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Watch: Austin police chief weighs in on city’s deadliest year in decades, police reform and "defunding" the department
Austin would not have enough police officers on the streets even if the city filled every vacant position on the force, Police Chief Joseph Chacon said this week in a wide-ranging interview with Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith.
The question of whether Austin needs to boost the number of officers took center stage this year as the city, like many other major U.S. cities, experienced a record surge in homicides. In November, the city’s voters soundly rejected a move at the ballot box — known as Proposition A — that would have forced the city to hire hundreds of new police officers.
But Prop A’s defeat doesn’t mean that the city doesn’t need more police officers, Chacon said in Wednesday’s conversation. The Austin Police Department simply doesn’t have enough officers to quickly respond to high-priority calls like stabbings, shootings and assaults.
“To be clear, we don't have enough officers,” Chacon said. “I want more police officers.”
Prop A would have required Austin to hire two officers per 1,000 residents — a standard Chacon dismissed as “a random number.” The department is going through five years’ worth of call data, trying to figure out how many positions it would need to add to its 1,600-officer force — which currently has 200 vacancies — to lower response times, Chacon said.
It now takes officers up to nine minutes to reach the scene of a shooting or an assault. Chacon said he’d like to bring that down to about six and a half minutes.
That assessment is taking place as Austin is seeing the same spike in homicides that nearly every major U.S. city has experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. With 88 killings so far this year, Austin already has hit its highest homicide rate in two decades. Austin also has seen more aggravated assaults than in previous years, Chacon said. Crime experts have speculated that the growth in violence stems from stress brought on by the pandemic and economic uncertainty.
Overall crime in Austin, meanwhile, has fallen since 2010, other than a slight rise from 2019 to 2020.
In September, Chacon announced that officers would no longer respond to nonemergency calls — giving supporters of Prop A ammunition to say the city truly didn’t have enough officers.
Chacon said police simply don’t need to respond to every call.
“Over time in my career, what I've seen is that the police have taken on more and more types of responsibilities in our society that fall outside of law enforcement,” Chacon said. “They could be social ills. They could be something that really needs a social worker, and particularly in the area of mental health. Should we be sending those types of subject matter experts to a scene to handle if that scene is not violent?”
Austin leaders’ past attempts to shake up its police department have drawn the wrath of state elected officials. As protests against police brutality spread across the country last year, the city council nixed 150 officer positions, canceled a trio of cadet classes and moved some police functions to other city agencies as part of a $150 million round of cuts to the city’s police budget.
Gov. Greg Abbott and state Republican lawmakers pounced on Austin, passing a law earlier this year that punishes large cities that cut their police spending by forbidding them from raising property taxes.
In response, Austin City Council reversed the cuts this year and raised the city’s police budget to a record $442 million — more than a third of the city’s $1.15 billion operating budget. The council didn’t restore the 150 positions, but paid for three new cadet classes.
Chacon said he disagreed with the move by state lawmakers.
“I think that a city needs to be able to make decisions without fear of the state stepping in, reversing that decision or basically playing politics with a lot of these things,” Chacon said.
And while Austin was slammed by some of its critics who said it “defunded” its police department, Chacon said that’s not the case.
“To me, what I would interpret as ‘defunding’ is that we have taken that funding completely away and we've stripped it away and it's doing something completely different now,” Chacon said. “And that just did not happen.”
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Austinites are beating the record heat at local watering holes like Barton Springs Pool this summer. (Isabel Lanaux)
This month has been Austin's hottest June on record after 21 days of triple-degree heat, according to the National Weather Service.
Despite a weather forecast that predicted otherwise, Austin beat the odds and logged its 12th straight day of 100+ degree high temperatures Monday. On the same day, the city also broke its 2008 record with the most triple-digit temperatures ever recorded during the month.
Austin has now hit 100 degrees 21 times this month and 12 days in a row, a new June record.
— NWS Austin/San Antonio (@NWSSanAntonio) June 27, 2022
The city has now broke heat records for two months in a row after recording its hottest May ever last month.
But at least some of Austin's hot and dry start to summer may be alleviated soon as a so-called cold front heads into town Monday night. Temperatures are expected to remain below the mid-90s for the rest of the week, and Tuesday could break the nearly two-week streak of 100-degree highs.
With the cold front comes much-needed rain, which is expected to scatter across Central Texas skies Monday night. Lightning and gusts of wind up to 60 mph could hit the area, especially along the I-35 corridor near San Marcos, where a Severe Thunderstorm Warning has been issued.
Storms will continue to develop along an east to west line through sunset. The Hill Country, I-35 Corridor, and Coastal Plains will be most affected. The main dangers are lightning and gusts winds to 60 mph. pic.twitter.com/ocKg9cYDSd
— NWS Austin/San Antonio (@NWSSanAntonio) June 27, 2022
Scattered storms are expected to remain Tuesday with possibly bouts of gusty winds and small hail, and some storms could continue in the area east of I-35 through Thursday. Austin has seen 2.8 fewer inches of rainfall than the average this month and is only expected to see about a quarter inch of rainfall this week.
Scattered showers and thunderstorms are expected to persist through about 9-10 pm this evening before weakening. Expect a similar setup on Tuesday, but chances look better for the Rio Grande Plains and Winter Garden region. Gusty winds and small hail are possibly. #txwxpic.twitter.com/X4tmSTLBQu
— NWS Austin/San Antonio (@NWSSanAntonio) June 27, 2022
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(Brigitte Lacomb)
The University of Texas’ Harry Ransom Center is commemorating its 65th anniversary with a star-studded gala celebrating film history and an appearance from longtime actor Robert De Niro.
The “A Celebration of Film” gala will celebrate filmmaking, film history and the creation of a new endowment called the De Niro Curator Film at the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center, located at 1900 University Ave, on Sept. 24.
Harry Ransom Center Director Stephen Enniss said the endowment will go toward ongoing efforts to preserve film history, expand film collection and “inspire the next generation of filmmakers.”
“I strongly believe in and support what the Harry Ransom Center does to open the creative process of filmmaking to students and the community,” De Niro said. “The Center has done a remarkable job curating a breadth of collections underscoring the history of the art form and the business.”
The actor is famous for starring in classic films like “The Godfather” in 1972, “Taxi Driver” in 1976, “Raging Bull” in 1980, and “Goodfellas” in 1990.
The Ransom Center’s archive collects and tells the stories of directors, writers, producers and actors from the silent era, the Golden Age of Hollywood and the age of blockbusters. De Niro donated his own archive in 2006, alongside additional materials through the present era.
The Robert De Niro Papers include multiple movie-making aspects—scripts, production records, costumes, props and video from the late 20th and early 21st century. More information about the gala will be released in the coming months.