City Council takes step to restart Community Police Academy

After a three-year pandemic hiatus, the Austin Police Department’s Community Police Academy, a 14-week program designed for members of the public, may soon resume classes.

City Council voted last week to direct city staff to report back on the possibility of restarting the academy, which had graduated 2,716 community members across 101 classes as of December 2019. District 9 Council Member Zo Qadri opposed the motion.

District 6 Council Member Mackenzie Kelly sponsored the ordinance, citing her experience as an academy alumna. 

“This program means a lot to me, not just because I’ve gone through it but because I’ve spoken to members and alumni who’ve taken it, and they’ve told me some very interesting things, including that they got their eyes open to what, really, our officers go through on a regular basis,” she said during a March 9 Council meeting. 

A handful of Austin residents spoke in support of the program during the meeting’s public comment period. 

“I encourage you all to bring back the Austin (Community) Police Academy program to give the community the opportunity to learn firsthand how their police department works and to build stronger police-community relationships,” Missy Osterman, a member of the academy’s 89th class, told Council members. 

District 5 Council Member Ryan Alter successfully proposed an amendment calling on city staff to make recommendations for ensuring the academy achieves the following:

• Is accessible to “a broad and diverse cross-section of the community.”
• Safeguards “a diversity of opinions” about policing.
• Isn’t used for political activity, such as lobbying or organizing.

His amendment also recognized the Austin Police Department’s desire for a name change from the Citizen Police Academy to the Community Police Academy. 

District 4 Council Member Chito Vela delved into the reason for the change in a March 6 post to the City Council Message Board.

“This change was designed to align with the general order related to maintaining an impartial attitude toward citizenship status,” he wrote.

District 3 Council Member José Velásquez endorsed Alter’s amendment, speaking to his own positive experience as a program alumnus as well as to more recent feedback he’s received “from community members, fellow alumni and friends that raised multiple issues that are concerning.”

“I do believe that a well-structured program can help our community rebuild the much-needed trust that we need in this city,” he said. “But, if we want to see change, we have to take responsibility for doing our due diligence, as it has been laid out in Council Member Alter’s amendment.”

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, APD’s relationship with the broader Austin community has grown more strained. 

Large numbers of Austin residents protested against police violence and racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minn., in May 2020, an event that sparked nationwide demonstrations. APD officers injured dozens, some critically, during the Austin protests, resulting in grand jury indictments of 19 officers who used beanbag rounds on protesters, nearly $17 million in legal settlements paid by the city, cuts to APD’s budget, and a temporary suspension of the department’s training academy. 

More recently, Council eschewed a four-year tentative agreement between city staff and the police union, instead announcing a plan to extend police pay and benefits and to address long-standing staffing shortages when the current police labor contract expires at the end of this month. 

This stopgap, members said, will allow Austin voters to weigh in on two competing propositions related to police oversight on the May 6 ballot. 

The first measure, spearheaded by the local political action committee Equity Action, would strengthen civilian oversight of the Austin Police Department, going beyond what the city’s bargaining team was able to secure in the tentative agreement, as the Austin Monitor previously reported.

Voters for Police Oversight and Accountability, a PAC funded almost entirely by the police union, proposed the second measure, which uses the same language as Equity Action but would instead weaken civilian oversight of the police department when compared with the current labor contract.

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