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Police

Council members grill APD, DPS chiefs over partnership's impacts on Black and Latino Austinites

City Council questioned leaders of the Austin Police Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety on Tuesday about the disparate impacts its policing partnership is having on communities of color throughout Austin. The briefings took place during Tuesday’s work…

APD, Public Safety Commission clash over decorum, responsiveness

Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon threatened to withhold his department’s participation in future meetings of the city’s Public Safety Commission, citing a lack of decorum and exposing deep-seated tensions between the two entities. Commissioners, in turn, spoke of APD leadership’s…

A month into Austin patrols, state police are disproportionately arresting people of color

New data from the Travis County Attorney’s Office shows Black and Latino people have been disproportionately arrested by state police in the last few weeks. The data provides a look into the first few weeks of the Austin Police Department’s…

Council OKs license-plate reader contract negotiations, amid community concerns

City Council is taking steps that will allow the Austin Police Department to reintroduce – on a much grander scale – its license-plate reader program, which was shelved as a result of major departmental budget cuts in 2020. Council authorized…

City Council interrogates APD, city staff about DPS partnership

More than three weeks after Austin Mayor Kirk Watson announced a new partnership between the Austin Police Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety, City Council members had a chance to ask APD leadership and city staff about the…

Police chief says Austin has seen a big drop in violent crime since state troopers started helping out

Austin’s police chief says the department has seen a 25 percent drop in violent crime since a partnership with Department of Public Safety troopers began late last month. At a news conference Friday, APD Chief Joseph Chacon said the partnership…

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Public Safety Commission chair joins family's calls for more information on Austin Police shooting death

The chair of the Public Safety Commission on Monday joined the family of a man fatally shot by Austin police in calling for more information from Chief Joseph Chacon. The comments from Chair Rebecca Bernhardt came during Monday’s meeting, after…

New APD-DPS partnership sparks pushback, arrests

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson cited long-standing police staffing shortages, which have led to a “decentralized” approach to traffic enforcement among other things, when he announced last week that the Texas Department of Public Safety would soon begin playing a supportive…

Austin Police revert to decentralized traffic enforcement approach

The Austin Police Department’s staffing shortages are leading it to take a decentralized approach to traffic enforcement, the city’s Public Safety Commission learned during a traffic enforcement and management update on April 3. Most of the crashes that happen on…

City Council delays vote on police dash-cam contract

City Council voted unanimously to postpone voting on a three-year, $3.8 million contract to update the Austin Police Department’s fleet of dashboard cameras, citing concerns about the vendor’s built-in automated license plate reader, or ALPR, technology.  “There’s lots of things…

State police to supplement APD officers amid ongoing staffing problems

The city has entered into a partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety to supplement the Austin Police Department amid its ongoing staffing shortage and a public perception that the city has too few police officers. The partnership was…

Report: APD Training Academy curriculum review flawed, hampered by resistance to reform

A third-party evaluation of the Austin Police Department Training Academy’s curriculum review process found it lacked “a clearly defined mission and scope, which hampered its effectiveness from the beginning,” and that it suffered from instructors’ resistance to reform and did…

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