Public Safety Committee (PSC) Special Called meeting Transcript – 5/22/2023 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 5/22/2023 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 5/22/2023 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [10:00:12 AM] committee of the Austin city council. It's Monday, may 22nd, 2023. We are meeting at 301 west second street in Austin, Texas, and we have all of the members of the committee present and some members of the city council . I want to welcome those members of the council that are not part of the committee. And thank you for being here with us. Members the order that will go in this morning will be to take up the approval of the minutes. Then we will have the discussion related to the collaboration between Austin police department and the Texas department of public safety. And then we will go to public communications and any communications on the items that we have posted. With that being said, you all have had the minutes of the public safety committee meeting that was held on April 24th, 2023. Is there anybody that wants to offer a change or amendment or speak with regard to those amendments ? Luz. Without objection, the amendments of the meeting held on April 24th, 2023, is there [10:01:13 AM] approved? That will take us to item number two. The briefing and discussion on the Austin police department collaboration with the Texas department of public safety. I will recognize as chief Chacon and allow him to tell us who else he wants us to hear from. Welcome chief. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, mayor and council members. Joseph Chacon, chief of police, coming up with me this morning is Dr. Jonathan cringan , as well as deputy director Vincent Luciano with the Texas department of public safety. To be able to provide a short presentation to you regarding just a little bit of an update and maybe some information that the committee has not had previously related to the APD dps partnership and then [10:02:14 AM] obviously to take any questions that you all that you all may have. Thank you. Very quickly, just an overview of what today's presentation will be. I will provide a very quick review of the goals and objectives of the partnership and then I'll turn it over to Dr. Cringan, who will be talking about the deployment strategy with regard to crashes as well as emergency calls for services that are related to gun crime, and then what we expect future reporting to show. And then, as I said, we'll be taking some questions and answers. I will start by saying that we're keeping it pretty high level as really we're looking at about four, maybe getting close to five weeks of data Shea we still have challenges getting some of that data. We've made requests to all the all of the partners that are involved, whether that is dps, our county and district attorney's justice of the peace [10:03:16 AM] number five, which is judge chew, trying to get information related that I know is important to this committee and is important to our community about what what is the data, what kind of stops are being made, what what arrests are being made, what the demographics are, and so forth. And so today is building on that. But we still are challenged by trying to get some of this data. So we're we're trying very hard to be responsive and to provide as many answers as we can. And appreciate the committee's patience as we go through that. Again, the just a restatement of what our goals and objectives are with the partnership really centered around two main things the first being reducing serious traffic injuries and fatalities. We're going to spend a good part of today's present session talking about that because that [10:04:16 AM] is where some of the data has been lacking in the past. As well as trying to reduce the incidence of violent crime and the crime that is involving firearms is driving that information really or driving the operation. Ann is where those calls for services are coming in and that is what you will see today. Shea. A third thing that we really wanted to do, which is a bit more ancillary, is reducing response times to 911 calls for assistance because we know that when we do that, we have better outcomes. There's a better chance that people are not seriously injured. We make an arrest, we recover a firearm when we get there faster. So I'll go ahead and turn it over at this point to Dr. Cringan and I thank the committee for having us here today. Thank you. We're going to start just by looking [10:05:16 AM] at the initial information that we shared with dps that drove the deployment strategy as chief Chacon said, there were two primary sets of information that were used, ones our crash data that helps us understand where crashes in particularly crashes resulting in injuries and fatalities occur, as well as the call for service data for emergency calls, for service involving firearms. So this is a map of the injury crashes in Austin a year preceding the dps deployment and what you see in the dark blue means not really anything happening. Anything is not dark. Blue is running up a color ramp from blue to yellow to Orange to red, with red being the areas of highest density Wright. So we can see in this map where injury crashes are predominantly happening in Austin, Ann and if we look at it by council district, we see it's in D four. We see it's in D one. We see it's in D three. We see it's in D two. Now a lot of that [10:06:19 AM] information is actually coming from things that are happening on I-35 since I-35 is the major crash injury corridor in the city of Austin, traffic places it above all other areas in the city. As far as the actual costs of collisions that occur if we move outside of looking at I-35, we see some other areas where we have a number of substantial number of injury crashes. Those are going to happen over here in D seven over here in D, six D, three, and D, five. So if we look at fatal crashes now, just looking at the most impactful crashes that are happening, it becomes a little more clustered, it's a little more focused Burt. But again, we see this as a lot of that activity happening in D four. We also see it in D three. So whether it's injuries or fatal collisions, we're beginning to see which districts are carrying a disproportionate burden for those outcomes. The ones that we want to provide [10:07:19 AM] assistance to lesser once we get off taking 35 out of it, we begin to see this area out in D two where we have issues Luz and we're going to look again at emergency calls for service involving firearms. So these are calls where someone calls 911 and says he or she has a gun. So these we treat as the highest priority in the department and we see the clustering happening in D four and in D three Wright and so those are the initial data that sort of drove the deployment effort Wright a little bit lesser extent. We see some activity areas in D one that are important and down in D two Wright and so generally in the information that we've shown you here, the first things that I showed in red Eid were the primary drivers of deployment. And as we look at the things in green, as we started trying to distribute resources further out, these are the areas that we began to ask dps to take a look at. So we haven't looked at any [10:08:20 AM] crash data yet. I had made everyone aware that our crash data comes to us on a lag. We have been trying Singh very diligently to try to move that along as quickly as possible. And we do have some crash data. And so for visualization purposes only, I've put up some crash data here, plotted for a several year period preceding Singh the dps intervention. And then the red line shows us the date that dps began in late April working in the city and then we see the weeks of data in black thereafter. And if you can see in this, what you see is on the whole in the city of Austin and these are injury crashes, we see this reduction Ann that's happening. You notice the points on the black are generally lower than what we see in Orange on the left. Now working with council members to try to understand their individual districts. We'll take a look at some of the individual districts. Wright so D one, what we see here is that we see it's somewhat inconclusive. A lot of [10:09:20 AM] the crash activity in D. One is really going to be coming on 35 and 35ft of road. We had a lot of focus there, but this is what we see. D two we actually see something that's around average as well rolling out to D three, which is an area where we see included recommendations burns for both traffic and violent crime enforcement. Here's actually the first place where we start to see rey reasonable reductions. You notice that the black points tend to be under the average for the Orange points. On the other side. That shows us a reduction in helps us visualize it. D four, which is an area where we focused both violent crime resources as well as traffic. We see something very similar. We see this what appears to be reduction after the dps is there D five. It's a little bit harder to see here. That average is a little bit lower. Importantly, remember that D five was a redeployment area, so technically it's only the two data points furthest to the right that would have occurred after we asked dps to [10:10:22 AM] start moving in the D five. Those are the two lowest that we see after the dps deployment. So there was some activity in all areas of the city in the earlier data points, but the last two show us when we specifically we began providing locations in D five so Wright D six crashes D seven crashes. D seven was an area of redeployment. Wright we had some resources going through D seven we focused a little bit in the last two. We do see that's a little bit lower than average Wright D eight crashes. D nine crashes and last D ten crashes. Now D ten has received they receive Eid traffic focus in the last two weeks. And so this is something we want to follow up on now. This takes us to one week prior to dps leaving Wright the lag in the traffic data. Take us there so we will soon have the next week which will help us understand all of that. So what was the impact of all of this? And I've answered a [10:11:23 AM] couple of questions last week about why why we say these things. This is what we saw related to calls for service response times and reduced violent crime in the areas that dps was asked to deploy. We saw reductions in call for service. We saw reduced response times. So APD officers were arriving at emergency calls for service more quickly and we saw reductions in violent crime right now, importantly in areas where dps redeployed from, this means the areas where they initially deployed and we saw those reductions and then we moved them in weeks five and six. We asked them to refocus it to some other areas because crime had fallen where we had initially deployed them. So we moved them to other areas. Once we moved them out, what we saw is an increase in calls for service, increased response times and increases in violent crime. So when you look at the city as a whole, Wright moving the resources to other areas, created reductions in other areas, but increases in the [10:12:24 AM] areas where they had previously been deployed. Right. And so this is at an aggregate what has sort of happened with the with the operate nation as a whole. We see reductions in injury collisions. We see reductions in calls for service response times in violent crime in the areas where we did place dps. And the last question, I'll answer, someone specifically asked for me to include this is that we've talked a great deal about whether these reductions are a result of the dps intervention, and we can say conclusively Leslie that it is. We've been asked a great deal of questions. We said that at week four about how we would do that with four weeks of data so people can understand how we do that a little bit more. It's not four weeks of data. There are seven days per week, which is 28 days . In the four weeks dps is deployed 12 hours per day. There's two 12 hour periods per day. So that's 56 half days. And we actually analyze the data at [10:13:25 AM] a city block level. There's about 40,000 city blocks in the city of Austin, so that's about 2 million observations since the point in time in which dps came into the city. And so we're analyzing the data that way. That's just to illustrate the visualizations that we have here to help us understand that. But we are confident in saying scientifically confident in saying that the dps reduction did result in these things. This week is the end of the first week since dps has actually redeployed to other business in the state. And so we'll be analyzing what happens this week and next week moving forward. And so we'll be able to report on that later to give us a better understanding of what happens when dps moves out in its entirety. Wright we are focusing at this point for the discussion in the city on council level reporting Wright and we'll continue to report on violent crime and victimization [10:14:26 AM] on a two week interval. Wright so we'll be producing every two weeks that we have information at the end of next week when we have the full two weeks of information from dps having departed the city will begin production of those materials for the next report and we've shared with council some of the ways in which we're going to be sharing that information. We'll include violent crime and victimization, the emergency calls for assistance, including the gun focus, response times, traffic crashes, injuries and fatalities because on that, as chief Chacon mentioned, there's a substantial amount of data that is important to the discussion on the activity data. The what is happening data. We continue to work to try to make those data available for analysis. And we believe that the period of downtime will provide us a little bit more opportunity to focus on that. We have asked for data from a variety of locations, so we can speak in more granular detail all about what it's happening as a result of it. And as those things become available, we will [10:15:26 AM] work to make those to integrate those into this part of the reporting and so that's a basic summary to date, and I'll turn it back over. All right. And that concludes this formal part of the presentation. Ann director Luciano did not bring a presentation Ann per se, but is here. We can't have the discussion without dps being at the table. And so he's here to answer any questions or give any feedback that the committee might want. But thank you for giving us an opportunity to present that and we're glad to take any questions you might have. Thank all three of you. I'll start by recognizing councilmember qadri. Do you guys mind going back to the impact slide? And if you're unable to do that, I guess my main question. Yeah, you're able to do that. Second to the last [10:16:27 AM] slide, I think it was towards the bottom. So one, we're up there you go. Yeah. So this is an area of dps deployment reduced CPS, cfs reduced response times and reduced violent crime. Do you all have data of like this is what the response time was then? This is what I got to. And then, you know, on the other end when dps redeployed, do you have this is what the time was and once they left, this is how bad it got. Yeah. So we do and we've reported that in we've reported it in some of the previous memos about what's happened on a two week basis. What we'll be reporting moving forward at the end of the next two weeks is beginning to look at the different areas effectively, see the areas where they have been deployed and then taken out. We do have initial information on that. The increase in calls for service response time for emergency calls for service is about two minutes. It's about [10:17:28 AM] four minutes for urgent calls, what we call P one times. And so we do we again, this is specific . It's looking at areas where dps had a focus for a number of weeks and then were redeployed to other areas of the city. So we're asking the question in the second point, the point on the bottom, what happened when they actually moved out. So, yeah, now what we have to work on on this is that we which I've discussed with council members, we will be working to aggregate this in a way that can be that can be provided. We're working on providing it primarily at a council district level. That is not the ideal level for conducting this statistical analysis, but it should give you some sense of what's happening. And we're happy to produce anything else that we're requesting. All right, great. And then I guess this is a question for either one of you, but what was the protocol to reduce speeding and reckless driving during this partnership ? Tip well, actually, I'm going [10:18:30 AM] to go ahead and let director Luciano answer that, because his his folks were the ones that were actually conducting that. So. When the troopers go out and patrol, they look for every traffic violation they see. So if they saw that violation, then that's what they would stop for. So zo, you can only stop people for the violations that you observe. So they stopped people for the violations. They observed. And then my next question was, is does the chief's monthly report include arrests made by dps? And the reason I ask this is because in March, before the partnership crimes against persons decreased by 11% in comparison to the year before and in April of this year, they decreased by 10. It does not include those arrests. Okay. And then my last two questions and I've asked a similar question before. I know [10:19:32 AM] other members have so I'm going to I'm going to ask if it also kind of rephrase it for as long as the partnership existed. Eid do you guys consider it a success and then my follow up question to that would be what does success look like at the end of the day? Yeah I did consider it a success. And what success to me looks like is that we are are having a decrease in the number of calls for service. Those p0 and p1 emergent calls that were on the rise and were actually declined during in the in the deployment areas as well as, you know, subsequent to that, the violent crime. And we saw reductions in those, you know, people being seriously injured, whether in a traffic crash, which obviously is not not criminal per se, but is no less injurious as well as people using guns to commit violent crime. We saw drops in both of [10:20:34 AM] those in those areas. And I think it's important to talk about that. Was there something you wanted to add on that? Yeah and so importantly, I want to bring attention to this because you brought up the information that chiefs monthly report so the challenge in the chiefs monthly report is the way in which the data are provided. Those data are provided based upon a basic nibrs counting standard. Wright so these are the official data that we provide. And so I noticed for example, in the March report, you'll notice there's a 7% net change in crimes against persons which is mostly equivalent to what we think of as violent crime. I would say importantly, if you look at that, those were reductions primarily in sex crimes. Right? And so because of the nature of sex crimes, because of the locations of sex crimes and whatnot, those are not part of the index that we're counting for deterrence. There's generally only a few categories is aggravated Wright, which would mean with a weapon that would we would think of as [10:21:35 AM] something that would happen generally out on the street. And so, you know, you'll notice that the largest reductions in March were actually sex crimes. Beyond that, if you go down to crimes against property and we see the robbery category, robbery is up 13% from March 2022 to March 2023. Robbery although classified under the nibrs standard as a crime against property, is fundamentally a violent crime by nature. Now, there's actually two categories of robbery. There's robbery by assault, and there's robbery and robbery by assault and robbery. Aggravated robbery. Aggravated is primarily what we're interested in. That is robbery that involves a weapon, if that makes sense. So generally, when we read the chief's monthly report, comparing them to the violent crime index for the purpose of for the purpose of dps deployment, there's a little bit of confusion over that. You can follow the same information in the April report or you'll notice that although it's showing a reduction of about 7% [10:22:36 AM] again on crimes against persons overall, the majority of those are occurring within the realm of sexual assault, right? So that's where we're really that's where we're really seeing the majority of the reduction Ann again, you'll notice there's a 11% increase in robberies that month as well. So when you average robbery in with it and recognize the nature of the total reporting Singh, you can just kind of see the difference. And again, that's hopefully it helps understand the difference in reporting. Thank you. I'm sorry, I do have one last question and this might be asked by another member, too, but is there any timeline of when the partnership would resume? I'm going to let director Luciano go ahead and answer that one. There's no specific timeline. However, we plan on resuming currently. We're tied up with a lot of border operations. There's a you know, if you're following the national news, the ending of title 42 and all that other stuff. So we are still [10:23:39 AM] trying to be the best partners we can be to the city of Austin. This weekend there was a planned street takeover and we sent a large contingent of troopers to assist Austin pd. We're still going to be the best partners we can be to all of our local agencies, sheriff's departments and all of our partners and law enforcement, because we take care of the citizens and the entire state of Texas, no matter where they reside. So even though we're committed, other places should the need arise, we will be responsive to anywhere in the state. Okay. Thank you, guys. Councilmember did I see you punch your button? Can we go to slide. Three the heat map for injuries. The one without the council districts. Although the one with the council districts is fine to [10:24:41 AM] . It's number three. I'm not sure if it's actually sequentially three, but that first heat map. There you go. All right. That sure looks like a map of I-35 and its major intersections. You know, when you look at that kind of line running through the center of Austin and then, you know, when you see district four and that kind of red going to the to the east and then up that yellow and red going up to the northwest, I mean, that's the intersection of 291, 83 and 935 right there. Is that again, thinking of prioritization and maximizing public benefits that just jumps out at me again as as you know, where people getting hurt, where are people getting injured. And again, I think about in my district, I mean, they're getting injured on those those major highways, major roadways. You know, that's where the. Is [10:25:43 AM] that your sense? How do you feel about, you know, the patrolling the highways in, you know, the major highways in Austin? What's your your sense of it that was our our exact sense of it as well. Councilmember and that if you'll remember back to my briefs that I previously gave we were concentrated on the on the main you know, high speed roadways like I-35, 71 to 92 to a lesser degree, 183, mostly north, 183. As those as those maps would kind of drive this is where we're seeing serious injury crashes, Luz and fatalities. And we saw part of the deployment was really concentrated on these areas as well. And that was just that just jumped out to me as seeing the map. I just want to say I do appreciate the redeployment in response to the council [10:26:43 AM] communications and concerns. I know that from my perspective of, you know, folks in the Lamar Ramberg area who were feeling, you know, overpoliced or have have not been contacting me as much about those same concerns. So my sense is that there was kind of a certain relief to see the patrols spread out. And again, just anecdotal feedback from other council members and other folks kind of not just in d4 but around town. You know, some folks are happy to see a dps patrolling in, you know, 20 to 22 or, you know, whatever, wherever that that may be. So, you know, I understand the kind of the data concerns that are that are driving the program. But I do appreciate your the responsiveness to the council concerns and the and the public concerns and thank you. Councilmember Kelly. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. And thank you, chief Chacon Ann dps for being here. I really appreciate Wright [10:27:44 AM] you all collaborating together and being responsive to council's questions and needs. I do have a few questions. Chief Chacon. What does APD see as the impact with to the city with dps no longer able to help us well with them no longer being able to help us, we have fewer officers once again that are responding to emergency calls and that to me is problematic and that is not certainly not a knock on on anyone. It it is where APD finds itself safe with regard to staffing. And so in each one of these areas, I have a finite number of officers that I'm able to deploy. We have backfill personnel that are coming in from other units and other ranks to answer emergency calls. It's just not enough. I need to you know, I'm grateful that this past weekend we were able to graduate a class and add those people into the academy, [10:28:44 AM] into out on the streets. We started another academy today. But those numbers are relatively small given the number of vacancies that we have. So dps is that force multiplier that was really helping us to slow zo all of these things, to have them go on and decline and the fact they're not here now, we are seeing that that those numbers are starting to climb again. I appreciate that information regarding the cadets who just graduate did that was actually my follow up question. How long or do you even have an estimation of how long it may take to fill the vacancies that we currently have? Well there there are really two factors that affect that. How many people can I can I encourage and recruit into an academy class and the second part being, how can I retain the people that I have an and the numbers that we're losing continue to be very high and the numbers that I'm recruiting into the class are relatively low. So I don't have a good timeline other than to tell you that it is not on the [10:29:45 AM] horizon. It's going to be quite a bit of time before we're able to really fill those vacancies and we're working very hard to get that done. Has the department gone through any sort of operational changes or have you heard any and have you heard any feedback from officers since dps left? The feedback was overwhelmingly positive from the officers. When dps got here, they were glad for some relief and has been somewhat negative. Obviously since they've left because they enjoyed having that that backup out on the street with regard to operational changes, we are in a bit of a steady state right now with how many personnel that we are redeploying for backfill operations, but that may change in the coming weeks and months as we continue to Luz folks. And until those brand new officers can come off probation and start taking calls on their own. Thank you. And in my last question, are there any tools that council can provide to APD that may [10:30:47 AM] allow APD to work within the constraints of the vacancies that you have with dps no longer here? Yeah I think that council has been very responsive to those type of requests that have come over from the city manager's office. I will continue to work with acm Bruce mills as well as our city manager to, to, to look to provide any suggestions or requests that could really help us and convey them to council to help fulfill it. Thank you very much. And I just I think it's important as council members that we listen to feedback and that we hear from the community about this. So I'm glad to see our chambers filled today with individuals who are here to speak. I've also gotten thousands of emails in support of this partnership and collaboration, and I've heard from people in my district, I've driven through the district and seen dps pulling people over or just at calls for assistance. And so I'm appreciative of the collaboration. And thank you again for being here today. Thank you. Councilmember Fuentes [10:31:48 AM] thank you. Thank you for joining us. Director Luciano, I guess just to take a step back, I wanted to lay out my understanding and thank you, doctor Cregan, for meeting with me and my team on Friday. I think that conversation really helped illuminate how the operation Ann, how it unfolded. So just to be really clear, because I want to make sure our community that we Ann I want to make sure I understand it correctly and to I want to make sure that the community also hears more about how exactly the patrolling took place. It seems to me, based on the information provided to me on Friday, that the areas in which dps were first sent to were based by an intersection of where we have high injury crashes and fatalities and the intersection of where there's high, high calls for service is that right? That's correct. We focused. We focused an initial group on simply the major thoroughfares, as we talked about, I-30 5 to 91, 83, and I'm sorry, mopac as [10:32:50 AM] well. And so the rest of the contingent we looked for those areas to maximize the gain where we saw both high levels of emergency calls for service involving firearms and traffic collisions and resulting in traffic crashes, resulting in injuries or fatalities. And so areas where both of those occurred were the guiding information for that deployment. So based on Ann, your data here that you presented in this data is, is it tied to vision zero? So what we do is we look at two different things. And so vision zero, we looked at we look at their data zo, and we looked at their impact data vision zero has Austin traffic has a methodology for projecting effectively the cost of a collision, right? And so what we looked for in our data was the actual number of collisions resulting in injuries and then we referenced their data to, to measure some form of the impact . There's a high level of [10:33:51 AM] overlap in both of those. When you think about an area where there are repeated collision burns or crashes, you have a greater impact overall. So we worked with Austin traffic on that. The next thing that we did because Austin traffic's methodology places so much information or so much emphasis on I-35 and since I-30 five itself was one of the initial singular deployments Wright for the for the dps troopers, we began to work with Austin traffic to have them help us isolate areas, not I-35. So these would be more intersections within the city. So we're looking at surface roads as well. And that's because let's dig let's dig in on that. So you mentioned you focus on I-35 in the beginning. You know, I was in a meeting with our county attorney who shared with us a map of where the citations were actually coming from. And we saw Riverside as a predominant predominant area of where [10:34:51 AM] citations were held. So if the focus was additional, was first focused on I-35, would we have not have seen more citations being issued on I-35? So I want to take that one. And certainly director Luciano can fill in any any gaps that he sees. But I want to just just as a reminder , three out of every four possible citations burns that dps could Wright they issued a warning on the ones that they wrote were generally were the ones that by policy they have to write, such as no driver's license and some others. And so where you know I think that you can't solely look at the tickets that are written. You need to look at all the stops including the warnings. So that's the information that we're still trying to get because I don't know today. Shea how many warnings were written on 35 or mopac or those other roadways where dps was working? What we know are the tickets that were written, which by policy had to [10:35:52 AM] be written well, most of them by policy had to be written. And so until we have all that data, I'm not sure that it paints as clear a picture as we would like. You know, I share in the objective of trying to create safer streets and certainly appreciate that the way one of the goals for this operation was to reduce serious traffic fatalities and injuries and so to me, the citations that would have been welcomed to see would have been, you know, citations for speeding for running a red light, especially along speeding along I-35. But that on preliminary data that was issued, like you said, chief, you said most of the citations that were given were for driving without a driver's license. And so I think well, first, yes. Director, did you have a comment to say I would like to so for those of us who have been in a patrol car before Shaw, we noticed that people tend to drive much better when they see us than when they [10:36:52 AM] don't. However, if you want to stop somebody for speeding or running red lights and all those other kind of things, typically that's why they call them speed traps. We hide. Eid so the goal of this operation was not to hide and Wright tickets. The goal of this operation was to be seen to be visible knell with a presence that deters both violent crime and bad traffic and bad driving. Poor driving, illegal driving so that is probably one of the reasons why you didn't see a lot of speed enforcement, because when we are visible, people tend to drive more carefully. The byproduct of that goes back to the councilman's sitting here, you're Wright on how we get to a bunch of violations that aren't speeding and what have you is [10:37:52 AM] because those are the violations that we see. So I think back in my day there were 367 traffic violations and the traffic code . I could be wrong, chief. He probably knows off the top of his head, but I remember he told that one time. So the only laws that you can enforce are the ones that you see committed. So everybody wants to see something specific in the real world. It doesn't work that way. You enforce the laws that you see. So if somebody is not speeding, you can't I don't know. Before I saw him that he was speeding someplace else. So I get to stop him for that. So that that is a lot of why the data doesn't show speeding violations, because we were there to be highly visible to deter crime. We want safer neighborhoods. We want safer streets as and when people see police officers with lights turning one the other byproduct of that is we are more visible. So people tend to drive better and they don't commit crime in our presence. Well, thank you, director Luciano. And I think, [10:38:54 AM] you know, having more dps presence on I-35 on 22, 22 on mopac, that would be, you know, a welcomed partnership, a welcomed effort of the partnership. We're trying to illuminate to the community is that unfortunately, during the first few weeks with the community saw where dps troopers within the neighborhoods and so having this information presented today that the reason why you know we had a significant amount of troopers the first week on Riverside was because based on the data that you shared of having the intersection of high traffic injuries and high traffic fatalities with the intersection of calls for service, that was the reason why the operation was first deployed Eid into our east side communities. I guess director Luciano, moving forward, we know that this operation currently is on pause . Like you have shared with us, that it is going to return at some point. When we heard from colonel Mccraw, he shared with us publicly that the troopers are deployed. You know, at the discretion and the direction of [10:39:55 AM] our police chief, chief Chacon, what can we expect moving forward for the next iteration of the operation? And he knowing the adjustments that have that were made towards the end of the program, what can we expect for the second phase? This is a collaboration. So a lot of times, you know, we have these discussions personally, we, I want to be the most visible. I can or have my people be the most visible. They can in the areas that are most affected by calls for service, violent crimes and traffic accidents. So that data is comes from the Austin police department. And then there's also some other factors that go into it. And you know, based on that is where we will move. Chief, any comments from you. Well, I appreciate the question, councilmember. And as [10:40:55 AM] you saw in just as the operation before was put on pause, there was a redeployment from the areas and that was all based, again, on data and, you know, I have to take into account council members and the mayor and council's desires about how how they'd like to see policing services delivered in the city that weighs into it as well. And what we saw was a deployment really in areas where you hadn't seen as much dps presence and it and it continued to have a good effect up until we had to put it on pause that is going that that is largely what is going to drive the effort moving forward . I've heard very clearly dps has heard very clearly what the council's wishes are with how the operation should be conducted. We want to operate within that framework. We want to be responsive. We also want to affect violent crime and serious injury collisions. So [10:41:55 AM] we'll work towards a plan and obviously provide data, provide updates to council on an ongoing basis so that you all know exactly how we're doing it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember councilmember Velasquez. Thank you, chief. Thank you all for being here with us today. When we when we sat down and met with with county attorney Garza and district attorney Garza and the rest of the folks that are here in the room, we talked about forming a working group so that we would be able to compile data and properly disperse it to the community so that people are aware of what's happening and where it's happening. Have we already put the wheels on that? So we've had we've exchanged several emails. It is tough to get some of the leadership up in the same room at the same time, have not settled on a final schedule yet. It's still in the works. Okay and at this juncture and I appreciate you, doctor, for chatting with us on Friday, what data are we missing and how [10:42:57 AM] can we get that in order to because the initial issue was that we didn't have a full understanding of the numbers because there was data that was missing. Are we still there? And what do we need to get there or get beyond that? Excuse me? Yeah. So the key information that's the key questions that have been asked are data that are not APD, operational data. And so those data are. I'm sorry, doctor, can you pull the mic closer to your mouth? You're not you're better. You're not as soft spoken as director Luciano . But yeah, but you are soft spoken and. Yeah. And please start that answer again if you don't mind. So the key information that we've been asked about that we have not been able to provide are the information that APD is not the custodian of record for. And so their data that are fundamentally do not belong to the city of Austin. And so we have asked both of the courts to provide us information that we can use to start to fill in some of the blanks. Wright and so we [10:43:58 AM] have reviewed some information from dps that they've shared with us about the activities and whatnot so that we can understand and the information coming out from different sources, right? So so, so the information that's probably most pertinent to the discussion will have to come from the courts. That's going to be the misdemeanor arrest information. It's going to be the it's going to be the felony arrest information and the citation information. And so at this point, because we have a limited ability to review data, we do have to sort of use an inferential reasoning, right? So we look at things like the 167 misdemeanor arrests, which the disproportionality was discussed . So we looked at so we looked at those. I I only reviewed the 104 the first three weeks, not the first four weeks. Importantly there were 94 misdemeanor warrants in those arrests. And so as we all recall, those are required by law. There is no there's no [10:44:59 AM] mechanism whereby any officer APD dps or otherwise, cannot make that arrest. So we are doing additional analysis on the information. We do have to try to inform. For example, we've begun we've begun a study of the currently open warrants that we have in our system for arrest warrants so that we can understand the disparity that exists in warrants and to the extent that warrants drive arrests, which they must, we can understand how that contributes to the ratio that we're seeing right. And I just want to add one additional item on that question, which is I've had conversations with the county district attorney. I haven't spoken directly with JP Chou, but we're still working with all of them. District attorney Garza informed me that he anticipated being able to provide Eid good data to me. This week, perhaps as early as tomorrow or Wednesday. That would give me the kind of information that we've been looking for. And I know that council has been [10:46:00 AM] asking for. So I'm hopeful on that front. But again, we're we're a little bit at the at the mercy of getting that information from our partners and once we and thank you for that. And I want to touch on what what councilmember Fuentes and Eid councilmember vela spoke about. Initially, the there was a heavy, very heavy police presence in district three and district four. We know that we asked for a realignment readjustment of this partnership ship. Are you all able to tell us what that looks like now, if we have 100 officers in Austin and how they may be dispersed across the city, if I want to make sure I understand or when we had them here excuse me, the 100 dps officers, when dps is here and what it looks like. So we did not change any of our deployment strategies for our APD officers while the dps is here. Those remain the same and it's all based on, you know, call the number of calls for service, the types of calls for service and then where our our [10:47:02 AM] sector and district lines are are drawn throughout the city. And you know we'll deploy the number of officers in each one of those sectors based on on those on that type of data. It is not it did not change because the dps deployment, it could potentially change every single week based on where the calls for service is happening. So we don't want to we don't want to adjust the number of APD officers as well so that did not that did not change. Okay. But with the dps officers, how did that how was that changed? That I want to make sure I understand your question. You're saying where are we deploying the dps officers? Yes sir, our troopers. So that is always going to be based on the data that we're provided that we're providing to them. On the calls for service, the p0 gun hotshot calls, as well as the traffic data and as you as you saw, those were the first few weeks were really along the I-35 corridor and in [10:48:03 AM] predominantly to areas of the city. In the later part, it really further dispersed based on where that crash data was, as well as calls for service. And we'll have to just really look at what is the data look like when they're ready to come back. And that will once again drive that, you know, drive the operation. Okay. One more question. When we talked about when we talk about the data that we're compiling as a working group with all these with all the organizations, how are we going to make that available to the public once we receive the information and we can, you know , provide some analysis on it through Dr. Corrigan's staff, if something similar to what you see here, we may provide it in a memo format or we may provide it as part of a formal presentation . Rey thank you. Councilmember pool. Morning. Morning, gentlemen. I just had a couple of questions about the provision of the data from our county partners. You mentioned Garza, [10:49:08 AM] his jurisdiction. Ann is what specifically is it? Felonies, felony cases, and where do the misdemeanor cases fall? Those those fall under the county attorney. County attorney Garza and you mentioned that da Garza was willing to provide the arrest data and he's working to get us that. It's been how many weeks since we started this this partnership? About six weeks. It's been six weeks with one of those weeks being no deployment . So so he's working to get us the information that we need in order to assure the community that we're being transparent and accountable on arrests. What about at the county attorney level? What what's is there a holdup there? I'm not sure what the holdup is, councilmember, but they have indicated that there's no timeline at this [10:50:09 AM] point on when they're going to be able to provide it. Do we do we know what that means? I really don't. But I think that's probably a good question for county attorney Garza she provided obviously some data a couple of weeks back related to what she was seeing in some of the demographics and so forth. We asked for more detailed data to be able to, as Dr. Crane was talking about, how many of those were worn arrests, where did the arrests occur and so forth, and have yet to receive it. So is this information subject to the open records disclosure? Yeah, I would think so. I would think so. And is that under there are some timelines related to open records disclosure, is that correct? When you go through that official process? Yes. You want to talk about that? Yeah. Under Texas public information law, there's a limited period of time in which you can provide an estimate of timeline Wright but the actual timeline for delivery [10:51:09 AM] can go way beyond that. And so we do believe that we do believe that we will make progress on obtaining the data. And so we're still pursuing it through the through the executive discussion and whatnot. And so we believe that we will actually get the data reasonably soon and allow us to actually take a look in more detail. Wright because the initial data were limited, as we mentioned, the 94 warrants in the first 104 arrests means we want to understand that more, more thoroughly. Yeah. And we know under the open records act a governmental entity is required to release the information that's been requested within ten days of the request when they know that it is releasable or go to the attorney general to request a reason not to release it. So I know we're not in that formal kind of situation with our partners at the county, but but it is a little bit disappointing and concerning, I think, to all of us here at the city that we [10:52:09 AM] are inhibited from, providing some good data assessment and analysis to the public who are absolutely wanting it and deserving to receive it. But we, we seem to be running into some obstacles. I sure do hope that we're able to that we see these obstacles be overcome, and that we get full accounting and transfer currency on arrests from our partners at the county. Really really soon. Really soon. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, councilmember. Okay. Councilmember qadri. And then I'll ask rey the data that was provided to all the individual council members. It was emergency calls for service before the partnership. Before that partnership. It looks like district. Three for one Ann, seven and nine had the most emergency calls for service in [10:53:10 AM] that order. Would you guys be able to get us emergency calls for service during that five week? That was on the ground by by district? Oh, yeah. We've put the information together. Those things that were circulated to council were the initial background. We've pulled together the information since the deployment Wright, so we'll be putting that together, adding that in and making that available to council very soon. Great. Thank you. Great thanks. I want to also thank the council . I want to thank the council members that are here that aren't part of the committee. That's part of what we had hoped would happen. And I appreciate them being here. I want to also note that councilmember Allison alter has joined us virtually, although she's apparently having some audio difficulties. But I want to recognize that that she's here. Any other questions or comments? S anything else you all want to add before we go to public comment? We're we're cool. All right. Then what we're going to do, members, is we will [10:54:11 AM] go to public communications and then those who have signed up on item number two, which is the briefing discussion item. So thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, mayor. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, for public communication. We'll start with people that are remote, but okay, starting off with Vince cabales, please unmute your mic. Good morning. My name is Vince cable. I'm a past chair of the Asian American quality of life advisory committee and currently the president elect for the network of Asian American organizations . Today, however, I'm not representing either organization, just myself in modern American history, Asian Americans have been regularly scapegoated during periods of national distress. In World War [10:55:11 AM] two, forced internment of about 120,000 Japanese Americans is just one example. And more recently, the covid pandemic put China in the spotlight. But it also posed a threat to all Asian American communities. Luz so now's a critical moment for the city of Austin to recognize the history of anti-asian violence in the country and realize how it's connected to the mistreatment of other ethnic minorities. As the Asian American community does not feel safe as underlying tensions continue to grow. I know this is not specifically about the subject today, but but it's a continuing issue in the Asian American community. In recent years, there was an Asian community liaison who could build trust with the aapi community and also zo help the Austin police department [10:56:12 AM] understand the growing concerns in the community. This awareness can help prevent Asian hate from escalating Singh. And I'd like to support Wright reestablishing a community liaison position that focused on the aapi asian-american and pacific islander community that's my concern. Thank you, sir. Submit Dasgupta. Simic, can you hear us okay? I think we might be having an audio issue. Please call back. [10:57:15 AM] We'll start with in-person public communication. Ann Ruben Clemente. On deck. Gopal guthikonda. I shouldn't be here. I was going to speak about something, but I was kind of shocked to see that my district four is has a lot of crime area and I have an agenda to speak to , but I'm requesting to have a face to face conversation with police chief Joseph Chacon or the city manager. Everybody knows what I'm going through, but anyway, this is not the agenda for me to speak about what I'm going through, even though I'm pretty sure he can. He can admit that I'm telling the truth about who's been harassing. That's all I have. Thank you, sir. On deck. Benavente. Good morning. Council members. Vice mayor. Thank you [10:58:18 AM] for the opportunity to come and speak. I'm goal guthikonda. I want to highlight the issues that are faced by the Asian American community here in Austin and literally the community is living in fear and living very unsafe, either. These are neighborhood break-ins automobile break-ins jugging incidents following and targeting Asian Americans. And you will hear some of the cases that have happened not only not only in our neighborhood, all over, but it is important Swint that you all please pay attention Ann to what is going on in the community. Katy and I think the issue here is visibility. We used to have the patrolling officers in the neighborhoods that would come and patrol the neighborhoods and they would attend the neighborhood meetings. We know the officer, we have their phone number. We could call them on what's going on in the neighborhood. We haven't seen [10:59:19 AM] the police officers in the neighborhood for many years. And the only time I see police officer in our neighborhood, Eid, is when there is an emergency. And that is causing a significant uneasiness among all the residents. And you can see that in the neighborhood community discussions in the forums in whatsapp, groups everywhere. And please do something about this. We elected you to set the policy to help to reduce the crime and to get the visibility Katy to go back to where we feel safe and it is important for us and the other thing I want to talk about is we met with mills and captain Fitzgerald sometime back or last week actually to highlight what is happening and we came to know that only 33 cadets are graduating this year. Out of the 100 that we were, we could [11:00:20 AM] graduate. And there is a distinct I'm sorry, I ran out of time and I want to highlight that. Please use resources to get more cadets into the group and please help us be safe. Thank you. Thank you. On deck. Fugitt dod. Namaste good morning. Council members. My name is binni nanavati. I'm a member of the Asian Indian community and my family has been calling Austin home for 25 years now. I'm here to speak to you today about Indians and Austin and the recent crime in our community. The Indian community in Austin is growing Singh dynamic and making a positive impact on the city. Most common occupations for Indians in Austin are it health care and business. According to the 2020 us census, 56,623 Indian people or. 2.2% of the city's [11:01:23 AM] population live in Austin, with a median income household income of $100,000 and a median age of 35 years. The community has become more involved in local elections, according to the Travis county clerk office, 5.2% of Indians voted in the 2020 election. Austin seen a significant increase from 3.6% in the 2016 election. Ann voter turnout among Indians was. 52.5, and that's higher than the overall turnout of 45.2% of overall voters in the same election. Voter turnout among Indians in Austin is also higher than the voter turnout rate for all races and ethnicities in Austin. The increase in voter turnout among Asian Indians is a positive sign for the future of Austin. It shows that our community is engaged and invested in the city's future and that we're becoming more aware of the importance of voting and taking steps to make [11:02:24 AM] our voices heard. Austin has been experiencing a crime in an a rise in crime in recent months. In the past year, there's been violent crimes against Indian people in Austin , including robberies, assaults and murders increase in crime has left Indian people feeling unsafe in our own homes and neighborhoods. We're afraid to walk out at night. We're afraid about our safety. Can I continue ? I'm so sorry, but your time has expired. Okay, great. Thank you very much for being here and giving us your comments. On deck . Ricky Perez good morning. My name is satyajit Rodia. I just came to explain a jogging incident happened to me April 21st. I left home to deposit some jewelry in the bank. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten my locker key at home. I drove back home from the bank. I locked my car, went left my bag in the car. I went inside to get my [11:03:27 AM] locker key. I came out about four minutes. In the meantime, my jewelry had been stolen. My neighbor cameras caught that. Some car followed me from the bank. Well, I assume from the bank. But they caught the car following me and they got in the house talking to neighbors and friends. And my social circle, it's become apparent this is growing over the last seven, eight years. And I echo the comments from gopal earlier that we are no longer seeing patrols in our neighborhoods. And I request the and the APD to work together to restore those. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir. Ricky Perez rey, reverend Darrell Horton. On deck. Pastor Abraham Perez. Good morning. Mayor and all persons who are present. Thank you for allowing us to be here. We have just [11:04:28 AM] gathered here today because there are persons of the faith community who want you to know that we are just as concerned as everyone else about the issues that you are dealing today with public safety. We want you to know that this is a large conversation that should continue. We are grateful to our police chief and to our directors of dps for helping us to be here to have information Ann but our request is that we would continue to have these conversations in a greater place where more of the public can hear the information that needs to be presented. I don't have to tell you that perception becomes reality when people look at their experiences and how they feel they are being treated, how they perceive that actions are being taken in their area. And so I think in an effort to help the community to feel safer with the actions that are being taken, we would just encourage some kind of way to get a greater amount of community action out to the public to allow them to understand that the reason why dps is present is to curb the things that are taking place, not to harass or not to do other things. Whenever media comes out and there are reports that tell you that 80% of the stops are black and brown people, that furthers the [11:05:29 AM] narrative, that furthers the perception. And I think it makes the conversations more challenging. So I think members of the faith community are here today to let you know that we are concerned that we are here, that we are wanting to be a part of the solution and part of that we think is helping the city of Austin and all the others together to just provide greater communication to the community so that we know what's going on so that we don't have to fill in the narrative with perceptions and also with fear. Thank you so much for allowing us to be here this morning. Thank you, pastor on deck, Alan Ramirez. Hello, my name is Abraham Perez. I'm a pastor of Austin reconciliation church for the last 28 years. And also the president of healthy pastors grow. I will also like to echo all the words that reverend Darrell Horton said about about the safety of our communities. Faith community wants to also be part of this vital information that we can [11:06:30 AM] also receive and communicate. So we can be involved in the process. So our church is located right there in Cameron road, middle to 91, 83, and I-35. So that's where I live. And that side of desert road. So I know pretty much what goes on. And lately we have issues within the last few years of lack of policing, lack of patrolling, you know, the 911 calls taking quite a bit longer to be responded. Also, there's a lot of crime going on in the community and not enough policing to deter that crime. And so we are asking the police , hear our voices, and we could also get the faith community, the different ethnics and also economic groups to come together from the community to support for the unity and the safety me and lowering of crime of our neighborhoods and so I ask you to please consider all these [11:07:30 AM] issues that are impacting our community and help us to come up with solutions and working together with different faith communities. Also with different agencies that we can partner and work together to solve this issue in Austin. Thank you and god bless you. Thank you, pastor on deck. Ronnie McShay. Good morning. My name is Alan Ramirez. I'm a former president of Alma. It's a an organization that represents over 50 churches in the Austin area. And also I'm a business owner along with my family. We own four businesses and I moved to Austin in 1992. But over 30 years ago. And I remember back then I could leave the keys in my cars and nothing happens. So now we have to install security cameras on all our different businesses. And even having cameras, we have people breaking into them and just like a dps officer says that when you know, when they're around people, you know, it's a [11:08:32 AM] word that the police is around them. And it's just like the when a house when you got the lights off you know the roaches in the in the rats their their hide somewhere. But when you turn on the lights they're they're just disappear and it's the same with the APD and the EPA. I know. You know, lately we have seen the presence of dps around the city and I, you know, I follow up the social media and everybody says that the crime, the increase over 50. So as a taxpayer and as a pastor Shaw that are represent hundreds of people, I really encourage you all that that we do pay a lot of money on taxes and that we really need the presence of the dps and APD so that way we can, you know, work together and the people out there that they're looking desperately to make money the wrong way, the crime will help. You know, we work together to, you know, to [11:09:32 AM] decrease that. So thank you so much. And I honor you all. And god bless you. Thank you for the hard work. Thank you, chief. And god bless you all. Thank you on that Escott flack. Morning, mayor and council. I'm Ronnie Mitch. I worked at frost bank for 40 years. I just retired Eid, but I've been in the city for 49 years. I love the city. I love everything about it that we've done and grown. I agree with the faith leaders. Some of the questions and concerns today I'm voicing my perspective while acknowledging that I also want to gain more understanding from my fellow brothers and sisters of faith of some of the social and economic and the ethnicity groups that are being impacted. I've raised four children here. I have eight grand children in the Austin area. I think we can all agree we can all agree that we want to have our families feel safe from violent crimes and Eid be able to get on the [11:10:32 AM] road and feel safe. We need a safe environment to continue to thrive and grow in the city of Austin, we need a safe environment. As I said, currently APD is short of staff . While the city has continued to grow. In my mind that this is a good formula for the that it's going to cause is a good formula for disaster. And so I know we're trying to fix it. I know it's going to take time. One of the things that I feel very in I'm looking for and would love to hear a unified solution to all that. I think we're all working toward that. I want to commend mayor Watson and chief Chacon, whom I've gotten to know throughout the years, and both of them have a heart to unify this city and work with all the ethnicities and socioeconomic groups. I realize this is a tremendous amount of time and effort to accomplish this, but I'm confident they they will continue to move us in the direction Ann in the best direction for Austin and its residents. Ultimately we believe [11:11:34 AM] we can have a collective unity around public safety. We'll share long term visions and work for the safety and unity of Austin as a beloved community and thank you all very much for your time. Thank you, sir. On deck, Joe bland. Thank you all. My name is Scott flack. I'm also a 30 year austinite came here to attend school and never left for more than a couple of weeks. I've got a business here. I've got a family here. I've got a lot of friends from the faith community that asked me to lean in. I'll also mention just quickly that I chaired the social equity committee at a think tank called aero, some of you might be familiar with I don't want to. I'm not here representing aero. I'm not here representing my church or my business. I'm here just to say that I think that there's a new group up, a new approach, perhaps. I feel like whenever I've talked about this issue one [11:12:35 AM] on one with folks, I'm being asked to make a false choice to either folks entirely on the opportunity for long term change in the business of policing and public safety, which I think is an important thing to study and work on. But it's either do that or or advocate for more more police on the streets and at some cost to thinking long term. So the new group that I'm thinking about doesn't even have a name. I just was I've been frustrated that I've been asked to make a choice between two really important things. Similarly we do. I care about teachers or students during the covid process. I care about both of them, and I also care about the opportunity to hear from all groups in terms of how we might rethink some of the training and execution of law enforcement. Long term. We have a little white paper that we came up with after a year's worth of work that's produced some some [11:13:36 AM] potential long term opportunities for new facilities to pull people together, to think about that. So are you for long term change and working on that research to create potentially meaningful change to this business or are you for the appropriate ratios and the mathematics and statistics that are too compelling to ignore? I'm for both. So join me if you're interested in that. And thank you for your time. Mayor can I can I ask this gentleman, if you can, Mr. Flack can you share that white paper that you referenced? Yes, ma'am. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I'll do it. Thank you, sir. On deck. Escott Crossett. Good morning, mayor and council members. So I'm fortunate to have lived here in Austin all my life. 70 years and, I, like you, are concerned with the rising crime rate, the illegal drug trafficking, and sex crimes that are taking place [11:14:37 AM] in my hometown. I watched in dismay when gangs took over intersections of our great city and lawlessness prevailed. I know APD has cadets in training and additional officers in a year or two, but we don't have a year or two. We applaud you for partnering with the dps to lower our violent crime, arrest violent criminals, Ralls and lower 911 response times restoring civility to our city. But there is much more work to be done. Even with lower crime numbers. Our community, which is the heart of the problem, seems broken. I think it goes without saying that criminals are taking exploiting our minority communities. They're and that's something that we must strive to stop. The black, brown, Asian and lower income communities are being salted with criminals and [11:15:40 AM] it's threatening their hardworking families, their children and their friends. And they all deserve the same rey rights to safe neighborhoods that you and I enjoy. But no zo in our minority communities increased police activity can bring fear for the innocent and guilty alike. The actions of bad cops and the evils of racism has propagated fear and unrest for many in our minority communities . However, the extreme crime situation, which is where we are today, Shea just makes knell necessary measures soliciting the help of the dps. Thank you. Thank you. On deck. Pete Inman. Thank you guys for your service [11:16:41 AM] . I know it's a thankless job. A lot of times. My name is Scott Crossett. I've lived in Austin for 55 plus years. I grew up in the east side, went to win elementary, pierce junior high and Reagan high school. I've been lucky enough to own a business in Austin for the last 35 years called apple leasing. I've seen Austin grow and change in a lot of different ways. I've also gotten to know the last three police chiefs. I'm part of a group of businessmen and church leaders that support APD spirits Leslie along with the city. We're also able with this group to purchase a health and wellness wellness program for support of APD. We've also had the opportunity to pray over the last three police chiefs. I couldn't be prouder than to have them protect our city and I'm a proud supporter of Alan graham and solutions for his homelessness. I want to share a abbreviated story. I own a car lot in one of the wealthiest zip codes in Austin on November 6th, 2022. Eagle illegal men pulled [11:17:43 AM] onto my lot that got out of the car and acted like they wanted to buy a Lincoln navigator. My salesperson, Jerry Lee, a 60 year old black man, opened the vehicle to show it to them. They began to beat him up. Somehow my other salesman saw this happen. He called APD. Jerry was able to get away from the criminals as he started to run away. They both tackled him and beat him to the ground. They pulled a pistol and shot him two times in the back head at point blank range. He was killed instantly. They walked back, got on one of my vehicles to steal it as they were leaving the car lot, APD pulled up, put their lives on the line to arrest them. These officers had been a minute later . These individuals would be free on the streets committing heinous crimes. Maybe against one of us or one of our family members. However, due to the [11:18:43 AM] quick and courageous response to those officers, instead of them anyway, I just want to thank you guys for your job, your support of chief Chacon. He loves this city and he loves his police officers. Thank you, sir. Mr. Herzig, I know your business is in my district, and so one of my staffers is going to come down with a business card so that you can reach out to my office if you have any other questions or need any assistance. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Council member on deck. Pastor Belize require mayor Watson council members. Thank you so much. Grateful for the opportunity to speak into this community discussion around public safety . It's a conversation that we all believe that we can have. I agree with everything that reverend Dr. Horton said, as well as the pastors and the market place leaders. Yet there are additional leaders and voices that are not here that we hope will engage this discussion because it's a community wide discussion. Ann and today, like many of my brothers and sisters, [11:19:44 AM] I'm simply voicing my perspective while also trying to learn on a very steep learning curve. We will always prefer to use APD appropriately trained officers in Austin, but when you have a 350 person deficit of officers on APD, that's not viable right now. But we will also always fight to ensure that all of our citizens, all of them are not unfairly targeted. While a lot of us are strong supporters of public safety in particularly chief Chacon leadership, we need to and this is probably the most important thing that you all need to hear and have resonate. We need to have a deeper our appreciation that public safety has a lot of different dimensions and it starts from birth. And so to come in here and just talk about law enforcement is I think what is frustrating for a lot of the members of our community, we've got to have educational opportunities early on. We've got to have job opportunities. And I think the community is [11:20:45 AM] also willing to have that conversation. Finally for our public safety families, please find a way to get to a multi year deal with APD and its officers so that we can move forward, so that we can stop the problem with retention and we can start recruiting. 33. We celebrate last night. But when you're looking at a deficit of 350, it certainly seems inadequate to the task. God bless you all. Thank you. Thank you, sir. And mayor. Yes, my apology to the committee and to the public, but I have a capital metro meeting at noon and I need to get over there. So I'll be having to leave. Excuse me. Thank you, pastor. Belize rasooli. Ramesh sundar. Sundar Rajan. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. [11:21:49 AM] Morning council members. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Ramesh. I live in north Austin. I'm live in the same neighborhood as Mr. Gopal and miss Benny and satyajit. I'm here to express my concern about the crime in my neighborhood. I'm very active in social media and for the past couple of years, I've noticed something Singh alarming increase in the number of posts from ordinary citizens in various forums like Instagram or Facebook or whatsapp about increasing crime. First thing in the morning I see is people getting jogged or they're losing their catalytic converters or the Ford pickup is gone and so on and so forth. People working from home, they have to rush downstairs to pick up their Amazon package or FedEx packages or ups packages and I don't know if you noticed that yesterday or a couple of days ago, there was something in the mainstream media where Austin city is dropped from sixth to [11:22:51 AM] number 40 in the most livable places to live Wright and one of the one of the criteria is quality of life. When you are fearful of your car or your package being picked up or being judged, that's not good quality of life. Wright and I don't know what this driving this criminals and I don't know why they are here and so on and so forth. But my request is very simple. I know Dr. Director Luciano talked about that a little bit. When there's a presence of a petrol, petrol, car, APD or a police cop , the criminals will stop or just run away. So I'm requesting for increased presence of APD in the neighborhoods with increasing crimes. It's actually a cascading request. You know, APD just don't don't show up from thin air. That's increased. APD funding and increased recruitment efforts and so on and so forth. You all know all about it. But please do play, you know, emphasis on that. [11:23:52 AM] Thank you for your time. Thank you. Yes. Councilmember qadri. Yeah, I know some of the other folks of south Asian descent had made a comment that this might be racially motivated myself and councilmember Allison alter on the hate crimes task force. So please reach out to our office and if you're here after this meeting ends, I'll gladly and happily talk to you all. Thank you. Maudlin Eckhardt Ben temperley. Good morning, mayor and council members and thank you for APD chief and dps officers. Thank you so much for carefully listening. What we are saying. My fellow citizens and I been to downtown hundreds of times and I've been living in [11:24:53 AM] Austin last 19 years. I never thought I'll be in front of you guys so you guys can understand that. Like, you know how the Asian community is feeling. I have two questions. In fact, I didn't prepare for any speech or anything. I want to speak from my heart. Okay. Two things. First one is like, so there are a lot of thefts, like my neighbor said, theft. And like you know, happening when we call 911 and they might come or they might say like, you know, is somebody there is any life threatening when we say that if it's not life threatening and nobody is there, they may show up after a couple of hours. And in our Asian community, what we are thinking is something happened, some robbery or anything, just forget about it. You will not get your money or gold or whatever. The second [11:25:55 AM] thing on experience last week happened, but it's not incident. The kind of fear I went to the bank with my wife and while coming back I was looking back in my rear view camera. Somebody is following. In fact, there was a car following after some time the car went away. But that kind of fear we have when we go to the bank or anywhere coming back is somebody following me? Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your comments. Sumit Dasgupta. Sumit can you unmute from your phone, please. Hello. I can hear you. Go ahead. I can hear you. Okay, [11:26:55 AM] great. So may I ask council members chito Chacon thank you for the opportunity to let me speak so I want to express on behalf of Asian Americans the level of concern Ann that seems to be increasing about our personal safety and the safety of our families. So I want to describe an anecdote. In the middle of 2021, at the request of congressman Doggett's office , my wife and I arranged a get together of about 75 Asian Americans in our backyard to listen to congressman Doggett Doggett so that we could stand apart from each other. And with our masks on. As I went around speaking to all the guests coming in, I spoke to a young family and expressed my concern about our increasing lack of safety and our concerns about it. And that's so few of us ever even thought of owning guns, to which this young woman smiled at me and said, uncle, that may be your perspective, but we in the [11:27:56 AM] Asian community, who are of the younger age, are beginning to take our security in our own hands. And many of us have bought guns that is not the direction we should be taking, where we will be owning our own guns to fight for security. So I'm appealing to all of you involved in this matter to focus on increased public safety, mental health and education of everybody, to let people know that we, people of color are not the enemy. We are all part of the same humanity. Thank you very much. That concludes public communication. We'll move on to item two. We'll start with our remote callers, cleopatrick. Please unmute your mic. Everyone listening concerned about crime [11:28:56 AM] and wondering why we can't recruit officers. There's only one reason, and that is the ongoing demoralization by the council, by this council of our police department and their failure to place a city agreed four year contract up for a vote . I recommend you schedule a meeting with your council member and urge them to put the police contract with the most Progressive oversight in the state. Up for a vote. The partnership exists for only one reason and only one reason. The failure of this Austin city council to cast off the foolish policy direction it took several years ago. Those policies resulted in unacceptable levels of crime and an inability of APD to respond appropriately. Those policies resulted in a demoralized police force and precipitated staffing crisis at Austin. Can't easily undo those policies resulted in more violent crimes disproportionately black and brown, which is a fact that the opposition to dps never wants to discuss in fact, the opposition [11:29:58 AM] to dps has no ideas except to complain about every other solution. Austin had an opportunity to turn this around by accepting a negotiated police contract with which included the best accountability measures anywhere in the state. Instead Eid it opted to pretend a low turnout sham vote on unenforceable measures was the answer for Austin had the chance to control its own law enforcement destiny, but instead opted to keep pretending that endless measures put forth by those that hate any law enforcement were the way to restore a productive relationship with APD. Ken council members knew all this, but only council member alter and Kelly had the courage to state the truth. I support the dps partnership not because I prefer dps over APD, but because it is the only solution available for communities in need of law enforcement and the truth is, the weak members of our city council prefer dps to dps provides them an opportunity to complain and virtue signal [11:30:59 AM] and clamor away, all while getting the law enforcement they all know we need. They all know. Thank you very much, Jennifer Rex. Flint Klein. Joel Mcnew . Bruce Greiner. Bruce can you please unmute. New unmuted? First of all, let me just say thank you for the opportunity to share my perspective on the importance of continuing the city of Austin's collaboration with dps. We've all seen [11:31:59 AM] changes, as Austin has grown. Unfortunately prior city councils have forgotten what should be local government's highest priority, and that is ensuring the safety of its citizens through adequate police, fire and emergency services. For the past several years. City council eliminate police positions canceled Eid and reduced academy classes and did not invest in needed fire equipment. Austin was once looked upon as having one of the best police departments in the state and recognized for its excellent leadership, which was often sought by other cities, is not so today. As a city, we are less safe with fewer officers, high retirements and insufficient classes to close the gap. No local traffic enforcement and in my view is proceeding on the same path as Portland, Minneapolis and San Francisco. Is that what we want ? The reduction of police coverage and no traffic enforcement has resulted in more [11:33:00 AM] dangerous road conditions speeding, running red lights, reckless and drunk, driving. Just stop at any intersection along the 183 access road and see how many cars run red lights with impunity. I also can't recall the last time I saw an officer drive through my neighborhood in northwest Austin. Police coverage is clearly inadequate. I am very pleased or was very pleased when the governor, the mayor and city council manager reached an agreement for dps to supplement APD's police force until, unfortunately, as we know, that force has been reassigned to higher priorities. I am requesting the city council to continue this partnership when dps determines it can reassign reassign staff back to our city . Don't let the voices of a few adversely influence continuation . I'm confident the vast majority of our residents want more law. Thank you, sir. I'm [11:34:00 AM] sorry to interrupt you, but your time is expired. Thank you. Matt Mackowiak. Matt, can you hear us? Can you hear me? Yeah, go ahead. I can hear you. Great. Yes thank you. To mayor and to the members of council who are still here. I certainly wish everyone who was here at the beginning could still be here now. It seems to me that we have a basic math problem in our city and the dps partnership was an attempt to try to address that because it really wasn't another short term option that was going to work. And when I say a math problem, let's look at the numbers. As of, I guess about six days ago, we had 338 police vacancies. As you add 152 that which were cut in 2020 from the authorized strength that totals 488 vacancies from the 2020 authorized strength level. It's a wonderful thing that we had 33 [11:35:01 AM] cadets graduate, recently, and I guess there's a new class which will have a 7 to 8, eight month coursework period and a 1 to 2 month field work period. But we've only gained 33 and we've lost 108 just since the beginning of this year. So we are now 75 short of where we were just at the beginning of this year with that math problem staring us in the face. We have to take advantage of the fact that dps is willing to partner with the city of Austin, willing to improve public safety in our state, willing to enforce state law, willing to back up APD. We can always make things better. That is the role the council has to try to provide oversight and improve and look at the data. But we need to let the data drive where these resources go and I certainly hope and so many other people will testify today that dps will be back helping APD as soon as possible. Thank you, Jesse Mueller. John Harris [11:36:07 AM] . Sharon Blythe. Charles cup. Charles, can you please unmute. Yes sir. My name is Christopher. I'm with the health enrollment center, just responding to an application that was submitted for health. Hello we can hear you. Go ahead. This is Charles butts cup. Can you hear me? Yes sir, you can. Go ahead. All right. Very brief introduction. I'm a two tour Vietnam veteran and I served in law enforcement in the state of Texas for 20 years. You know, there's been a lot of eloquent things said Eid. [11:37:08 AM] But basically, it boils down to under the previous mayor oral leadership decision was made to defund the police department and bottom line is there's a reason why that there are numerical, equations that tell you how many peace officers you need to have for every citizen in your county . With this kind of liberal direction. We went in, we became categorized with every other democratic city council throughout this country that liberalized everything and so we have this big problem. The bottom line is it is about visibility. We you know, I can there was a time I could not drive down. One 3183 from my northwest Austin, home to downtown and not see at least 3 or 4 law enforcement vehicles out on the road. I can drive right now from the northern part of Austin to the southern part of Austin at about 100 miles an [11:38:09 AM] hour. And not worry about it because there's not anybody out there because they can't Wright with the with the reduction in staff. You don't have traffic anymore. There's a lot of stuff going on. It's a crime issue. And you guys inherited it and right now the collaboration with APD is extremely important. And don't forget, don't this whole racism stuff got nothing to do with it. They put you in, they put him in high crime areas because that's where the high crime is. Makes perfectly good common sense. It's not racism at all. Thank you. Sandy Ramirez, mcnaull. Sandy, can you please unmute. [11:39:16 AM] George Jordan Morehead. Kathie, coco. Tina Rodriguez. Tina can you please unmute. Good morning. This is Tina Rodriguez. Thank you, mayor. Thank you. City council and thank you particularly to the Austin police department and the dps. I strongly believe that this is a continuation of a support that this city needs to protect its citizens, be it young, be it old. So that we can feel safe in this city. It's a shame that as citizens, we [11:40:18 AM] cannot police ourselves and mind Ralls and laws that are made to protect each other. We need to bring back respect in this city and order. And we need to understand that everyone is allowed to have their own opinions about our city and to move forward. Eid we need to understand that we have to work together to collaborate and make these situations better. There is no way that 300 policemen are going to just appear overnight. Wright we know that the dps is going to be with us long term and I think it would be smart for us to, as we go through that relationship, have community meetings as we do with our current police department when there are available. It is important for everyone in this city to take responsibility and be part of this moving forward in our city so that we can be successful and be people that we [11:41:19 AM] once were and enjoy our own city and respect each other across all all communities. Thanks. Lee Ann Brunson. Leann, can you hear me? Yes. Can you hear me? Guess you can. Absolutely can. First, I'd just like to say I've lived in Austin since 1978, and I want to thank you all for this opportunity to speak about the most important issue facing our community today. That's public safety. I think that every community in Austin deserves to be safe. Every community. And right now we are not safe. We need more patrols in every sector and as we know, APD is roughly 350 vacancies down Ann I and my [11:42:21 AM] family appreciate the dps coming on board to help our exhausted patrols, and many of my neighbors do as well. I don't think we should have ever stopped the cadet program. And I think we all know that having dps is not the long term answer , but now we need to do whatever it takes to get our patrols and our units fully staffed again. And that means supporting APD. In the meantime, dps help is much needed and we hope that you will continue this program as soon as possible. Thank you. Richard Smith. Catherine Reimer . Chris Harris. Chris can you unmute on your end. [11:43:33 AM] Good after. Good morning. This is Chris Harris with the Austin justice coalition bringing dps to Austin was a bad decision and made in a very bad way without input from the council, without input from community. It's caused more harm than it's helped and we really hope that they do not come back and that you do not bring them back. Firstly it's because of how dps operates. They perform and dps director Mccraw said this at your last work session they enforce all traffic laws and they do so as a pretext to look for other things. This is a failed tactic. Similar to stop and frisk known to disproportion harm communities of color and the poor and not not by find major crimes or prevent major harm in any serious way. Number two, the reality is the reality recruiting of law enforcement nationwide has been falling for [11:44:35 AM] the better part of a decade. The officers hired after 1994 crime bill and that glut of spending are all retiring. You to the policymakers have to find alternative ways to address our public safety challenges. And those officers are not walking through that door. That means really assessing what police do, what they do that causes more harm than helps them. And not doing it. And where the violence and the threat of violence, which is what police do, isn't useful, isn't helpful, and in fact, more harmful. And how can we address those situations with other types of workers, other people in the community? How can we address our public safety challenges differently? This is the challenge before you not to bring in officers who will conduct harmful operations, not to double down on something that literally cannot be changed, cannot be addressed in the way that, you know, unfortunately, many people have been fooled and to believing it can be. But to really be creative. And we look forward to partnering with you [11:45:35 AM] all to really find and implement those solutions to our public safety challenges that, again, recognize where we are and Eid how policing affects different communities differently. Thank you for the time. Thomas Henry. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. You can go ahead. Thank you. Thank you, mayor Watson, for the opportunity to address council and the citizens of Austin. I am a 20 year resident of Travis county and I would like to testify in favor of item two. The partnership between APD and dps with an example of quantitative and exponential significant favorable response time increase to an injury accident that happened on April 30th involving an elderly driver who perceived to be in his 80s and a female driver he had hit after he had mistakenly failed to stop for a red traffic signal [11:46:37 AM] . The resulting head on collision left both vehicles disabled at the intersection of the 183 north feeder road and great hills trail. Traffic was impeded in all directions, but because of the rush hour time of day, several drivers did not slow down nor render aid and created critical and additional potential danger for both driver and pedestrians. Bystanders who were at the time standing near the smoking vehicles. The vehicles were in such serious damage condition that all airbags had deployed on both cars involved. The elderly gentleman was walking in obvious distress and shock while in traffic. So I ran to him to offer assistance to get him off the main road and to the curb. During that time I could hear sirens approaching in the distance and one of those turned out to be a unit. The dps unit officer was is the only form of law enforcement who showed up on scene for that accident. He took down my witness information as well as immediately began directing traffic flow for safe [11:47:38 AM] passage Paige. After all, pedestrians in the roadway were safely off to the sidewalk. Austin Travis county ems was on scene in mere minutes. This accident occurred at the near at the new and now notorious accident site that had resulted in a 2.5 hour delay of law enforcement response to an injury accident at the same area of 183. The addition of the partnership between dps and APD was crucial in providing relief to Austin dispatch and APD response to a critical injury accident. The elderly gentleman . Thank you, sir. Sir I'm sorry, but your time is expired. Thank you, Nick Tarantino. Nick, can you unmute, please? Yes hello. Thank you. Mayor Watson and council members, especially the ones that are still there today. Thank you very much, chief [11:48:38 AM] Chacon and the dps police officers. We really appreciate your work. My comment for the city council is to please do everything we can to support our law enforcement officers as we have you documented that we, the city, would like to have more officers than what we have now, and the partnership with the dps allows for the officers to feel supported and allows for more, faster response times and patrols. I have lived in Austin for over 20 years and I run a business here and we have properties all over the city of Austin and we deal with hundreds of different properties and thousands of tenants and I can't tell you the amount of conversation we have with our tenants. Over the past several years of unsafe conditions, people loitering on the property, trespassing break ins, fires that have been started, [11:49:40 AM] different things. And those are affecting our small businesses, people that are in this community as well as their customers and their invited guests and, and, and I think by choosing the dps partnership, we're showing that the city is supporting officers and we're supporting our community and local businesses and business owners. And I think that's really important and we greatly appreciate your review of this and I support the partnership with dps. Thank you. Sandy Ramirez, mcnaull. Okay, sandy, can you unmute from your phone. Can you all hear me? Yes we can. Go ahead. Awesome. Thank you. [11:50:43 AM] I'm in support of this partnership. It should be strongly, which should be strongly appreciated and supported. Let's not forget we're here because of continued poor choices made by the council, with the exception of council member Kelly, just for the short time we've had this partnership crime proved to be on the decrease in areas like Riverside district three, district four, which are all well known by citizens to be high crime areas. Our police department is not staffed 24 over seven to protect and serve all residents with well over 300 vacant officer positions. Burns. There shouldn't be any doubt of wanting their support, which is why we need and want dps back. While most of you question the success of this partnership, anyone that makes a different choice because of the partnership is a success. Any one life that is safe because of this partnership is a success. Safety for all is not racist. Thank you. Dps and APD may god bless you and keep you all safe. That's all I have. We'll move on [11:51:45 AM] to our in-person speakers. Yvonne Weldon Ann on deck. Amanda Rios. Hi, good morning. My name is Yvonne Weldon. I'm a longtime. I grew up here in Austin, and some of you all know I recently was a candidate for city council district three and the top issues that pushed me over the edge to run was the homeless crisis and the public safety crisis and the staffing crisis and the couple. In the past couple of months, I have witnessed firsthand what seems to be a positive pivot in direction on those issues. And thank you all for that. When I first heard about the specially called meeting, I mainly wanted to convey the gratitude for stepping up, stepping up and helping us out. For me, it's been noticeable when out on the streets I often do rideshare as a side gig and it's not uncommon for me to drive 3 to 4000 miles a month, mostly on the streets of Austin this past weekend I was able to log in over 1000 miles alone. I've seen a lot and I've had a lot of conversations [11:52:45 AM] with thousands of folks that I've been doing since I've been doing this side gig. And when I recently started seeing more dps officers on the street in the past couple of months, I assumed it was a legislative related, but it was it's calmed. It's been a lot calmer. And the degree of safety, my degree of safety has increased. And yes, the dps presence has slowed my heavy foot down as well. Recently I was I was almost sideswiped and cut off by an intoxicated, intoxicated driver on I-35. I had riders in my vehicle and I let that driver stay well in front of me until he crashed at the split on Ben white and 35, I was forced and able to stop in the middle of I-35. I call 911 and immediately and I called 911 immediately. And we'll never forget the fear I experienced as I waited and heard. Please hold. Do not hang up. Then again, in Spanish and then again in English. And as I waited for a help to arrive, I have a lot more to say, but I deleted most of it after seeing the presentation and this discussion. I love statistics and I'm proficient in understanding how data and statistics can be created and [11:53:46 AM] manipulated and expressed to say whatever you want it to say. It's evident to me, it's evident to me that the expertise presented today by chief Chacon and the dps are exceptional and I hope the city council and leadership that has exacerbated the crisis will get out of their way and let them do their job. So all thank you on deck. Brad hodges. Hi, good afternoon. My name is Amanda Rios and I'm here to tell you a story about at a park where children are free to roam. They're seeing swinging their parents are pushing them, and it's just a safe place to be . They've ridden their bikes to the park. They can go home. And now I want to tell you another story of a park where children can no longer go play. It is overrun with drug dealers, with people who are prostituting, with the children, cannot walk [11:54:47 AM] to the library. They cannot walk to the recreation center. There is lack of safety and has been for a while. When we're down to these situations and we're talking about low income neighborhoods where lack of opportunity persists, you you add on to that public safety and you're just squashing, squashing them even further. So I'm here to ask, do you want to help raise up a community and provide Eid an opportunity for children to feel safe and to be able to enjoy the amenities that we pay for and give hope and a future to our children or do we want to continue living in fear where the children can't go in their front yards because of the gunshots, because of the people who are crossing by? I am a member of district four. And I have taught in title one schools for my entire career. And this is a question that keeps coming up. What can I do as a citizen, [11:55:47 AM] as a teacher, to bridge the gap between low income and middle upper income and it seems to be getting bigger. And the policies that you all are making can either contribute, can contribute to that or help contribute to lifting up these kind of neighborhoods that I live in. And the dps partnership and APD, all of us are relieved Eid, because if we hear gunshots outside of our house, if our children are out there petting a cat and we have no one to call if something goes down, we're just in trouble. So thank you guys so much and thank you for your service. I really appreciate y'all on deck. Bill Wallace hey, Brett hodges self for so on March eight, 20, 23, about 30 hours after prop eight passed out, an Austin constituent got himself pulled over by dps on 183, decided to [11:56:49 AM] flee. Dps spiked, strapped him in Round Rock and then he decided it would be a good idea to have a gunfight with dps. He lost that gunfight and rightly so. But what if that discussion had not turned out as clean as it did? What if a trooper had been injured or killed in that engagement that would be very bad. The second and third, fourth order ripple effects of defund the police movement are severe and ongoing. Dps has now clearly demonstrated Eid and practiced what public safety in Austin is supposed to look like on the other hand, the identity justice movement is antithetical to what public safety is supposed to look like. We know that now, by all available rational metrics, dps troopers are doing an exemplary job in a notably suboptimal situation. Thank you. Greg Abbott, for providing that temporary lifeline. Ann and what can only be characterized as a manufactured crisis. There's no doubt what so ever dps has shown us all the right way how to do it. If dps can do it, then APD can do it too. And they will, but only if city council recognizes the reality that dps [11:57:49 AM] did not make this messy situation. And it is not for dps to clean this mess up. The city made this mess in the name of identity, justice, politics. The city must now correct course and time to matter. I have three printed as well. Testaments. I think two are from eight and one are from ten. I only brought two copies. Thank you. Any questions . On deck? Cole Adams. Mayor Watson honorable council. I'm born and raised here in Austin, Texas and seen a lot of changes like everyone else. But I will say this. This listening today to direct the Luciano, I may have pronounced your name wrong. My apologies. No disrespect to hear him talk about what public safety looks like from a standpoint Wright that his officers are only given one [11:58:50 AM] charge, and that's to try to enforce 300 and some odd 400 and some odd offenses that are in the criminal code traffic code to just continuously be hostile, look over black and brown bodies to enforce. That's not that doesn't make that doesn't make for safety. That doesn't make me feel safe. That doesn't make anybody that has to be looked over continuously and hostilely. No, sir. Circumstances, whatever we see, we call it out. That's not safety. It's not safety anywhere. It doesn't make anybody feel good. Eid he talked about setting traps because us people act Wright when they see us setting traps that didn't make us feel good. Safety doesn't look the same for everybody, and building trust is a big thing. I've seen, I believe every last one of you on [11:59:50 AM] this dais during your campaigns or in the community and one thing that I'll give you credit for, mayor Watson, is that you reach across and you try to build trust across lines. That's true. Trust isn't built by hostilely policing, black and brown and poor bodies or unhoused bodies is mental illness. It's citizens in our community. That isn't how you build trust. And so that population of people that are unhoused, that are dealing with mental issues that are black and brown, do not feel safe. And therefore, this partnership needs to end. Thank you for your time. Cole Adams, Thomas camerado. Gen Ramos. Members of [12:00:55 PM] the committee. Good afternoon. Much to the ire of our current mayor. I'm John Ramos, a senior at Texas A&M international university, a resident of district three and a community leader here to speak in strong opposition to the dps roalson partnership as a resident of the Riverside oltorf community for seven years and someone who actually lives in an area of overpolicing by dps, I have never seen so much fear and anxiety by my neighbors, by their presence. It was a regular sighting to see at least two patrol cars for every traffic stop or a patrol car loitering every 500ft without an emergency in sight. It is because of journalists and not dps or the city of Austin that we have learned that 90% of the citations were for black and brown. Austinites, in spite of the fact that we make up less than half of the city's population. Based on what we've heard on the presentation today by dps and the obvious solutions to what's been presented by today's cherry picked data is one, let's not expand I-35 because of the high level of crashes in the area. And two, let's use dps to be dispatchers instead of harassing austinites with traffic tickets in the name of shortening response times rather than focus on an open, solution minded discussion. This [12:01:55 PM] partnership has been started in secrecy, exacerbated by the fact that only five weeks after the fact has law enforcement announced their objectives and goals in this partnership. Through today's public presentation, the person who struck this closed door deal without input from council members, Kirk Watson, has not bothered to hold a town hall or show his face in the council districts that have suffered the most from overpoliced Singh Twitter might not be the solution, mayor, but hiding from constituents is not a solution either. As a constituent and resident of one of the most diverse communities in our city, I'm asking that we please not bring back into our neighborhoods and am more than happy to answer questions about the experiences of living in this area that has been traumatized by this partnership . Thank you for your time, Shane walker on deck. Leland Freeman. Mr. Mr. Mayor, council council. Good morning. My name is Shane walker and I'm the CEO of an organization called greater Austin merchants association. I'm providing comments today on [12:02:55 PM] behalf of our organization, which is a retail and gas association of more than 575 locations, of which 258 are located within the Austin city limits. Overall Austin is a very safe city. Statistically safer than most other large cities. But when we witness our retail business customers, employees being threatened and police response to risk response times taking too long, it does not always feel safe. Our preference is to use only Austin police officers that are trained to patrol the city. But until that can happen, we support augmenting the public safety with other departments such as dps, getting a new four year contract negotiated with Austin police association is vital. Lowering current police response times is important and ensuring the safety of businesses so that they can stay in business as essential. Many of our retailer locations have experienced threatening, frightening types of situations to their customers, employees because of several of the locations are struggling. Because of that. Several of them are struggling to retain their employees at the half because they don't feel [12:03:56 PM] safe. Many have experienced people coming in and taking what they want and just walking out. Some have been quoted to say when they were asked to pay for the goods called the police, they aren't going to come anyway. Both examples are reoccurring regularly and most times we are directed to call 311 and report it. This cannot be how this works. We cannot support our city's businesses and citizens this way. We should, however, feel that we are protected. So let's be one Austin. Together we are safer. Convenience store retailers is an essential business for all. We provide gas for your vehicles , products for those late nights and holidays when everybody else is closed. Products in those times of need like ice storms and water boils and much more. The good work of this council will enable gamma to safely provide goods and services to law abiding consumers. Mr. Mayor and council members, thank you very much for hearing me today. On deck. Creed Staley. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the council that are still at the [12:04:57 PM] meeting and especially to council member Kelly who suggested I would to come and testify to this being I am very much in favor of not only continuing the partnership with dps, but I echo the views that were previously stated by former sheriff Terry Kiel, where I feel that maybe a dps should completely take over APD here in the city. And my sentiments are over. The past a decade there have been numerous crimes, numerous felonies. I have tried to report to APD and they steadfastly refused Luz to take down police reports. Even going so far as stating I should sue the suspect for the evidence before they would be interested in taking down this evidence before even taking a police report. The statistics have shown that where the areas that dps has had patrols, obviously [12:05:58 PM] the crime levels have gone down and as dps director has said, that it is a deterrent to crime . I actually witnessed some incidents happen last night in auditorium shores where an individual was attacking a shower about 50ft to the east of the Stevie ray Vaughan statue and then directly next to him on the bench was a couple that in an act of fornication. I have lived in the city of Austin for 20 years. And when I first moved here to go to the university of Texas, the city I consider to be extremely safe at the time. I don't consider it safe now. And at the very least, continuing the partnership with dps, having the ability for citizens to report crimes maybe directly to dps or the county sheriffs without using the excuse of it's not their jurisdiction, could also be a near term solution to the problem. Thank you. On deck mudaliyar Ben temperley. Hello [12:07:01 PM] mayor. Council members. My name is Craig Staley, one of the owners of royal blue grocery in downtown. We have a unique perspective on the crime in the city with six stores in the downtown area, many of them open 17 hours a day. I can tell you that the crime level going on in our stores over the past couple of years has just gone through the roof. We're having a hard time keeping our staffs, staff safe and we're at the point now where there's a crime committed in one of our stores every day. This partnership is vital to getting us through the shortages in APD staffing. That's probably going to go on for years. And I urge you to codify this partnership long term Ann and if I may request that resources are directed toward downtown Ann the perception of safety in downtown is not there for the call. Times are too long and we don't have the policing that we used to have from APD, and I think dps could be a vital part of that [12:08:04 PM] and in keeping our city safe, it's the perception that they would provide. That's all. Thank you. Wic Dasgupta. Ken Smith on deck. Susan Ann almaza. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. City council officers by all means. And I applaud the city council people who have been looking into the statistics because statistics can be misleading. I want to say that I appreciate the dps and the APD. I think they do a great job. I think the fact that they are using a visual deterrence in my hotels is exactly what we always look for when we're looking at the problems of the city. You know, one of one of the comments that was most distressed is that we have less recruits and more turnover. And if that's the case, we are in dire straits because that's going to be very important for [12:09:05 PM] the future. I I've lived here for 15 years. I used to live in San Francisco when it was a great community. Now you have guns, gangs running rampant. You have apps that show you where the feces and the needles are. And I'm afraid that Austin may be on that same road. We all want to have a safe city, and there's nothing inevitable at our future of the city. There are ways to predict the future, not to create. And that's where you all come in. We can talk about all the defunding of the police, the governor's involvement. We can talk about dps, but the facts are we are in the city right now and we need to figure out how do we stop the crime. And that's the most important part. Regarding the targeting that somebody mentioned, I just want to I just want to mention a great man, almost 60 years ago to the date which that someday our nation will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And I still believe in that dream. I applaud you for at least getting into this, working hard for it. If you have a chance, talk to the patrol officers. It's one thing to talk to the department heads and to the people who are [12:10:05 PM] in charge, but talk to the people on the line, talk to the da's attorneys, talk to the dps officers themselves and see how they feel about that. Thank you very much for your time. On deck. Carlos pinon good afternoon. Mayor city council members. I'm Susana Almanza and I've been a native of Austin for over 70 years. This partnership was implemented without community or council involvement and is anti- democratic. This partnership is being executed without any mutual agreement upon no variable guarantees. We want the racial profiling to stop, and we want this partnership to start to stop the institute for predictive analytics in criminal justice at Tarleton state university has published an addendum to its annual report regarding racial profiling data, and this is a review of dps racial profiling [12:11:07 PM] data found stops. Hispanics were more likely than whites to be stopped. Searches hispanics were more likely to be searched. Hispanics were searched at a rate of 5.4% more than whites. And at a rate whites had a rate of 4.1. Ken Sargent searches. Hispanics were more likely to be to experience a consent surge of all searches conducted by dps. Only 19.5% of searches of whites were consent searches, whereas a staggering 32.1% of hispanic searches were consent searches. This finding is significant because consent searches are discretion. Sherry contraband Driskill. Qadri. Hispanic searches were less likely than white searches to result in discovery of contraband. Eid. Only 28.5% of hispanic searches resulted in contraband, compared to 39 point. 39.6% of white searches. Racial profiling. These findings indicate the possibility that Texas [12:12:09 PM] department of public safety dps may be racially profiling hispanics and that's no doubt of what is happening in our communities. When we look at all of their statistics that they produce from 2021, 22 and 23, it shows that people of color were most likely stopped and pulled over than any other ethnicity in this city. And they try feel insulted. They try to justify it. Thank you so much on deck, Adrian Macias. Oh, sorry. Good afternoon. Council members. Good afternoon, mayor. My name is Carlos pinion and I'm with Brodie and I'm basically here to just echo the sentiments that have been gathered by people against the partnership over the last month. This partnership intended to decrease crime, traffic related injuries and fatalities and emergency call response times. But it appears to me that dps troopers had different priorities and that is affected mass traffic stops with [12:13:09 PM] the intention to bring people into Austin's criminal legal system invaded homeless encampments and cited and arrested people for minor offenses that were no threat to public safety of course, this affected Austin's black and brown communities most the incessant surveillance and policing of black and brown people by dps officers has racist origins as historically we know, black and brown people have been the primary targets of overpolicing and police brutality. The harm done over time has then yielded exorbitant amounts of trauma in communities of color who already experience hardships because of structural, social and economic factors that I think you should redirect the energy you have for this partnership toward Eid. Instead of turning to a stunt like this, a clear commitment to reproducing harm in all the communities you're meant to serve, why wouldn't you invest in them and address the root causes of the issues you want to solve by implementing non punitive alternatives that can achieve the same things you wanted in pursuing this partnership, why devote yourself to making things onerous and wearisome by introducing more police into Austin's communities and instilling fear in them? When you have the resources and [12:14:10 PM] position to lessen suffering and imagine ways to move away from harm. So yeah, that's basically all I want to say. Please reconsider resuming this partnership with dps and end it promptly. Thank you. On deck, Valerie Menard. Good morning, mayor. City council members. My name is Adrian Macias. As we know, mayor Cagle Austin, Texas. Governor Abbott and lieutenant governor Patrick Dan Patrick released a partnership with dps troopers. But with our partnership as a community, there was no public announcement with the Travis county. No public announcement with the Austin courts and no public announcement to the communities . With this partnership being in full effect. But it's left many black and brown communities fearful and just not having like [12:15:10 PM] the safety as we wanted is reported just in a few weeks at 12,000 stops have been reported in ever since the dps troopers have been around the communities , which is before more dps were around, only 17,000 stops were have been nearly. People are scared to leave their homes and worried that they're going to be bullied by the higher authorities. As the dps. So I'm asking to hear our voices to the councils and mayors that we stop this partnership. Thank you. On deck. Jordan palmer good morning, mayor. Council members , thanks again for giving us this opportunity to speak and I am a project director with Beaudette as well. I actually live in district one, so actually I have to say I didn't see as many dps in my district, [12:16:11 PM] but we had a press conference at the corner of Riverside and montopolis. This was with other community justice leaders Luz and Beaudette. And in that one hour time I counted 16 dps vehicles on the on Riverside going by. And we also found counted for stops. And although our dps reps said that they're just going to do the follow their their routine or their program for who they stop and why they stop people mainly for speeding. That's what we saw were people being stopped and held and questioned for 30 to 40 minutes. So I don't know if it takes that long to give a ticket for speeding, but we also have anecdotal evidence from other residents of the neighborhood that had the same experience. They weren't just stopped. They were accused of this or that. And one of the officer couldn't find something to charge them with. The questions kept coming and finally they were let go. So [12:17:12 PM] it's this is this is not just your basic police Singh. And so we I'm opposed and we are opposed to continuing this partnership, not because we don't want to be we don't want to be safe, but because we don't feel that the dps well, what they do on the highways is appreciate and we need them on the highways and that's great, but we don't think they belong in neighborhoods. Not certainly if they're going to be overwhelmingly visible in neighborhoods of color where they're overwhelmingly issuing tickets, 70% when we're only 35% of the of the of the population in our communities were disrupted and traumatized. We know at least one family that was separated Eid with a father being deported, referred to ice. So when you were compiling these statistics, we do want to see that as well. Please get a statistic of how many ice referrals were made. Thank you. On deck. Shanadoo. Takala. Good afternoon. Mayor and council [12:18:13 PM] members. My name is Jordan and I'm a member of polgar and represented on their behalf. I understand that safety and decriminalization is the goal here, but I don't think it's right to put fear into these brown and black communities with constant surveillance. Threat of citation, search or arrests along with violence and deportation, dps troopers have conducted mass pretext traffic stops trying to find any reason for to bring people into the criminal legal system sweeping the homeless camps, ticketing unhoused austinites. It's and also citing and arresting people for minor offenses that have no threat to public safety because of this, it has resulted in tremendous fear into these communities. And I ask you to please do not continue this partnership with dps. Thank you for your time. Pedro Hernandez, Jr. Good afternoon, mayor and [12:19:25 PM] council members. My name is Pedro Hernandez and I'm with polgar and I also am a member of the metropolis neighborhood association. I'm the chair for Vasquez fields neighborhood association, and I am here to oppose the partnership and I would like to say that going back to the press conference that we had, again, there were I counted 14 dps officers. And again, for being stopped and ticketed or something of that nature. 14 within that press conference was very unnecessary. They could have been in those other neighborhoods where people are needing their those people, the protection that they that they're asking for. I also work with the homeless community. People were being pulled over on their bikes. How is that necessary? What is the reason for that? Nothing so I just like to say that I do oppose that. The partnership with the dps and APD. Thank you. Scott fleck. [12:20:35 PM] Cynthia Simmons. Good morning, council members. My name is Cynthia Simmons and I am the director of women's justice at the Texas center for justice and equity. So part of my role I am a policy analyst, and I'm here to tell you that this is a bad policy and it will be my recommendation Ann for you to end the partnership between dps and Travis county. The structural inequities that are in place, the systemic racism that has existed in Texas history, in Austin, the overpolicing Singh of marginalized communities is really what is the problem that's driving the force for criminalization and poverty. And those are the things that have to be addressed by bringing a more police presence to areas [12:21:35 PM] where there is already discord and discontent between the police and between the community members is not healing anything and it's not making anything better. The data shows that there's more crime because those areas are oversaturated with police and because they are looking for that and that's what they wanted to mimic. So that they can uplift this narrative that there is more crime there. There are other alternatives to sentencing and overpolicing. These communities that would be better solutions. There is categorically the black single mom has the highest likelihood to be incarcerated, but yet she has the lowest likelihood to receive services. These are the things that should be addressed if we really want to create safer and healthier communities. Oversaturating our communities where black and brown people are not safe as the mother of a black son, I have to fear if my son, depending on what he wears or what his hair looks like, if he's going to be harassed or if he may not make it home, that's [12:22:37 PM] not fair to communities of color . And to say that this is not racist when 90% of the people who are being ticketed are people of color is illogical and irrational, it's absolutely racist. And it's absolutely a result of the systemic racism and structural inequities that have always existed. And if we want to move toward safer communities, we have to address the mitigating factors that got us to this point. Thank you. Madam vice chair. That concludes all of our speakers. Thank you very much. Colleagues, do you have anything that you'd like to add? Okay well, with the chair, mayor Watson off the dais as the vice chair, I. Mckenzie council member Mckenzie Kelly will adjourn the special called public safety meeting at 12:33 P.M. Thank you again to everyone who came today to give your feedback.