by Daryl Slusher | Jul 7, 2023 | Police
(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
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
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
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
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, 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, 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...
by Daryl Slusher | Oct 6, 2021 | Police, Prop A November 2021
As the election nears on Prop A — a petition driven measure on the November 2 ballot which would require Austin to have 2.0 police officers per 1,000 people — the Prop A campaign is reassuring citizens that their measure would only raise the City budget by a tiny...
by Daryl Slusher | May 13, 2021 | Police, Texas Legislature
One thing that the Prop B results exposed was that there is a lot of unoccupied ground in the political middle. By that I specifically mean between the majority of citizens and the Austin City Council, and often between the majority of citizens and the more active and...
by Daryl Slusher | Apr 23, 2021 | Police, True Stories
Let’s start by checking in on Governor Greg Abbott, who we haven’t discussed in a while. Abbott is actually an Austin voter and he took time after voting early on Tuesday April 20 to tell waiting media that he voted for Proposition B. That is the proposed reversal of...
