Austin’s Interim City Manager Jesús Garza has suspended the Austin Police Department’s (APD) partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), in consultation with Mayor Kirk Watson.
“From the start of this partnership with DPS, I said I wanted Austinites to feel safe and be safe. Recent events demonstrate we need to suspend the partnership with DPS. The safety of our community is a primary function of City government, and we must keep trying to get it right,” Watson said in a statement. “This partnership was an innovative approach to address acute staffing shortages that were years in the making. However, any approach must be in sync with Austin values.”
Good call by the interim City Manager. A DPS trooper pointing a gun at a little kid and his dad because the kid had to go pee deserves a ‘zero tolerance’ approach kicking in. If the DPS troopers act like that AT ALL, immediately dissolving the partnership sends the right message. Austin can figure out other ways to get more people helping protect the community. And the DPS deserves to live in shame for having such awful training and terrible employees. Law enforcement employees are not meant to be death-dealing samurai. Fire the psychos and hire decent human beings. And then provide the new folks with proper training.