by Daryl Slusher | Feb 1, 2024 | District Attorney Race, Police and Public Safety
In our last story I wrote that Council Members and others who opposed the appointment of former Police Chief Art Acevedo as an Assistant City Manager may have had more reasons than they let on to condemn Acevedo. But, I added, “none of them ever let someone convicted...
by Daryl Slusher | Jan 25, 2024 | City Council 2024, Police and Public Safety
Art Acevedo’s return to Austin City government was over before it started. That’s literally true. Last Wednesday there were media reports that Acevedo was leaving his post as Interim Police Chief in Aurora, Colorado to return to Texas. Mysteriously there was no...
by Daryl Slusher | Jan 17, 2024 | Police and Public Safety
Happy New Year and thanks to readers for bearing with us while we took a few weeks off. I was working on several stories to begin the new year, and we’ll get to those. But, that was before the machete attack on the young man near Auditorium Shores. So that will be our... by Daryl Slusher | Jul 7, 2023 | Police and Public Safety
(Wednesday I posted a story about the Statesman’s coverage, or lack thereof, of the May 22 public hearing on the partnership between the Austin Police Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety. I recommend reading that one before reading Part 2 below, but...
by Daryl Slusher | Jul 5, 2023 | Police and Public Safety
It has been a few weeks since the Independent published and so there’s a lot of catching up to do. One thing that happened is that the Austin Police Department (APD) partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) is back on, as of July 2. The initial...
by Daryl Slusher | Apr 17, 2023 | City Council 2023, Police and Public Safety
Some very preliminary results are in from the deployment of DPS (Texas Department of Public Safety) troopers in Austin to help the understaffed Austin Police Department (APD). Data on the first week of the partnership runs contrary to the longtime assertions of police...
by Daryl Slusher | Feb 2, 2023 | City Council 2023, Land Development Code/Zoning, Police and Public Safety
Austin housing prices have made the national news in a new way recently, but there has been a paucity of local coverage about it. According to multiple national media outlets, the financial giant Goldman Sachs predicted that Austin will be one of four metropolitan... by Daryl Slusher | Nov 4, 2021 | Austin Elections, Police and Public Safety
Austin voters stepped up and pulled City government back from the brink on Tuesday (and in early voting) with a sound trouncing of Prop A, 68% against. Prop A was the petition driven proposition from Save Austin Now to require Austin to have two police officers per...
by Daryl Slusher | Oct 18, 2021 | Police and Public Safety, Prop A November 2021
In yesterday’s installment we looked at whether the Prop A election — Save Austin Now’s petition driven referendum on whether to require two cops per 1,000 residents — will more closely resemble May’s election on the reinstatement of the camping ban (Prop B) or or the...
by Daryl Slusher | Oct 17, 2021 | Police and Public Safety, Prop A November 2021
For anyone wanting to assess the possibilities in the upcoming Prop A election, studying the results from the May 2021 municipal election is a good place to start. Prop A is the costly, high stakes, petition driven referendum on whether to require two cops per 1,000...
