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Police Refunding Petition Makes Ballot To Fight Austin Crime Surge

Tuesday, July 20th, 2021

Just as they did with the homeless camping ordinance, Save Austin Now says they have enough signatures on their petition to restore police funding to make the ballot in November:

“107 days from now, we are going to have an overwhelming victory,” Matt Mackowiak, co-founder of the activist group Save Austin Now and Travis County GOP chair said while announcing the group’s collection of over 25,600 signatures to restore Austin Police Department’s (APD) funding.

The group was joined by representatives from the Austin Police Association, Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas, Texas Municipal Police Association, Texas Police Association, and the Austin Police Retired Officers Association (APROA).

Nearly a year after the Austin City Council approved a $150 million APD budget cut and redirection, it appears likely its restoration is well on the way toward this November’s ballot. The group says every petition has been validated by themselves and expects a validity rate close to their mid-90s percentage for the homeless petition effort.

While it fell short of the goal to collect 50,000 signatures in 50 days, only 20,000 is needed to secure a spot on this November’s ballot. Additionally, Mackowiak noted in a Monday press conference that 40 percent of the petitions sent in for this effort were from citizens that did not sign a petition for the camping ban reinstatement.

Save Austin Now announced the effort in late May, not even a month after the group’s resounding success at the ballot box to reinstate the public camping ban.

The APD-related petition effort does a handful of things:

  • Mandate a minimum staffing level of 2.0 officers per 1,000 residents
  • Establish a minimum 35 percent community response time standard
  • Require 40 additional hours of training
  • Oblige the mayor, city council, and city staff to enroll in the Citizens Police Academy
  • Facilitate minority officer hiring through foreign language proficiency metrics

    • “Our ballot measure ensures that the Austin Police Department is not solely subject to the [city council,]” said Save Austin Now co-founder Cleo Petricek, a mother and Democrat.

    APD currently has over 160 patrol vacancies and is 390 officers short of an adequate staffing level — widely considered two officers per 1,000 residents. APD is currently at 1.2 officers per 1,000 residents, according to department figures.

    The petition is extremely timely considered that almost every indicator shows everything getting worse post-defunding:

    Last year, the Democrat-run Austin City Council, urged by local anti-law enforcement activist groups, defunded the Austin Police Department by a whopping one-third ($150 million). Since then, APD has been forced to disband multiple units (including DWI, family violence safety and stalking, and criminal interdiction), cancel multiple cadet classes, and watch a growing wave of officers leave the force.

    On the streets, [APD Interim Chief Joseph] Chacon said 911 response times are “dramatically” slower, and violent crime has already surged to record numbers in 2021.

    “We’ve never really seen [that level] here before,” he said, referring to the rising number of homicides.

    Chacon said the department is losing 15-20 officers a month, and their understaffing is “not sustainable.” He projected 235 vacancies by May 2022 and 340 by May 2023.

    And make no mistake about it: The budget cuts are the main reason police are leaving the force:

    “Holly Pilsner” is the pseudonym she has used on Facebook for years. She didn’t want to use her real name for this story. She wrote a public post, after she turned in her badge, calling out the $20 million cut to the APD budget and the tense politics around it.

    “I think we all feel eviscerated to be honest with you,” she said. “We do love our community.”

    Pilsner was on patrol for seven years in northwest Austin before moving to the risk-management unit.

    She says she started thinking about leaving the force last summer — claiming the protests were different than they were portrayed. “Everything was a peaceful protest, peaceful peaceful — it wasn’t peaceful,” she said.

    Meantime, the department is feeling the squeeze. Some units have been shut down. Just last week, officers at the scene of a deadly shooting told us they’re having a hard time responding to Austin’s surge in violent crime.

    And things just keep getting worse:

    Another big driver of higher crime rates is radical, George Soros-backed Travis County Jose Garza, who seems to see his job as keeping criminals on the streets of Austin:

    Garza seeks to end the prosecution of crimes: “As you know, on March 1st we implemented a bail policy that asked our prosecutors to ensure that no one is in jail simply because they cannot afford to get out. Our policy prioritizes the safety of our community and our prosecutors have been working hard to re-evaluate open cases according to that community safety framework instead of a wealth-based system.”

    Instead of handcuffing criminals, Garza is handcuffing the prosecutorial process and Lady Justice herself. Garza is inline with a national effort to cripple his department’s prosecutorial ability in advancing a radical ideology that’s focused on completely redesigning the city’s – and the nation’s – criminal justice system. This dangerous reality is also being peddled by a new brand of Bernie-endorsed Democrats across the country.

    As far as Garza is concerned, police and crime victims don’t count at all:

    On March 15, 2021, about two months into his tenure, Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza (D) issued a secret standing order regarding the handling of felony cases in the county. It went into effect immediately…

    Garza’s standing order opens with “In the interest of justice and fairness for all persons arrested for felony crimes,” never mentioning crime victims. In fact, the secret order fails to mention victims of crime even one time. It is solely focused on the DA’s power to decline to prosecute arrestees, and what it demands the Travis County Sheriff’s Office should then do when Garza’s office declines prosecution.

    Snip.

    I spoke with Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT), about this Tuesday morning. The easy-going Wilkison was livid about the order and told me that law enforcement officers have already seen its effects. They are seeing suspects they take in on felony charges released so quickly, per Garza’s order, that they are back on the streets before officers even return to their precincts. This indicates the DA office’s review may not be very thorough. He noted that homicides are up more than 50%. Northwest Austin suffered yet another fatal shooting Monday night, pushing homicides up near 50 for the year.

    DA Garza’s tenure has already come under scrutiny multiple times since he took office in January 2021. Crime is skyrocketing on his watch, while he has openly prioritized prosecuting cops on cold cases that have already been investigated. He has set up a catch and release system that put an 8-time felon back on the streets, where he perpetrated a 10-day armed robbery spree and led law enforcement on a chase from just outside Houston into Austin. More recently, an assistant prosecutor quit the office, claiming Assistant District Attorney Trudy Strassburger ordered her to delete evidence from case files. The Austin Police Association has called for an investigation into this disturbing case. If the name in that case rings a bell, Strassburger is the same assistant district attorney who solicited for lawyers who want to prosecute police officers to apply for work with the Travis County DA’s office. The Travis County district attorney’s priorities are more than clear with Garza at the helm: ignore crime victims, hastily release felons and accused felons, and prosecute police officers.

    And he just hired former Hayes County Judge Millie Thompson, who was crazy she had to resign after four months, for the “Civil Rights Division” (AKA, to prosecute police).

    The Travis County DA’s office doesn’t seem to hire the best:

    Mayor Steve Adler is, as usual, nowhere to be found:

    Crime is spiking hard in Democrat-run cities across the country, many of which defunded their police and then proceeded to demoralize them. Austin is not only not an exception to this, it led the way with one of the nation’s largest defuding efforts. Adler led the city council to gut the police budget by about $150 million, a third of its budget. The cuts included key community policing and intelligence units.

    What on earth did he expect would happen when he led defunding of the city’s police? Why hasn’t anyone in the mainstream media asked him how he expected defunding to play out, versus what’s actually happened?

    Why don’t the anchors ask him about a) defunding, and b) the consequences of defunding?

    The usual idiots, of course, are shocked at the very idea of adequately funding police:

    As previously documented, the hard left wants to keep police defunded so they can get their fingers on as much money and power as they possibly can.

    Austin’s leftwing citizens finally woke up enough to vote for proposition B in May. Let’s hope they do they same to restore police funding in November.

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats | 2 Comments »

    Sixth Street Shooting Shows Austin’s Continuing Slide Into Lawlessness

    Sunday, June 13th, 2021

    If you live outside Austin, you may be unaware that at least 13 people were injured in a shooting in downtown Austin early Saturday morning since none of the victims died:

    During a briefing Saturday morning, Interim Police Chief Joseph Chacon said the shooting happened at 400 E. 6th Street, which is near Trinity Street. There are many bars in the area. The initial 911 call about shots fired came in at about 1:24 a.m.

    Chacon said 11 people are now receiving treatment at one hospital, while one victim went to a separate hospital and another received treatment at an emergency room. There are no deaths to report at this time.

    Two of these patients are in critical condition, according to Chacon.

    Police said they are still searching for the suspected gunman. Chacon could only share a vague description at this time. He said the suspect may be a Black man with a “skinny” build and locs-style hair. A motive for the shooting is not yet known.

    “Locs-style” evidently means “dreadlocks.” I was previously unaware of this new linguistic usage.

    “Skinny black guy with dreadlocks” would seem to be a specific enough description for police to start interviewing possible suspects, but not for the social justice-infected partisans at the Austin American-Statesman:

    Translation: “We don’t want to tell you the shooter is black.” Despite their efforts, one suspect is in custody.

    Back in 2019, I noted that Sixth Street (long known as Austin’s nightlife bar row) had gotten so dangerous that there’s a YouTube channel dedicated to Sixth Street brawls. (I’d provide a sample, but they’re non-embedable.)

    This is just yet another example of Austin’s long slide into disorder and lawlessness engendered by the policies of Mayor Steve Adler, Austin City Councilman Greg Casar⁩ ⁦and his fellow travelers, and Travis County DA Jose Garza, who inflict this chaos on law-abiding Austin citizens while stripping away the Austin Police Department capability to maintain order.

    Austinites are suffering through a crime wave because the hard left Democrats in charge of the city have inflicted policies designed to increase crime in the name of “Social Justice.”

    Update: One of the shooting victims has died. “Police identified the victim Sunday as 25-year-old Douglas John Kantor.”

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors | 4 Comments »

    Austin Voters Reject Bumsville

    Sunday, May 2nd, 2021

    You expect Austin voters to embrace crazy leftwing policies, but turning every grassy median and underpass in the city into a garbage-strewn 24/7 amusement park for drug-addicted transients (with side order of arson and mayhem) was too much even for them, and yesterday they reinstated the camping ban. Proposition B passed 85,830 (57.13%) to 64,409 (42.87%). It’s a grave blow to Austin Mayor Steve Adler, City Councilman Greg Casar, the homeless industrial complex, and a number of random drug dealers.

    Other May 1st Voting results:

  • Proposition F, which would turn Austin in a “strong mayor” form of government (i.e., let Adler control spending more directly instead of a City Manager) was overwhelmingly defeated, 126,847 (85.91%) to 20,810 (14.09%).
  • Proposition G (adding another city council district) was defeated more narrowly, 83,092 (56.58%) to 62,702 (43.42%).
  • Proposition H, to give every voter two $25 vouchers to contribute to political campaigns (i.e., another way to pass taxpayer money to leftwing politicians) was defeated 83,092 to 63,809.
  • All the other propositions passed, including Proposition E (ranked choice voting), which is illegal under Texas law.
  • In the special election for the U.S. 6th Congressional District, Republicans Susan Wright and Jake Ellzey head to a runoff, guaranteeing that the seat will stay in Republican hands. Carpetbagger Dan Rodimer finished with a dismal 2,086 votes, or 2.66% of the total, good for 10th place.

    • Some Twitter reactions:

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Texas | 3 Comments »

    Austin T Minus 2 Update

    Thursday, April 29th, 2021

    Two days from now, Austin voters will go to the polls to decide the fate of reinstating the camping ban, along with a number of other proposals. (Cheat sheet: Vote for Proposition B and against everything else.) So here’s an update on Austin news in advance of the election.

  • Austin crime has exploded, and it’s all due to the feckless actions of leftwing politicians:

    Three members of the Austin City Council (AKA local control/city government) politicians are guilty of promoting the crime-enabling policies not unique to Austin. Mayor Steve Adler, Greg Casar, and Natasha Harper-Madison are the main culprits who expedited this radical shift away from public safety. Mayor Steve Adler has shown a careless lack of leadership on the issue, most notably during the Summer 2020 city-wide riots. Greg Casar has used the issue to push his Marxist values. Natasha Harper-Madison has exploited the safety of Austin citizens in order to promote her racism and perpetual victim ideologies. History will judge the actions of these three local partisan politicians poorly. How long are Austin citizens going to continue to sit back while these three continue their radical progressive experiment to the detriment of the city?

    Austin was one of the most sought-after, safest cities, but in 2020, there was an increase in murders by 50% from the previous year. Currently in 2021, there have been a whopping 21 murders to date. Austin is well on its way to breaking last year’s record number of murders.

    Also, this is a pretty sobering chart:

  • Paul Martin on factors driving crime increases in Austin:

    First, our police department is losing officers. The latest information can be found here, but here’s a summary for the TL;DR crowd:

    Last year, the Austin Police Department lost about eleven officers per month through resignations and retirements. In the first four months of this fiscal year, the police department has already lost an average of fifteen officers per month. The department will have more than seventy-five vacancies by the end of January, in addition to positions previously cut from the budget.

    (emphasis original)

    Fewer officers in a city with a growing population means fewer officers per citizen. This means increased response times for even high priority calls. Increased response times mean less policing and thus less deterrence to crime.

    The second component to this is the new policy in the Travis County District Attorney’s office under which the D.A. “will present all use-of-force cases [of law enforcement] to grand juries that involve deaths or serious injuries.” In other words, any time a citizen is injured during an arrest, the arresting officer runs the risk of being subjected to the grand jury process. The concern here is that officers will be less likely to use force moving forward. Violent criminals know this, and they know the officer will be reluctant to use force to take them into custody.

  • Matt Mackowiak makes the case for reinstating the camping ban:

    1) The homeless community has exploded, from around 2,500 to what I estimate to be 5,000 now, although according to Austonia a report commissioned by consultants for the city recently put the estimate at 10,000.

    2) Homeless fires are on track to double last year’s all-time record (to 503), endangering homeless Austinites and their personal property and our courageous firefighters.

    3) City parks are being destroyed all over the city, despite the fact that the camping ordinance specifically exempts parks from legal camping.

    4) Every single major highway intersection is worse today, and this is especially visible on Hwy. 183 and Hwy. 71, as well as on IH-35.

    5) Public safety in Austin is at the worst I can ever remember (I arrived in Austin in 1984), with our homicide rate set to double this year (after last year’s all-time record), and regular violent attacks by homeless individuals happening almost daily at this point. A quick review of the Citizen app will cause you to lose sleep at night.

    6) Public health in our city is far worse today than it would be without the ordinance, as the city had no plan for the human and physical waste created by camping, and we regularly see human feces, drug needles and other waste at encampments across the city.

    7) Tourism has taken a direct hit. Major hotels are losing conferences, visitors are shocked to see what’s become of Austin, and the related economic effect on the hospitality and service industries has been profound.

  • Austin’s homeless policies have made the problem worse:

    What is happening in Austin is nothing short of a humanitarian crisis. It threatens the health and safety of the community, and in particular of those struggling with homelessness.

    According to pre-COVID-19 data released in late March by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the number of Austin’s unsheltered population—those who live in makeshift tents around the city—has risen a staggering 93% since 2016.

    The Austin metro area represents 7% of the overall population of Texas, but about 25% of Texas’ unsheltered population today resides on its streets today.

    Snip.

    It is important to understand the origin of Austin’s homelessness surge. In 2013, HUD rolled out a one-size-fits-all homelessness policy, called Housing First, with spotty evidence of efficacy. Their “solution” to homelessness? Provide life-long, “no strings attached” housing—no requirement of sobriety, no work requirement, no requirement to access services to change the behaviors that led to homelessness. Austin’s elected officials took the bait—hook, line, and sinker.

    HUD promised the Housing First approach would end homelessness in a decade. Instead, it resulted in an over 16% increase across the nation, including a 21% increase in the “unsheltered” population—ironically, the population for which this approach was originally designed.

    Because Austin elected officials chose to follow HUD down an uncharted rabbit hole, Austin has experienced the same disastrous results, indeed the same disastrous results California has seen since it adopted Housing First in 2016—a stunning 37% increase in homelessness.

  • Could the Austin police department animal units be defunded?

    Austin’s Reimagining Public Safety Task Force recommended in a work session Wednesday the idea of doing away with several police units in the next budget cycle. It suggests reallocating the money for other needs.

    Two of the units one workgroup focused on are those that involve animals — APD’s Mounted Patrol and K9 Units.

    “There are many tools police have. These happen to be very costly,” said Kathy Mitchell, chair of the workgroup that made the recommendations.

    The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force estimates that APD’s Mounted Patrol and K9 units collectively cost the city nearly $5.5 million a year.

    The real reason, of course is that the hard-left “Reimagining Public Safety Task Force” hates the police and wants to free up that money for left-wing crony graft. Plus they hate those units because they’re effective and provide good publicity for APD. Plus the mounted police are particularly good at breaking up riots before they start, which the #antifa/#BlackLivesMatter loving Austin left all but encourages.

  • Austin criminals are getting bolder:

  • Austin city government may finally be letting APD graduate a cadet class, but they’re changing training to “increase community engagement and involve citizen groups in the cadet training process,” which I’m pretty sure are codewords for cramming leftwing indoctrination into the curriculum.
  • More evidence of what Adler and the city council have brought to Austin:

  • It looks like conventions are returning post Mao Tse Lung, but a lot fewer groups want to have their conventions in Austin now that it’s turned into bumsville:

  • Speaking of conventions: Austin voters properly kicked leftwing City Councilman Jimmy Flannigan to the curb in 2020. Surprise! Right after his defeat, Flannigan landed a cushy $140,000 job with “Austin Convention Enterprises, or ACE, [a] public facilities corporation that was created by the city to own, finance and operate the downtown Hilton.” Evidently once you’re a corrupt leftwing insider, you get cushy sinicures carved out for you to keep you on the government teat no matter what voters think… (Hat tip: Adam Loewy.)
  • Steve Adler, liar:

  • Lots of Austin restaurants are bailing on downtown:

    “In downtown, we depend on foot traffic and vehicle traffic driven primarily by visitors, hotel guests, conventioneers and locals who want to bar hop,” [B.D. Riley’s Irish Pub] co-owner Steve Basile said. “There was no path that we could draw that was anywhere more optimistic than 10 or 12 months of financial loss before downtown began to see the things that made downtown what it was pre-pandemic.”

    Convention-less. Festival-less. Tourism-less. In downtown Austin, the pandemic has taken the regular menu of revenue drivers off the table, and the public health risks now attached to large, in-person gatherings and out-of-town travel have placed a particular burden on small businesses in the city’s central business district bound by Lamar Boulevard, I-35, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Lady Bird Lake.

    The drain has made the math especially difficult for restaurants and bars, where bottom lines also depend on a now-dissipated office workforce, and smaller real estate footprints exacerbate the impact of social distancing rules. According to Community Impact Newspaper’s tracking of business closures, at least 10 locally owned restaurants and bars have permanently pulled out of downtown since August but, like B.D. Riley’s, have maintained business operations in other parts of the city. Their reasons signal a pessimism about the pace of recovery in the city’s center.

  • Proposition E wants to move to ranked voting (which is illegal under Texas law anyway). Here’s why it’s a bad idea.
  • Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell speaks out against the Wilco homeless hotel”

  • A montage of Adler’s Austin:

  • First-hand evidence of sex trafficking among the Adlervilles, and how no government entity would help:

  • Truth:

  • Some numbers:

  • Your city government in action: “Nobody knew how to restore power at Ullrich Water Treatment Plant during the freeze.”

    On a normal day, Ullrich Water Treatment Plant produces roughly half of Austin’s drinkable water and is crucial to keeping the city’s water system functioning.

    State regulations require the plant to either have access to a backup power source or a substantial amount of water reserves in case the plant sees an unexpected shutdown. Ullrich has both.

    So when a tree limb fell on an electric line leading to a substation that powered Austin’s largest water treatment plant on Feb. 17, backups should have snapped into place to keep power running and water production churning.

    But there was a problem: Nobody on site knew how to operate a 52-year-old gear switch that would have restored power to the plant.

    And so Ullrich Water Treatment Plant went dark for three hours in the middle of the worst winter storm to strike Central Texas in decades. It cut off roughly half of the city’s potable water production and deepened the winter weather crisis that at that moment had thousands shivering without electricity in their homes.

  • Hey, remember Mellow Johnny’s, the Austin bike shop that announced they would no longer sell bikes to APD? Well, guess which bike shop was recently burglarized?

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    Posted in Austin, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Waste and Fraud | 12 Comments »

    Reinstatement of Austin Camping Ban Makes May 1 Ballot

    Thursday, February 4th, 2021

    A tiny bit of good news in a sea of gloom: The petition to restore the camping ban has been garnered enough signatures to be placed on the May 1 ballot:

    A group’s petition to reinstate Austin’s camping ban will appear on the May ballot after the city clerk certified enough signatures.

    The Office of the City Clerk confirmed Thursday the petition submitted by Save Austin Now met the minimum requirement of 20,000 verified signatures to put it before voters. This is the second time Save Austin Now has attempted to bring this issue to the ballot, the first time they gathered signatures during the summer of 2020, the city’s analysis indicated the group did not gather enough valid signatures to do so.

    A city spokesperson told KXAN that the City Council will now have to decide whether to adopt the ordinance changes as written in the petition, or call an election for May 1. The council has until Feb. 12 to make this decision, and there is expected to be a special meeting to discuss these issues on Feb. 9.

    Up to this point, Save Austin Now has identified as an educational nonprofit and is led by Matt Mackowiak (the chair of the Republican Party for Travis County) and Cleo Petricek, who has been vocal about her opposition to the city’s recent policies related to homelessness. The Save Austin Now website notes its leadership includes Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday, president of UT safety group SafeHorns Joell McNew, and former Austin City Council Member Ora Houston. Now that this measure will be going before voters, Save Austin Now will have to register as a Political Action Committee with the city to handle activities for the election.

    It’s good that they finally got enough signatures to exceed the threshold of fraud.

    An Austin City Council who respected common sense and the will of citizens would go ahead and reinstate the camping ban, so that will never happen. Instead expect a vicious campaign from Mayor Steve Adler, Austin City Councilman Greg Casar and the other advocates of the Homeless Industrial Complex to smear those backing reinstatement of the ban as “white supremacists” (the reflexive go-to smear for the hard left in 2021) and wanting homeless people to die.

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    Posted in Austin, Texas | 3 Comments »

    Austin Update For January 17, 2021

    Sunday, January 17th, 2021

    Austin news has been accumulating in heaps in drifts like trash strewn from a homeless encampment in a public park. So let’s grab a shovel:

  • First up: the case of the missing $6 million:

    More than $6 million in taxpayer money flowed to Austin nonprofits affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but taxpayers might never learn the identities of the organizations that got the money or get a chance to dig into their stated need for assistance.

    Citing a little-known state law that government transparency experts are only now learning exists, the city has refused to turn over a list of the 365 nonprofits that were granted the funds.

    The $6 million was funneled through the city from the federal government and distributed out of the Austin Nonprofit and Civic Health Organizations Relief fund, more commonly known as the ANCHOR fund.

    On Oct. 19, the American-Statesman requested a list from the city of the fund’s award recipients. On Nov. 16, the city denied the newspaper’s request, saying in a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that it thought the information was exempt from public disclosure and requested that Paxton’s office affirm that determination.

    The law invoked by the city’s legal department, House Bill 3175, went on the books after the 2019 Texas legislative session.

    Filed by state Rep. Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont, the bill made confidential the name and other identifying information of individuals and businesses that apply for state or federal disaster recovery funds. The definition of disaster, as spelled out in the law, includes such things as floods, earthquakes and hostile military action. It also includes epidemics, such as the COVID-19 crisis.

    The disclosure of federal relief dollars is not exempted from public records if the money is awarded by the federal government. For example, news organizations, including the Statesman, have obtained through public records the names of businesses that received financial assistance through the federal Paycheck Protection Program.

    But under the new state law, Austin was able to withhold the identities of businesses that received assistance from the ANCHOR fund because the money, although originally from the federal government, went to the city before it was distributed to the nonprofits.

    I just naturally assume the money was handed out as graft to members of the Homeless Industrial Complex, Greg Casar’s leftwing cronies, and various antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riot instigators (I’m sure there’s a lot of overlap between those categories).

  • Speaking of the homeless, Austin’s homeless situation continues to get even more out-of-hand. “It’s not uncommon to walk out the door and find a pile of human feces on the patio behind us.”
  • A close, personal look at the problem:

  • If you live in Austin, you have until tomorrow (Monday, January 18) to sign the petition to reinstate the homeless camping ban. Go here to sign the petition.
  • There’s also a petition drive to recall various City Council members who reinstated the homeless ban. But you have to live in their respective districts to sign the petition.
  • I know you’re going to be shocked, shocked to find out that the City of Austin give preferential treatment to leftwing businessesin the form of property tax breaks…including one for Mayor Steve Adler’s own law firm.
  • Matt Mackowiak and Brad Johnson discuss the Austin homeless problem.

    • As the cherry on top, the City of Austin’s Stage 5 Wuhan coronavirus restrictions are still in effect through February 16…

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 3 Comments »

    Roundtable: Ten Questions About Austin Safety and Spending

    Tuesday, October 27th, 2020

    I’ve been meaning to do this roundtable on Austin’s future for a while, but the press of events (and fiddle-farting around on getting the right set of questions) delayed things until the headline rush toward election day finally made me send the questions out.

    Last week I submitted these questions to various Austin political observers, and here are their answers:

    1. What do you think drove the original lifting of the camping ban ordinance: An actual desire to help the homeless, virtue signaling, a desire to channel graft to their cronies (or leftwing causes), or something else?

      Terry Keel (Former Travis County Sheriff and State Rep): Decriminalizing petty crimes and protecting homelessness as a lifestyle choice is one of the new mandatory forms of virtue-signaling in the U.S. for liberal politicians like Austin’s mayor and council. It is a box they have to check, regardless of its obvious detrimental effects on surrounding property owners, businesses, and the homeless themselves. It just took a little longer for the political trend to reach us in Texas than it did in the large cities on the east and west coasts.

      Michael Quinn Sullivan (former CEO, Empower Texans): The Austin City Council seems perpetually vacillating between which virtues to signal. On the one hand, they are relentlessly handing out taxpayer dollars as corporate welfare to multinational corporations. On the other, they want to appeal to the leftist granola-crunching hippie culture that lives completely disconnected from the real world. The result are policies that have made Austin unaffordable and unlivable.

      Dennis Farris (retired APD): I think what drove them to Repeal the ordinance was a group of anti police activists who wanted to take some power away from APD. Its apparent it wasn’t well thought out because look at the outcome. You also have to look at who is profiting from the money the city is throwing at the homeless issue. 120 million plus in budgets 2019-2020 and 2020-2021.

      Adam Cahn (Cahnman’s Musings): The pre-camping ordinance repeal status quo wasn’t great. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that there was a genuine reform effort. That effort was really easy for Casar et. al. to co-opt for purposes of graft.

      Basically, a bunch of well meaning people who should have known better turned out to be chumps who got played for suckers by Casar.

    2. Who is the primary driver of the homeless policy: Mayor Steve Adler or Councilman Greg Cesar?

      TK: It was inevitable that they’d both push for it, though from different perspectives. Adler takes his cues from the same progressive special interests/think tanks guiding other big-city liberal mayors. Adler actually spent Austin taxpayer dollars to travel to Los Angeles to learn how to emulate that city’s homeless policies – among the worst in the nation from any sane perspective. In that regard, he has succeeded in causing more harm to Austin than any Mayor in Austin’s history. I believe Greg Cesar’s motivation is more from deeply held extreme left-wing philosophical beliefs. He’s smart enough to know that the policy is detrimental to everyone, including the homeless. But it serves his purpose because it creates a stark picture of misery which he uses as fodder to support his assertion (a false one) that American society is failing – and capitalism in particular, is a failed system – and that local government needs to redirect more tax dollars to the issue.

      MQS: Steve Adler doesn’t appear to be the mayor; he seems to be Greg Cesar’s spokesman.

      DF: Greg Casar is the puppet master driving every decision made in city hall.

      AC: Greg Casar is the primary driver of everything that happens at City Hall.

    3. Why has the city council not responded to the huge outcry from city residents at the explosion of homeless camping all across Austin?

      TK: The Mayor and city council have shifted hard left and believe political changes in Austin leave them largely unaccountable to traditional middle-class values and the concerns of ordinary local business owners. For example, they really don’t care that Strait Music Company is now living a nightmare along Ben White Boulevard. Until ordinary voters in Austin – including democrat voters – hold them accountable, politicians like our current mayor and council will continue to tune them out. Unlike the old days, in recent years, most Austin citizens couldn’t even name their council member or mayor. That may be changing. You can be sure the mayor and council are watching nervously to see what happens to the incumbents in this current election and recall effort.

      MQS: Leftists thrive on chaos. What the citizens see as a problem with explosion of homeless “camping” is what the council members see as a feature. The worse the problem they created becomes, the bigger the government solution council members (think they) can impose.

      DF: They haven’t responded because they don’t know how to govern. When 10-1 was first announced former Mayor Leffingwell told me it was going to be a bad idea because they would elect a bunch of activists and not people who know how to govern and they will do something because of their activism and won’t be able to fix it even though they know its wrong because the activism rules how they think.

      AC: Denial and groupthink.

    4. Who has benefited the most financially from the explosion of homelessness?

      TK: The mayor and council’s policies have ballooned Austin’s homeless population, which is a windfall for social service providers who receive a portion of the record-setting spending of millions by Austin. This spending in turn draws more homeless to Austin and keeps the problem and spending growing.

      MQS: As always, government.

      DF: The cronies who are running ECHO [Ending Community Homelessness Coalition]

      AC: The social-services industrial complex and their assorted hangers-on are a good guess, but it wouldn’t surprise my if the honest answer is nobody.

    5. Why was the vote to partially defund the police unanimous?

      TK: The current mayor and council are all committed democrats or socialists, and they bow at the anti-police altar because they perceive their political survival as hinging on falling in line with that new political trend. The endorsement of the Austin Police Association used to be the most sought-after political endorsement of every candidate running for local office here. But recently there’s been a well-funded, nationwide progressive political trend in city politics and within the democrat party to demonize law enforcement. That caught Austin’s police union completely by surprise this election cycle.

      MQS: The Austin City Council is the least diverse group in Travis County, if not in Texas. They engage in GroupThink to a degree that would make even George Orwell’s characters blush.

      DF: Because Casar bullied them and if they even spoke out against the move they were threatened by the activists. I truly believe at least 5 council members do’t believe what they voted on but were afraid what would happen if they didn’t. See answer 4.

      AC: Groupthink.

    6. Do you approve of the Keel proposal to put Austin policing under control of the DPS?

      TK: If enacted properly – including withholding a portion of tax dollars from Austin’s city government to fund the new APD division of DPS, this proposal would prevent what is happening right now: (1) Austin’s council shifting local tax dollars away from public safety to fund controversial leftist social programs; and (2) burdening statewide taxpayers with supplementing Austin’s local law enforcement by making it necessary for the governor to assign state troopers to make up for APD’s depleted funding. The seat of state government is by express terms of the Texas Constitution a constituent issue for all Texans. Every city in Texas derives its power and authority from the State of Texas, via our state Constitution and statutes. Local governments are creatures of the state, which determines what powers they have, what their obligations are, what privileges they hold, and what restrictions are held to limit their power. It is not the prerogative of local Austin politicians to turn the capital city into a Portland-type of chaos. The legislature has not just the authority – but a duty – to step in and act.

      MQS: No; it is a bad idea. Austin voters – actively or through apathy – gave themselves this city council; they must live with the consequences. Why should taxpayers around the state be forced to subsidize Austin’s bad decisions? Letting DPS do APD’s job would reward the city council decisions. Mr. Keel’s proposal, while no doubt well intentioned, is an untenably dense bureaucratic solution, creating new functions and offices inside state agencies overlapping with the city offices… It’s the kind of “Republican” solution that empowers Democrats by duplicative and expanding government.

      Rather than look for a bailout from King Greg and the Legislature, concerned residents of Austin (like Mr. Keel) should spend time and energy convincing their neighbors of the need for better thinking… or even just the need for right-thinking people to participate. The city council did not emerge from a vacuum; they and their bad ideas were voted into office by a knowing and willing electorate.

      DF: Yes I fully support the proposal put forth by Terry Keel and Ron Wilson.

      AC: If it were up to me, the legislature would revoke the city council’s charter in its entirety, but the Keel proposal is a reasonably decent stopgap.

    7. Do you think Austin’s overburdened taxpayers might actually approve the rail bond?

      TK: Yes, Austin’s voters may actually vote for this ill-conceived proposal if history is any guide to voting in Austin. Whether things have gotten so bad here with the current mayor and council that there will be some sort of local political awakening by voters, one can only hope.

      MQS: One would hope not.

      DF: If the same groups that came out to vote in the run off and defeated 2 moderates for county and district attorney then the bond might pass. They don’t see it as raising their taxes if they rent but ultimately will increase the rent they pay.

      AC: My guess would be no, but Austin voters have disappointed me in the past.

    8. If it is approved, where do you think the money will actually end up going?

      TK: It will be largely wasted on legal, engineering and environmental special interests and studies.

      MQS: The pockets of multinational corporations selling the latest version of snake-oil.

      DF: Not to the intended projects. ATX has a history of mismanaging bond money. Look at the 90 million dollar main library that cost 120 million.

      AC: Details remain to be seen, but “down the rathole” is a good macro-category.

    9. How bad do you think crime in Austin will get if Jose Garza is elected DA?

      TK: Look to Philadelphia for your answer. What Philadelphia is experiencing with [DA Larry] Krasner is exactly what’s in store for Austin if Garza is elected. In short, crimes like narcotics and certain thefts will be decriminalized and there will be zero death penalty prosecutions for the most horrific crimes. Crime victims will be a secondary consideration, subordinate to criminal defendants. The relationship between the DA’s office and the police will be dysfunctional, with the DA’s new priority being to aggressively seek criminal charges against arresting officers for perceived use-of-force violations.

      MQS: Crime will be a lagging indicator, but the policies he is endorsing will no doubt have negative consequences. Let’s be clear here, though. The nice people in Terrytown and the tony neighborhoods that subsidize the Austin left might be inconvenienced, but they will be mostly sheltered. The brunt of the problems will be felt by Austin’s poorest and most vulnerable people – the one’s Garza and the rest of the virtue-signaling left claim to be helping. That’s the way it is with bad government policy, anyway. The poor are made poor, and the vulnerable become more so. Mr. Garza’s policies will simply continue that trend.

      DF: I think crime is already getting bad but once elected he’s promised to not prosecute drug offenses. Most of the property crime and many of the robberies and homicides are committed to feed a drug habit or over drugs. He seems more interested in going after the cops than the criminals. Forget ever seeing another death penalty case in TC.

      AC: Bad.

    10. Do you think things will get better or worse after the November election?

      TK: If President Trump is reelected, Texas holds or expands Republican rule in the statehouse, and the incumbent Austin city council members are all tossed, things could be looking up for Austin, Texas. Anything less than that, life in the city will be worse.

      MQS: That light you think you see at the end of the tunnel? It’s a train.

      DF: Either way it gets worse. If President Trump wins the left will riot in the street and if Joe Biden wins the far left socialists will influence him or figure a way under the 25th amendment to remove him and push this country more socialist where everything is free until they run out of our money. He’s definitely got something wrong with him.

      AC: Better. One way or another (lege override/May election), the camping ordinance probably gets reinstated in ’21. In addition, even if it’s only one or two seats, changing the ideological composition of council will at least break up the groupthink.

    Thanks to all of the above for taking time to participate.

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 2 Comments »

    Austin Police Defunding/Homeless Update

    Thursday, August 20th, 2020

    In a follow-up to last week’s police defunding story, here are a few tidbits of Austin news related to police defunding, Adler’s bumsvilles, etc.

  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott says he will freeze property taxes for cities that defund the police.

    “[T]hey will lose the lifeblood of the revenues they receive from property taxes in Texas,” Abbott explained. “What this does, in English, is it is going to defund cities and cities’ ability to operate at all if they try to defund law enforcement.

    “We believe in law enforcement in Texas and we are not going to allow a replication of the types of policies we’ve seen destroying cities like Seattle and Portland and others.”

    Abbott accused such liberal precincts of “caving to the forces of socialism” even as crime increases, and added that some are allowing their municipalities to be “hijacked.”

    “So Texas is laying down a marker and that is, whether it be the city of Austin or another city, such actions are not going to be tolerated. In Texas, we embrace law enforcement, we will not accept turning power over to these socialistic forces that seek to abandon the rule of law and abandon the law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line to keep our communities safe.”

    However, unlike Abbott’s various Wuhan Coronavirus mandates, this will require the Texas legislature to enact, which won’t happen until next year. And Socialist Austin city councilman Greg Casar says it won’t deter his anti-police agenda.

  • Meanwhile, Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell blasted Austin’s defunding vote and asked Gov. Abbott to send more law enforcement. “In the correspondence, Gravell blasts Austin City Council members for cuts to the Austin Police Department valued at $150 million — including some $20 million in immediate budget cuts and a transfer of several departments away from police oversight to civilian functions, such as interacting with the homeless and dealing with mental health-related cuts.”

    It always seems to go back to the decision to make Austin bumsville, doesn’t it?

  • Brad Johnson of The Texan brings us news of what a trash heap Adler’s bums have made of the Windsor Park area of east Austin:

    “There were thousands of pounds of trash, human waste, and needles washing through our backyards and the creek bed.”

    Kevin Ludlow struck a nerve after posting his time-lapse video of the Windsor Park creek, which runs from Cameron Rd., into the neighborhood behind Ludlow’s house, and continues east. It even runs past a new community pool and water park.

    The video in question:

    The portion of creek bed which runs the length of the Heritage at Hillcrest apartment complex, behind his back yard, and down a couple of blocks further is prime real estate for the city’s growing homeless population because of its shade and relative seclusion.

    Since the beginning of 2020, Ludlow noted the population of homeless individuals living in the creek bed grew to a few hundred people until its apex a couple of weeks ago. A storm came on July 31, causing the creek to flood and wash the piles of debris further down the area.

    The issues that have arisen downtown and in the city’s business-heavy districts have been well-documented, but it has extended beyond these areas.

    Snip.

    In his video, Ludlow was able to record footage of campers smoking crack and shooting up heroin. Multiple times, campers became confrontational over his documentation.

    He added that because regular syringes can be hard to come by, campers turn to insulin needles — which are much smaller both in length and tip — of which he’s found numerous on the ground.

    He underscored, “I’m a pretty progressive-left guy, but [allowing homeless camping] has helped nobody, especially the homeless.”

    Snip.

    Back in October, Austin Police Department Chief Brian Manley reported statistics showing a 15 percent increase in violent crimes wherein both the victim and the suspect were homeless from July through September of 2019 compared with the same time frame the previous year.

    Austin’s homeless problem has been growing for decades, but a watershed moment occurred last year.

    In June of 2019, the Austin City Council approved the rescission of its public camping and lying ban. It went into effect in July and has led to a massive uptick in the unsheltered homeless population ever since, as more transients made camp on public property ranging anywhere from parks, sidewalks, underpasses, and more.

    The city’s stated intention was that the policy change would bring the homeless population into sheltered facilities wherein they could receive whatever aid they needed.

    In this year’s homeless population survey, the city recorded a 45 percent increase in its unsheltered population and an 11 percent decrease in those sheltered. There was an unmistakable incentive to leave shelters or the woods and live on the streets.

    The city eventually reinstated some of the restrictions in place before July 2019 but stopped well short of fully reinstating the ban. The issue has grown substantially and fractured the community and its elected council considerably.

    Read the whole thing.

  • Speaking of crime and the homeless:

  • Things that make you go “hmmmm”: “Austin council member Jimmy Flannigan has received more than $17,000 in contributions from members of a real estate development company that has worked on several city projects, as well as a lobbying firm that has many real estate, business and events clients, according to his latest campaign finance report.”
  • Speaking of Jimmy Flannigan:

    “Funding that upholds our dignity.” What bilious, gaseous nonsense. What he probably meant to say is “the graft that lines our pockets.”

  • Cahnman floats a radical solution: revoke the City of Austin’s charter, abolish the city council and have functions carried out by the county and state.

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    Austin City Council Steps Up War On Austin Citizens

    Saturday, August 15th, 2020

    The Austin City Council’s determination to destroy the city’s quality of life in an apparent effort to make Austin as dysfunctional a hellhole as San Francisco or Portland continues apace:

    After recent nationwide riots and lawlessness have left a trail of burned cities, destroyed livelihoods, and murdered citizens, Democrat local officials in Texas’ capital city are pushing further by slashing a third of the local police budget.

    On Thursday, the all-Democrat Austin City Council voted unanimously to take away $150 million from the Austin Police Department in next year’s city budget. The council decided to strip roughly $20 million immediately and spend it on other city projects, and the rest will be defunded and reallocated over the coming year.

    Among their cuts, the council removed 150 vacant police officer positions from the already understaffed department, canceled three upcoming cadet classes, and diminished APD’s overtime budget. Council members also proposed closing the police academy for a year and even demolishing the police headquarters building downtown.

    Ironically and tragically, the council is taking some of the police money and will instead spend it on killing children. Councilmember Greg Casar, a self-proclaimed socialist, said doing so will make Austin a “safer and better place to live.”

    “We did it!!” Casar tweeted after defunding the police, posting a picture proudly proclaiming, “We won.”

    Snip.

    “The council’s budget proposals continue to become more ridiculous and unsafe for Austinites,” tweeted the Austin Police Association. “They are going to ignore the majority who do not want the police defunded.”

    “The unwarranted attack by the Austin mayor and city council on their police department’s budget is no more than a political haymaker driven by the pressures of cancel culture,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a press release. “The City of Austin already struggles to combat widespread crime, violence, and homelessness. … The mayor and the city council should immediately reconsider this ill-advised effort at virtue signaling, which will endanger lives and property in Austin.”

    “Data says your recommendations have made us less safe, not more,” tweeted tech analyst Patrick Moorhead to Councilmember Casar. “[Austin is] #1 in murder growth and #3 in robberies. Why should anyone trust your new, fairytale policies? Zero effectiveness. Anywhere, any city. #SocialistPlaybook”

    Chuck DeVore has more on the madness:

    Of Texas’ six most-populous cities, five plan to increase their law enforcement budgets: Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. El Paso looked to increase its public safety budget 3%. Dallas Police Chief Hall emphasized countering violent crime while also “reimagining public safety.” Houston budgeted a 2% increase to its police department while San Antonio considered a 1.6% increase.

    But Austin just approved a $150 million cut to its police budget. Shifts in funding account for about $80 million, with the funds going to other departments, such as forensics and the 9-1-1 call center.

    As for the other $70 million in cuts to public safety in Austin, here’s where things get weird.

    More than $21 million in cuts come in the form of an amendment from Councilmember Greg Casar and include cancelling the three planned 2021 police cadet classes, reducing overtime by $2.8 million, and cutting supplies. Cutting overtime while reducing staffing will be especially difficult, as overtime typically results when an understaffed agency has to deploy existing personnel for more hours than anticipated.

    The remaining more than $49 million in cuts, also by Casar, comes under the rubric of “Reimagine Safety Fund.” It includes ongoing annual cuts of $3 million from overtime, $2.2 million from the mounted patrol, $1.3 million from the organized crime K-9 unit (drug interdiction), $279,086 from the police explorers program for youth ages 14 to 20, $18.5 million from traffic enforcement, $2 million from the regional intelligence center (focused on detecting, preventing, apprehending, and responding to criminal and terrorist activity), $10.7 million from training (which is odd, given the almost universal agreement that more police training is needed to avoid the potential for police abuse), $3.6 million from recruitment, and $7.3 million in reductions to the specialized units that patrol the lake and the parks.

    Of the cuts, $21.5 million is shifted in the form of “reinvestments” to programs such as $100,000 for abortion access and $6.5 million a year for the homeless under the “Housing First” policy of sheltering and feeding the homeless, with no expectation for them to seek treatment—essentially allowing them to live off taxpayer support until they die.

    So, “defund the police” looks like fewer cops and more abortions. Who knew?

    Meanwhile, downtown Austin has become like a ghost town due to COVID, as white-collar professionals do much of their work remotely, only making quick trips into the city for key meetings. This has left Austin’s burgeoning homeless population short on people to ask for money. The result is increasingly dystopian, as the homeless frequently outnumber office workers on the sidewalk—with the latter trying to find a place to eat that’s still open or quickly making their way to the parking garage, while the former call after them for drug and alcohol money.

    Snip.

    Austin’s preening politicians are playing politics with policing. The result is predictable: police morale will suffer, officers’ effectiveness will decline, crime will rise, and more people will be killed, injured, and robbed. Welcome to your brave new, post-logic world.

    This despite the fact that Austin is experiencing the largest increase in its homicide rate of any major U.S. city and that polls repeatedly show that Austinites don’t want the police defunded.

    Is it any surprise that the attrition rate in the Austin police department has more than doubled since 2017?

    The cherry on top: The just-cancelled cadet class would have been 51% minorities. (Hat tip: Matt Mackowiak.)

    This is what happens when you put the hard left in positions in power, when raking off the graft and waging cultural Marxism against “class enemies” like police and the middle class is more important than public safety.

    “Prepper Dad” and KR Training firearms instructor Paul Martin suggests two organizations Austinites worried about this decision might consider joining:

  • Save Austin Now
  • The Greater Austin Crime Commission

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 2 Comments »

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