Austin, Monitored: APD’s use of force and a transportation round up

External review finds data inconsistencies in APD reporting on use of force

From Mina Shekarchi:

During a special called meeting of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, Dr. Robin Engel, a Senior Research Scientist at The Ohio State University, presented findings from a recent re-examination of the Austin Police Department’s use of force. Engel said she found the department’s data analyses to be “rudimentary, inconsistent, and inaccurate,” among other concerns.

Engel kicked off the presentation with somber news. “Unfortunately, I did find a number of inconsistencies across the Austin Police Department (APD) in all aspects of use of force, including reporting, accountability and oversight mechanisms, and training,” she said.

Engel described her approach as “holistic”. She evaluated APD policies, training curriculum, internal reports, previous external reviews like the Kroll report, body camera footage and City Council resolutions dating as far back as 2019. She also conducted informal interviews with APD staff and leaders, met with Austin’s civilian-led Office of Police Oversight and rode along on some calls to Sixth Street, where there have been more documented incidents of use of force.

A MOBILITY RECAP

ICYMI in the way-back-when of last week, the Austin Monitor covered the highlights from the UTC meeting, including new director’s rules for the residential permit parking program and an update to the director’s rules for the micromobility program. This week, we’ve taken a minute to recap a recent meeting of the City Council Mobility Committee in order to bring you even further up-to-date.

Federal Transportation Grants Still in Limbo

No news is not necessarily good news where federal transportation grants, frozen by the Trump administration in January as part of a broad reevaluation of federal spending, are concerned. According to city staff, the federal Department of Transportation blew their own 90-day deadline and no further information has been forthcoming. If the freeze continues, or if the frozen grants are ultimately revoked, some of the city’s most expensive transit plans could be derailed. Some projects particularly threatened by include the I-35 cap-and-stitch (which will be voted on by City Council today) and the Barton Springs Road bridge revamp, which as budgeted depend on already-awarded federal money that the Trump administration has shown interest in clawing back. Much of the executive order that prompted the freeze may yet be ruled unconstitutional, with legal challenges ongoing across the country.

“February was a very uncertain time,” said Paige Warner, Transportation and Public Works’ interim chief-of-staff, who gave the presentation. “And unfortunately, today we’re not at that place of clarity that we wanted to be.”

Mobility Bonds, Class of 2012-2020

As part of a bundle of briefings presented to the committee, members heard an update on the status of projects funded by mobility bonds issued between 2012 and 2020. We’re still talking about them because some of them, like the Redbud Trail Bridge rebuild and the new Longhorn Dam bridge, are still in the works years later. Several Council members directed questions to transportation staff on how the city can improve the delivery times on those kinds of large projects, which committee Chair Paige Ellis noted seem to be the main sticking point.

“We all know the cost only increases as we push our projects further and further down the road until we get to a point where they can’t be built at all,” Ellis said. “And that’s not a position I, as a city leader, ever want to be in.”

Ellis also noted per the Transportation and Public Works Department’s presentation that the city has been more successful at completing masses of smaller roadway improvements, and struck an optimistic note on the potential of the new Capital Services department to help larger projects come in on time.

Bikeshares and Batteries

Another presentation focused on the city’s bikeshare program, which was overhauled last year. The biggest changes in that overhaul were the exit of the erstwhile vendor handling the program, MetroBike, and subsequent takeover by CapMetro and the whole fleet conversion to E-bikes. (That conversion was explained with the rationale that people who use bikeshare programs love them, which, fair enough.)  CapMetro also recently announced fare hikes intended in part to cover the cost of the new fleet, as well as other operating expenses related to battery-powered bikes.

One issue Mike Kimbro, the director of the Transportation and Public Works Department’s micromobility program, discussed during the presentation was the need to electrify docking stations because of the high and uneven distribution of power demand across the existing stations inherited from MetroBike. Kimbro explained that the stations are “for operational purposes” mostly powered only by solar panels. Kimbro said that the system currently only has one station connected to the grid, with another “tantalizingly close” to coming online. He went on to say that CapMetro and his department hope to bump that number up to 12 by the end of 2025.

Readers interested in getting it straight from the steel horse’s mouth can view the whole meeting archived on the ATXN website. And for real transit heads, it’s always worth checking out Transportation and Public Works’ official newsletter.

Sayonara,

Miles Wall

ELSEWHERE IN THE NEWS

After making tuition free to area high school grads, Austin Community College is seeing an increase in enrollment.

Summer is either here or on the way, and some people in San Marcos are already looking for ways to mitigate the river crowds by charging out-of-towners.

The Austin American-Statesman reports that UT Austin is losing out on $47 million in research grants under the Trump administration.

And KVUE reports that the Travis County District Attorney’s office missed deadlines to indict felony cases 263 times last year.

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