug-addicted transients walking the streets as possible because they’re an excellent source of graft for the hard left.
In a statement provided to The Texan, Austin Police Association President Thomas Villareal said, “The decision by the Interim City Manager and Mayor to suspend the APD/DPS partnership is absolutely unconscionable. 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.”
According to Villareal, the department’s internal staffing numbers show APD is currently 500 officers short.
Yeah, that happens when you defund the police and cancel cadet classes.
Austin is following in the same crime-and-homeless infested footsteps of San Francisco even after San Franciscans have risen up to start kicking them out of office. Hopefully Austinites have just enough sense to avoid following them into that feces-strewn ditch.
Tags: Austin, Austin City Council, Austin Police Department, Chito Vela, Crime, Democrats, homeless, Social Justice Warriors, Texas DPS, Thomas Villareal
The progressive anarchosocialists will never be satisfied until the country is destroyed. They will keep pushing until “working within the system” is no longer possible (we’re very close already), to be followed by accusations, blame, and finger pointing at everyone but themselves when it falls apart and their lives are in jeopardy.
Words cannot express how much I want these people and those they love to come to harm. I pray constantly for evil things to befall them, and that I might have the privilege of witnessing their pain.
Other Texas districts and police should head-hunt the best Austin PD members, and everyone should let them do a “responsible draw-down” until APD is no longer.
Why not? ALL Defunders know of successful places where police have been fully defunded and there are no oppressive police left. Just ask them! They all know of success stories. No need to ask questions, they understand it all.
Then no blacks will be oppressed except in awful places run by white supremacists. Win-win.
Give them what they want.
Nature will take its course.
The thing I don’t understand is why so many of the “persuadable middle” go along with the extremists. It’s as if they can’t work out cause and effect, or observe the actual effects of the policies they help support.
100-200 years ago, none of these idiots would last a day in office or authority before the public threw them out in disgust. You could have gotten away with criminality, back then, but… Supporting vagrancy in the streets? Paying them for it, with tax dollars? WTF? Where the hell did all that get started, and what did it?
[…] DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Problem: Austin PD Is Down 500 Officers. Austin City Council Solution: Fire DPS. […]
Spineless and/or blackmailable leaders. That’s what does it. You can’t stand against the unethical if you’ve already compromised your own.
Gov. Abbott should add an item to the latest call for a special session.
Specifically, for any city over 1 million in population that has a police force below a specified threshold, the Governor may order that DPS will assume responsibility for policing that city, with the costs for doing so deducted from the city’s sales tax revenues disbursed by the State Comptroller’s office. Also add that DPS may hire former APD officers and personnel on an expedited basis, and may requisition APD buildings and equipment.
In other words, if Austin doesn’t get its act together, the state will take over policing in the city, with Austin picking up the tab.
LKB, your idea sounds great. As a Houstonite, I’m glad that madness hasn’t spread here yet, but I would welcome such tactics to stop it.
“In other words, if Austin doesn’t get its act together, the state will take over policing in the city, with Austin picking up the tab.”
There’s precedent for this in St. Louis. For a long time StL had no local control of its PD. Missouri state had controlling interest over its board until MO Governor Jay Nixon gave back controlling interest to the StL Mayor and Board of Alderman in 2010.
IT HAS BEEN A DISASTER. So much so in fact that just this year Missouri is debating taking away their control again with a bill that didn’t make it out of regular session.
If they want to act like children, treat them like children.
Here’s a thought:
Policing is too important a job to entrust to mere “hired guns”.
So, what we should do is this: Draft the bastards. Conscription for police; everyone on the voting rolls has their name put into a pot, and they’re all liable for public service as designated law enforcement personnel for say, 24 months. They get their notice, attend an academy, and serve 24 months or so as beat cops. Investigators and supervisors would have to be professionals, obviously, but putting everyone at risk of being a beat cop would work wonders from several directions. One, everyone would at risk of having to be a cop, at one point or another. Two, everyone would learn what a pain in the ass the rest of the general public really is, which would greatly enhance their understanding of what the job entails. Three, because everyone has to do the dirty work, the odds are that you’d see far fewer abuses on either side of the badge.
Trust me on this, once you’ve spent a few weeks doing police work? You’ll understand and sympathize with them a lot more. Which isn’t to say that you’ll be any more inclined to excuse their abuses…
It’d also shut the “defund the police” idiots. I guarantee you that the first few of those morons who find themselves facing down a carjacker will suddenly be all about having all the resources they can stand…
And, ohbytheway, it’d educate the public about what to look for with judicial elections. You spend a few years as a cop, then see someone on a bench playing “release” to your “catch”? Yeah; unlikely that asshole will get re-elected.
Public order is everyone’s job, in the final analysis. We really ought to organize our policing so as to reflect that fact.
Home rule in Austin should be abolished, in favor of a gubernatorial-appointed State Capital Commission.
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To the Lunatic: be careful what you wish for. The District of Columbia has the Capitol Police for the central federal district. That’s responsible to the Congress, and we all know what’s happened there the last few years.
[…] a massive deficit in the number of police officers needed to patrol city streets, want to guess how many police […]
Minneapolis with 380,000 people and Mesa, AZ with 550,000 have similar numbers on authorized police staff, pay and benefits. Both should have about 850 cops. Mesa does. Minneapolis is down to about 500. I counted 10 cops, a firetruck and an ambulance at a shoplifting call at Ulta. Minneapolis typically responds to an armed robbery in 45 minutes if they even show up. Maricopa county prosecuted criminals. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarity doesn’t. Before winning her post she was fired from the public defenders office for incompetence.
But she just hosted Georgia’s Fulton County Attorney Fani Willis to share ideas. Willis is known for hiring her paramour to warm her bed and prosecute Trump. After no one in her office would work a case against a state policeman, Moriarty hired a DC firm to do the work. That case was dismissed for prosecutorial misconduct.
Oh, yes, Mesa PD has quite a few former Minneapolis cops.