Posts Tagged ‘911’

Austin Police: “Got Robbed? Don’t Dial 911, We Don’t Have Enough Cops To Respond”

Tuesday, September 5th, 2023

The Austin City Council’s partial defunding of the police back in 2020 continues to hurt law-abiding Austinites. Continued understaffing has left APD unable to fulfill what were previously considered basic police functions. Case in point: APD now asks robbery victims not to call 911.

Austin police in Texas are asking residents to call 311 if they get robbed near an ATM as the department struggles amid an increase in urban crime and staffing shortages.

The Austin Police Department posted a graphic in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, to urge residents to call 311 or make an online report if they’re robbed – 311 is a number usually used for non-emergency requests, as opposed to 911.

“Even if you are cautious & follow all the safety advice, you may still become the unfortunate victim of a robbery,” the Austin Police Department wrote on X. “Do you know what your next steps should be?”

“Make a police report & provide as much information as possible so we can recover your property quickly and safely,” the post added. The graphic included advice to mention the bank in the 311 report and include the date and time of the cash withdrawal.

The new protocol comes as the Texas capital grapples with an increase in crime. Compared to 2020, Austin has had a 77% increase in auto thefts, an 18% increase in aggravated assaults and a 30% increase in murders.

Thanks, Mayor Adler!

Austin Police Association President Thomas Villarreal told “Fox & Friends” in August that the department is sorely lacking the resources it needs to tackle crime.

“We’re a growing city, a city that should be up around 2,000 officers and growing right now,” Villarreal said. “I’ve got about 1,475 officers in our police department and, you know, we’re moving in the wrong direction. There’s less and less and less resources to go out and do the job.”

The understaffing is a direct result of the defunding effort. The defunding effort is a direct result of Austin’s hard-left, Democratic Party, Social Justice Warrior City Council’s ideology, and their desire to rake off the money for the hard left.

Without serious efforts to start and graduate more cadet classes every year, the understaffing (and the resulting crime hikes) will continue indefinitely.

(Hat tip: Dwight.)

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Posted in Austin, Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors | 7 Comments »

Austin City Council Continues Assault On APD

Sunday, April 25th, 2021

It’s obvious that the current Austin City Council hates the Austin Police Department, and will do anything they think the can get away with to strip it of money and power. The most recent example: They’re stripping 911 funding from the police to hand it over to a newly created department:

In continuing to restructure the Austin Police Department, the City Council on Thursday voted to move 911 communications and several other services out of police control and into other city departments.

The total funding to be transferred out of the Police Department’s budget will be about $33.3 million — much of it due to 284.5 full-time positions moving to other city departments.

The decision builds on the council’s work during last year’s budget process when it cut or reallocated $150 million from the Police Department’s budget — one-third of the entire budget. The money removed Thursday came from funds that were set aside to explore shifting roles assigned to police to other city departments.

Why strip money from a functioning 911 dispatch system? Obviously, because the current employees support the police department, and lack of control over it means it can’t be staffed with leftwing cronies, making it much harder to rake off the graft and embezzlement. The “efficiencies” the Austin City Council claims the move to an “Emergency Communications Department” will bring is efficiently siphoning taxpayer money from the causes for which it is earmarked and into the hands of the hard left. But don’t think the crazy stops there:

Thursday’s vote followed a presentation earlier in the week from a community task force assembled by City Manager Spencer Cronk’s office to consider ways to improve public safety.

The recommendations included removing various line items in the Police Department’s budget and investing them in low-income communities through things such as health care access, food, housing and sex worker outreach services.

Some of the more extreme recommendations came from a four-person working group over patrol and surveillance. They included removing all deadly firearms from police officers and putting an end to new cadet classes. By eliminating neighborhood-based policing, the working group said the city would save $210 million that could be reinvested in communities of color.

“Any City Council member who supports that should be fired,” [Austin Police Association President Ken] Casady said. “It’s crazy town. Just by reading this one recommendation this committee has lost all credibility.”

Removing firearms from police and giving money to whores: Your Austin City Council at work.

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Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Waste and Fraud | 7 Comments »