Time for DPS Takeover of Austin Police

It’s time for Austin City Council’s control of the Austin Police Department to be dissolved and transferred to the Texas Department of Public Safety. It is self-evident that the Council is both unwilling and unable to provide for public safety to residents, students, and visitors in Texas’ capital city.

The first priority of a government is to provide for the security of its people. It wouldn’t be prudent to flip control of a large police department for a transient shortage of management skill, but Austin’s inability to provide public safety accelerated over the past six years and now approaches a crisis point.

Austinites may be content to suffer rampant property crime and random violence, a willingness shown in how often comments like, “this level of crime is normal in a big city” are heard in public discourse.

But Texas’ capital city is used by all Texans, and the people of Texas have a right to throw off incompetent governance and find new guards to provide public safety. Texans, especially our kids, deserve to live, visit, learn, and work in the capital city in safety.

The Austin City Council clearly defaulted on this responsibility, and it is now the responsibility of the legislature and the governor to provide for safety in the capital city.

I’ll outline the reasons why Texas’ upcoming 89th legislative session should transfer law enforcement responsibility in Austin to Texas DPS.

Intractable Political Extremism

It should be apparent to Texans that Austin’s City Hall is locked in a level of political dysfunction and extremism that will not be fixed in any reasonable amount of time, if ever. Austin’s Dunning-Kruger style of governance gave anti-police activists policy-making authority over public safety, bringing cutting-edge crime-fighting policies like:

• Cancelling a year of cadet classes
• Injecting a $3 million critical race theory class into Academy training ($10,000 per class, a bargain!)
• Driving police staffing to 500 vacancies and climbing
• Voting down two consecutive police labor contracts
• Impeding or prohibiting cooperation between agencies
• Getting rid of license plate readers
• Preventing facial recognition on body cameras
• Efforts to eliminate the Austin Regional Intelligence Center
• Calls to eliminate civil service for cops
• De facto banning less-than-lethal munitions via the threat of prosecution
• Turning police department leadership a revolving door
• Rejecting arrests before a judge can review officers’ affidavits

If voters in a remote town that nobody else in Texas needed to travel to allowed local government slide into ineptitude, injustice, and disorder, that would be their business. Texans needn’t care as long as the town doesn’t export lawless criminality or economic burden to the rest of us.

But Austin is not Nowhereville, Texas.

The Capitol of Texas is in Austin. Texans’ kids attend Texas’ flagship university in Austin. It’s practically right in the center of Texas on one Texas’ busiest interstate highways. Austin City Council’s inability to provide for the safety of Texans and visitors at the State’s doorstep is of life and death concern to all Texans. A DPS takeover of Austin Police is the only solution.

Rampant Violence and Disorder

Is downtown Austin the most violent place in Texas? Whether it is or isn’t, it’s bad enough that a social media account called “TX Street Fights 2” can simply stand on 6th Street and produce daily videos of assaults and rampant violence.

Other than murders (it’s difficult to hide a death, after all), Austin’s crime rate is easier to experience firsthand than quantify. Between holding half an hour for 911, getting transferred to 311 because 911 isn’t available (or because APD doesn’t have the staffing to send a cop anyway), being told to make an online report because no human is available to talk with you, or the DA refusing to accept arrests even if APD files a case, crime is possibly being under-reported.

Take Over APD While There Are Still Officers

APD’s staffing remains on a downward trajectory with no sign of a turnaround in sight. “Lack of interest in law enforcement careers” may explain an average, peaceful suburb’s difficulties with hiring cops, but that problem doesn’t scratch the surface of why Austin can neither attract new applicants nor retain existing employees. You can read more about those issues here.

The point, though, is that if the legislature and Governor want DPS to take over policing the capital city, they ought to do it while APD still has officers.

How Would It Work?

Terry Keel and Ron Wilson’s bill (which can be downloaded here), would:

• remove APD from Austin City Council control and give control to the DPS director.
• place APD as a division within DPS
• bill Austin for the cost of running the Department
• require DPS to run APD in a similar manner to how it was previously
• maintain civil service rules for APD

DPS already patrols the city, including working 6th Street on weekend nights, and works with APD officers at various calls for service. At this point, it’s little more that keystrokes, paperwork, the passage of a bill, and the Governor’s signature to finalize the DPS takeover of Austin Police.

Have a better idea for providing police services in Austin? Stop by Twitter and pitch your best idea to me.