Mastering the who, what, where and why like Guru. Staff Writer
@AustinChronicle
. Get at me. asanders
@austinchronicle
.com or text/Signal: 512-666-0903.
Austin police officers arrested a deaf, elderly woman at ABIA for trespassing, but she just misunderstood instructions from a ticket clerk. Because she’s elderly and deaf. She spent 3 nights in the Travis County Jail, where a jailer broke her arm. She wasn’t taken to the ER.
NEW: Travis County Attorney Delia Garza says as of now, her office has been presented with 46 criminal trespass arrests stemming from the protests at UT yesterday.
The court has declined all of those cases for lack of probable cause and released the individuals from jail.
NEW: Austin firefighters have voted to oppose Prop A, which would require the city to immediately hire somewhere around 500 new police officers, which would impact the budgets of other city departments, especially Austin Fire.
So many failures here. Why did the ticket clerk call the cops? Why did officers arrest her? Why did jail staff use so much force on an old woman that it broke her arm? Why have the city and county abandoned a policy that could have prevented the jailing in the first place?
Just to clarify here, it was a corrections officer at the Travis County Jail that broke McGee's arm, not an Austin police officer. That said, we should ask why APD officers arrested a deaf elderly woman, alone and fearful in a confusing situation, rather than helping her.
I've been reporting a separate story related to police training and I have been thinking a lot about this paragraph included in a consultant report about how police department's can improve cadet training.
of course the first week of preschool ended with an early closure because so many faculty and students tested positive for COVID. Beginning a new school year any other way would simply be unamerican.
Workers at pizza shop Via 313 are holding a protest tomorrow at the location on the drag, alleging that upper management suspended 4 employees after a petition signed by 46 workers was delivered asking for paid sick time, hazard pay, and COVID protocols. Protest is at noon.
UPDATE: The remaining 11 cases have been dismissed by the County Attorney for lack of probable cause. Now, all 57 protesters arrested Wednesday are cleared.
46 of the arrests were rejected by judges (the majority by a criminal court judge) and 11 were dismissed by prosecutors.
As of this morning, 11 protesters have charges pending against them. All for criminal trespass — the same charges that judges rejected in 46 other arrests.
The County Attorney's office tells me they're looking into the 11 remaining cases to determine if they should be dismissed.
BREAKING: A Travis County Judge has dismissed the lawsuit Texas A.G. Ken Paxton filed against the City of Austin over its voter-initiated ordinance effectively decriminalizing the possession of marijuana. The ordinance remains in effect.
Austin City Council votes unanimously to adopt four measures aimed at protecting abortion access in Austin, including a resolution directing the Austin Police Department to adopt policies prohibiting them from investigating crimes associated with reproductive care.
BREAKING: Austin City Council approves $8 million and $2 million settlements in the lawsuits filed by Justin Howell and Anthony Evans, respectively, over grievous injuries they suffered at the hands of Austin police officers during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
Defense attorneys raised concerns with the probable cause affidavits submitted by UT police officers yesterday, as seen here. "We reviewed each case individually and agreed there were deficiencies," Garza told me. The court affirmed and declined the cases.
I received five probable cause affidavits submitted by University of Texas police officers after they arrested protestors today. They all look like this: arrest for criminal trespass, "was given dispersal order and refused to do so." Arrested person's name redacted.
Incredible sequence of events here. Shooting in West Campus last night, which the Austin Police Association falsely claimed took 50 minutes for officers to respond to, so the Austin Police Department issues a statement today, through UT Police, correcting the record.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is a YIMBY. "Yes In My Backyard? Yes, absolutely," she responded enthusiastically to my question during our sit-down interview earlier today. I asked how the federal government can help cities, like Austin, tackle housing supply problems. More soon...
The deal Mayor Kirk Watson worked out with Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov Dan Patrick appears to not have involved City Council. Certainly Council didn't vote on it and several Council Members learned of it 15 minutes before Watson announced it publicly.
Here it is: Travis County's incumbent District Attorney Margaret Moore concedes the race. Josè Garza will (almost certainly) be Travis County's next DA.
JUST IN:
@AOC
-assisted fundraising helped generate $798,290 from 98,375 donors for
@atxecho
. A spokesperson says that is 15x what ECHO raised from individual donations in all of 2020.
Full release below
Today D.A.-elect José Garza announced Trudy Strassburger will serve as his first assistant. That means Travis County’s D.A. Office will be led by two attorneys who have spent their careers in public defense and reform advocacy.
via
@austinchronicle
I received five probable cause affidavits submitted by University of Texas police officers after they arrested protestors today. They all look like this: arrest for criminal trespass, "was given dispersal order and refused to do so." Arrested person's name redacted.
NEW: Bradley Hargis, executive director of the Capital Area Defenders Service, says UT police does not intend to turn in arrest affidavits for people arrested at the protest until tomorrow morning at the earliest.
As a result, people will remain in jail longer.
It is increasingly hard to dispute what transpired this week: law enforcement tried to run the usual playbook — lie and obfuscate about police action during a critical incident — but the intense scrutiny that followed the massacre of 19 children has made that impossible.
Abbott responds to question about why he gave bad info :
"I was misled. I am livid about what happened. I was on this very stage two days ago, and I was telling the public information that had been told to me in a room, just a few yards behind where we're located right now."
Wow. In San Antonio, three cops gunned down Melissa Perez, who was believed to be undergoing a mental health crisis. THREE HOURS later, the cops were arrested, charged with murder, and later that night the Chief was on TV apologizing for the killing.
With renewed attention on Elon Musk's hyperloop grift, let me share excerpts from a public information request I received following the trip Austin Development Services staff took to Las Vegas in April where they met with Boring Company. Clark Couty, and the LV Convention Center.
New: The union that represents 300 workers at restaurants and retail store inside the Austin airport announce that they have won their demand for a $25/hr minimum wage. In August, members voted unanimously to authorize a strike if the wage demand was not met.
I am told that two city magistrate judges and a criminal court judge worked early into the morning to process the arrests.
Some protestors were released on PR bond, but many more had their cases declined outright by one of the judges.
"We will continue to individually review all cases presented to our office to make determinations on whether prosecution is factually and legally appropriate," Garza said.
Hearing that Austin Police Officers are hanging out at the Save Austin Now party in uniform. This kind of thing is prohibited by APD's General Orders, but still happens pretty regularly.
Meanwhile, EMS medics were told they couldn't even vote while on duty.
BREAKING: A judge has denied APD officer Christopher Taylor's qualified immunity claim in the civil lawsuit brought against him and the City of Austin following Taylor's fatal shooting of Mike Ramos in 2020. The dismissal clears a major hurdle in the quest for justice in the case
NEW: Travis County Attorney Delia Garza issued the following statement about the protest arrests today. Her office handles misdemeanor offenses, so whether or not the people arrested for criminal trespass (a misdemeanor) will be charged is in her hands.
UPDATE:
@Austin_Police
said an off-duty
@TravisCoSheriff
's deputy was "involved in an altercation in his personal vehicle with another driver while traveling south" on South I-35 proper and "a weapon or weapons were discharged" during the incident
NEW: Five months after the Austin EMS Association submitted a pay proposal asking for a $7/hr base wage increase for medics, the city has responded with a counter offer.
City management's proposal? A net wage increase of $1.17 over 4 years. Year 1 would be a 14 cent raise.
BREAKING: Texas A.G. says the City of Austin must turn over police records they intended to keep secret in response to a public information request I filed in June. It's a monumental decision made possible by the Austin Police Oversight Act.
whats the point of even having a criminal justice system when a proud white supremacist who openly fantasized about killing black lives matter supporters is convicted of muder for doing just that, but then is pardoned a year later because the governor went on TV to demand it.
Art Acevedo's career trajectory is something. Sneaks out of Austin as a seismic scandal unfolds, flees Houston following another scandal in which he is still ensnared, run out of Miami, shoved out of a made-up job in Austin and now, Chief finalist in America's 2nd largest city.
I am outside the Travis county jail where a group of family members, attorneys, and advocates are working to learn more about how many people were arrested during the protest at UT and what they are being charged with.
It is unclear how many people remain in jail, but this morning the sheriff's office told me that 57 people were booked into the jail for protest-related arrests.
Austin firefighter Association prez Bob Nicks takes Matt Mackowiak to task for trying to “manipulate” the association voting process. “It seems the truth is secondary to Save Austin Now,” Nicks says.
At this KVUE Prop A debate, Matt Mackowiak keeps repeating the lie that austin is less safe than it’s ever been.
Dont be deceived. The truth is that Austin is both safer than it has been in the past and safer than other big cities are today.
Austin area rideshare drivers have formed the first Texas-based chapter of the Rideshare Drivers Union, founded in LA to oppose California's Prop 22.
Local rideshare drivers will join RDU's nationwide strike tomorrow, July 21, and are encouraging all drivers & passengers to join
NEW: A Travis County judge has ruled that the City of Austin has been illegally maintaining a secret police personnel file known as the G file since voters approved the Austin Police Oversight Act last year.
The city will either have to stop using the file or appeal.
Still thinking about this incredible photo Neena took today. On the right, a police officer twice indicted for murder in one year, for fatal shootings that occurred 10 months apart. On the left, his union boss. It says so much about the politics of police accountability.
.
@Austin_Police
officer Christopher Taylor, right, and Austin Police Association prez
@KennethCasaday
at the courthouse as news breaks of Taylor’s 2nd murder indictment this year under new DA
@JosePGarza
My head is spinning reading this from Chief Chacon. Yesterday, he cleared two of his officers who shot at a car with a baby inside of it, killing the baby's father. Today, APD released video from an incident two weeks ago where officers shot and killed a young black men.
Minutes after Save Austin Now announced they submitted signatures for their ballot initiative that would force the city to fund ~500 new police officers at a cost of at least $50 million, 25 community groups announce their opposition to the initiative.
This guy openly advocating for increased surveillance and incarceration of Black people is a visiting scholar at the University of Texas' Salem Center for Policy, some kind of think tank housed in the university's business school.
NEW: After initially staying out of the Prop A fight,
@AustinEMSAssoc
is now OPPOSING the ballot measure. EMSA joins the Austin Firefighters Association in opposing Prop A, meaning both public safety labor groups are throwing their weight against the ordinance.
NEW: A campaign finance filing from Voters for Police Oversight and Accountability shows the Austin Police Association fully funded a petition campaign that relied on deceptive tactics to gather signatures in support of weakened police oversight in Austin.
One of the more perplexing things about the texas tribune layoffs is why, just four months after readers saved the Texas Observer from a board resigned to let it die, trib leaders didn’t order a massive, public fundraising effort to prevent the layoffs.
Probably the biggest consequence of last night's Council elections is that the caucus of diehard supply side skeptics has been reduced to two.
There's now a veto-proof majority for a broader, more rapid approach to increasing the housing supply in Austin.
Sharing a FB post from Marina Roberts, a local organizer who was active in both the May Prop B and November Prop A elections. Interesting insights into what made the difference last night compared to in May.
sometimes I'll think man I wish andre 3k would go back into the studio to record a full album, but then I see he's doing things like this instead which must bring him joy and fulfillment and realize it's great. he's already given so much and doesn't owe us another album.
André 3000 will make multiple appearances playing the flute on the original soundtrack for upcoming A24 movie 'Everything Everywhere All at Once,' alongside Mitski, David Byrne, Moses Sumney, and more.
Giving Art Acevedo a $270,000 job to oversee a single department is baffling.
The timing is also galling. The city was set to apologize to survivors of sexual assault next week for the myriad ways in which the Austin Police Department failed survivors under Acevedo's leadership.
NEW: I have obtained some of the affidavits filed by police officers who arrested demonstrators at the pro-Palestine protest on the University of Texas campus yesterday
They are much more detailed than last week's affidavits & are more likely to be accepted by prosecutors/judges
my big idea for attracting people to work in an extremely overworked and underpaid field in one of the most expensive cities in the country? Give them a single free pass to the city's big, cold pool as a signing bonus.
A lot of Election Day misinformation swirling around out there about crime in Austin.
To clear things up: police data shows violent and property crime rates have steadily decreased in Austin since 2020. These are easily verifiable facts.
Mayor Kirk Watson collaborated with Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov Dan Patrick over three days on an agreement that will allow Texas DPS troopers to patrol the City of Austin for an indefinite period of time. How many state cops will be deployed and where are still being worked out
hmm this austin university business is the most troubling development in the ongoing "your name is what and you live where" saga that is my life...i will be exploring my legal options
NEW: In victory speech, Kirk Watson said, "It means a lot to me to know that Austinites in every part of this city still want the leadership I have tried to deliver."
It's been miserable news week in Texas, but a bit of positive news today: union organizers at Integral Care, the largest mental healthcare provider in Travis County, expect the agency's board to authorize the union tonight after a yearlong push by organizers to make it happen.
I'm taking down the version of this tweet that has Mackowiak's number in it, because he called to tell me he deleted the FB post.
But I'm posting a censored version to preserve for the record that he is, in fact, an asshole.
NEW: Austin City Council approves a $2.95 million settlement with Brad Levi Ayala, the 16-year-old shot in the head with a lead-pellet round by an Austin police officer during the May 2020 protests. The vote was unanimous, with Council Member Kelly abstaining.
@jbouie
Bro anyone saying torchy’s or taco deli should be blocked. Taco deli is better, but both are marginal in a city with a growing immigrant population. They are gentrified tacos. Look for little tiendas in gas stations and trucks near where you’re staying. That’s the good shit
Unique moment from yesterday's pro-Palestinian protest at UT yesterday — campus police did not know what to do with his iguana when Julian Reyes got arrested.
EXCLUSIVE: In four months, two longtime associates of Mayor Kirk Watson and Interim City Manager Jesús Garza were paid nearly $150,000 for vaguely defined consulting services, without authorization from City Council.
Workers Defense Project plans to refer a case to the Department of Labor and to file a complaint with OSHA against Tesla outlining allegations of wage theft and workplace injuries at the Gigafactory in Southeast Travis County.
There is no context in any of these tweets lol, my bad. Austin's police union has just badly lost an election that sets the stage for local leaders to install the strongest police oversight system in the nation. The long read version:
On the left, Kirk Watson's electoral victory map in the Austin mayoral run-off. Watson won the precincts in purple.
On the right, Austin's zoning map. The yellow areas represent places where it is illegal to build apartments.
19 indictments. $10 million in settlements. Two young men permanently marred by police violence.
Me &
@BrantBingamon
on the news that's rocked the Austin Police Department and city at large over the past 24 hours, with reaction from an 8th Street Survivor
all of these headlines are about taxpayer-funded spending, but only one identifies the spending as "taxpayer money." Probably nothing, just balanced journalism.
this is crazy man. armed branch of the state deployed to defend a branch of the judiciary, appointed by a minoritarian segment of the populace, because the judiciary overturned a broadly popular law.
BREAKING: Travis County’s top prosecutors allege that “rogue” Austin Police officers are declining to investigate suspected criminal activity based on false characterizations of reform-minded policies implemented by the District & County Attorneys. 1/x
seen on reddit: Jennifer Virden is fundraising to pay off campaign debt.
During the City Council and Mayor campaigns she ran and lost, she loaned herself a total of $350k. She also owns six properties in Travis County with a combined appraised value of $2.95 million.
in this week's
@AustinChronicle
, you'll find a simple chart that shows the homicide rate in Austin is much lower now compared to 30 years ago, despite what some in politics and the media want you to believe.
~personal news~ time
You won't see my byline in the pages of the Chronicle for a few weeks, because I'll be home parenting this little one. Penny was born — no foolin' — April 1 and is healthy and lovely. Thanks to
@leticiawesome
for carrying and delivering our little girl 🥺
City Council will ask City Manager Spencer Cronk to resign.
The decision comes after Cronk successfully undermined the will of Council on police contract negotiations, which followed a week of intense criticism over his response to the ice storm.
Enjoyed some breakfast tacos this morning from one of the four gas station/truck joints in my North Austin neighborhood where the owners speak Spanish as their first language. You, too, could have this experience in Austin if you go to places besides torchys or taco deli.
the mythology around law enforcement in america has become so powerful that it allows the "thin blue line" ethos to co-exist with "an officer's first duty is to come home from every shift." But these two ideas are so fundamentally at odds that they can't be reconciled.
guys I really cannot understate how stunning these DA results are. Margaret Moore is the very embodiment of the criminal justice establishment. José Garza ran an insurgent campaign on a unabashedly progressive platform of transformative justice reform.
been a real weird day to oscillate between Twitter and Facebook. My fb feed has had a lot of "snow day!! fun!!!!" energy while Twitter has been like "once again our institutions have failed us, we will die because of state negligence."
Made it out to Via 313 where a fairly sizable crowd showed up to support workers protesting what they describe as unsafe working conditions inside the business.
Here's an eye-popping chart from a presentation given by the Austin Board of Realtors at Council's Housing and Planning committee.
Over the last decade, the median household income in Austin grew 38%, but median home prices grew 138%.
What I am gathering from early review of the street racing stuff this weekend is that Austin Police officers responded to four different incidents involving rowdy, confrontational crowds of young people and...didn't send anyone to the hospital with life-threatening injuries?
The Texas Legislature is trying to shield police officers who shoot people with lead pellet rounds from criminal prosecution — including the officers already under indictment in Travis County who are awaiting trial. From
@BrantBingamon
Austin's Police Chief fired a cop last week for helping the suspect in a domestic violence assault call evade arrest. The cop wrote the suspect a note indicating that if he went inside, he couldn't be arrested. So, that's what the suspect did.
NEW: Julie Oliver and Mike Siegel’s group Ground Game Texas will collect signatures to place 2 measures on the Nov. '21 ballot:
- decriminalize low-level pot possession
- ban no-knock police raids.
They need 20k signatures in 180 days. They're aiming for 25k signatures.
NEW: Watson and Garza have pulledl the plug on APD's controversial DPS partnership. It only took troopers shooting two people, one fatally, and pulling a gun on a child to get them there.
the andrew tate/greta thunberg episode demonstrates the unique power of twitter that no other social media platform has been able to replicate. she made him so mad with a quote tweet that he went and got himself arrested. incredible
I haven’t decided it 2021 was on the whole a good or bad year, but one unequivocal bright spot: being able to write about Save Austin Now’s “humiliating loss” or “embarrassing defeat” in the context of november 21’s Prop A. That’s forever, folks.
If I ever end up in a wish granting situation, like with a genie, one will be to put me in the room with Greg Abbott when he learned the convicted murderer he rushed to pardon proudly posted about being a racist, googled chat rooms to meet young girls & degrees or murder charges.
The way crime data is presented in this story is so egregiously misleading it's practically journalistic malpractice.
The FBI data actually shows that Austin has lower violent and property crime rates than Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.
Tomorrow, the voters of Austin, Texas will decide whether they've had enough of a "progressive prosecutor" who doesn't like to put criminals in jail. This election will be overshadowed by Super Tuesday, but it's an important bellweather. My story for TFP:
BREAKING: City Council votes 10-1 to fire City Manager Spencer Cronk, effective tomorrow. Former City Manager Jesús Garza will be appointed as Interim City Manager on the same day.
Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison was the only no vote.