Interim city manager updates Office of Police Oversight procedures

Austin’s Office of Police Oversight has been in limbo in recent years. Its authority to investigate allegations of police misconduct was dismantled in 2021. Its director, Farah Muscadin, resigned in 2022. The city’s police labor contract expired – without a successor – in March. A proposition expanding the office’s authority passed in May. 

In the wake of the third development but before the fourth, interim City Manager Jesús Garza attempted to clarify the office’s responsibilities and operations via an April 18 memo to City Council.

Garza wrote that he met with both Office of Police Oversight interim Director Deven Desai and Austin Police Department Chief Joseph Chacon before issuing the update. In keeping with the prior labor contract, the office’s director will continue to:

• Report to the city manager and provide advice regarding Austin Police Department’s policies, training and release of bodycam and dashcam video footage; 
• Make nonbinding recommendations to the police chief regarding the department’s internal investigations of police misconduct; and
• Have access to certain department materials related to internal investigations.

The memo follows Council’s Feb. 23 adoption of an ordinance granting the office “independent and unfettered access to APD personnel, records and processes necessary to carry out” its responsibilities, such as investigating “misconduct complaints against APD officers, including anonymous complaints from APD officers or local residents as permitted by state law.” 

But in the case of anonymous complaints, Garza’s memo included a new development. Austinites who wish to submit a complaint anonymously now can do so via an online form, which notes that the city “may be limited in what it can do with anonymous concerns not accompanied by a sworn statement.”

Although the office has accepted anonymous complaints in the past, the form makes the practice “easier and more visible for our residents,” Garza wrote. 

The memo also outlined changes to the Office of Police Oversight’s involvement in Austin Police Department’s internal interviews of officers accused of misconduct. Under the former labor contract, such interviews included two police department investigators, an oversight office representative, the subject officer and the subject officer’s representative. 

Now, they only include one police department investigator and the subject officer. The oversight office’s representative will have access to a livestream of the interview and can provide questions to the investigator, who may or may not ask them. The subject officer’s representative will no longer have access to either the interview or the livestream.

These changes fall short of Proposition A, spearheaded by the local political action committee Equity Action and overwhelmingly supported by Austin voters, which aims to strengthen civilian oversight of the police department.

Notably, the proposition expands the Office of Police Oversight’s authority to include “participating in investigations of officer conduct … with the right to gather evidence and directly interview witnesses.”

It also would grant the Office of Police Oversight access to any police records it requires, including confidential personnel files with information about prior use-of-force incidents and misconduct allegations. 

As KUT reported in May, the proposition directs the city to include these provisions in its next police labor contract. But negotiations remain stalled, and the police union has signaled its opposition to resuming them. 

“The (Austin Police Association) continues to prioritize negotiating a long-term contract; however, we will not be forced back to the table under a structure in which a new city ordinance attempts to unlawfully interfere with the statutory rights associated with the meet and confer process,” the police union wrote in a May 6 Twitter thread.  

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