Ideally, when an Austinite calls 911 for a police response they’d like the police to respond. However, last August, the Austin City Council voted to cancel the Austin Police Department cadet classes through June 2021. Without new cadets to fill increasingly vacant positions, various APD units were cut so their personnel could be reassigned to fill increasingly vacant patrol shifts.
To give you an idea of how police staffing at APD works, new police academy graduates start on a patrol shift where they learn the fundamentals of policing. After four years, they can apply to a specialized unit, like SWAT, the Violent Crimes Task Force, or they can apply to promote to be a detective or a unit supervisor. Every time someone in a specialized unit or in a higher rank leaves the department, a person is pulled from patrol to fill that vacancy. For example, if a detective in the Child Abuse Unit retires, the next officer on the promotion list fills in the vacant detective spot. If an officer on the bomb squad promotes, a patrol officer moves to the bomb squad. It’s a constant, outward, and upward flow of people from patrol to every other position.
By the end of 2020, APD ended up having to cut positions from DWI Enforcement, Organized Crime, Gangs, Narcotics, the Property Crimes Task Force, District Representatives, and Parks to send those officers to fill vacant patrol positions. Fortunately, council member Pool’s suggestion to eliminate the Bomb Squad failed. However, the loss of the Parks Unit predictably resulted in the disaster situation that Austin’s hike and bike trails continue to experience.
In the first quarter of 2021, 63 officers left the Department. When 63 officers leave in a three-month period, it leaves patrol shifts with huge numbers of vacancies. Patrol shifts are allotted 8 to 12 officers. But when a patrol shift now has four vacancies, several officers on light duty, FMLA, vacation, or out sick, it may be that only two or three officers show up for work. APD’s nine patrol sectors each service around one hundred thousand Austinites. It should go without saying that two or three officers cannot reasonably cover all 911 calls for police service for one hundred thousand people. So it’s not surprising that 911 call hold times are climbing and APD has already blown through 138% of its annual overtime budget in the first half of the fiscal year.
Given that more police services will soon have to be cut to continue refilling patrol vacancies, Austinites deserve to know which services City Council will cut next? Will it be more vacancies in detective units like Child Abuse or Robbery? Specialty units like the Property Crimes Task Force that fight against theft of business equipment, cars, bicycles, and Austinites’ personal property? What about the DWI unit that works to keep the streets of America’s drunkest city as safe from deadly carnage as possible? Hopefully *fingers crossed* it isn’t the bomb squad.
It’s unlikely that any Austin city council member will take ownership of their decision and tell Austinites which police services they will be cut next. Most likely they will put the responsibility on police management to quietly, oh so quietly, make that decision for them, and hope you don’t ask about it. But you deserve to know, and you should certainly >> click right here << to email and ask them.