Last month, members of the Public Safety Commission voiced concerns about the lack of consistent rules or guidelines on investigating senior members of the police, fire and emergency medical services departments for harassment or discrimination. On Monday, a representative of the city’s Human Resources Department conceded that the city did not have a defined process […]
Public Safety Commission
The Public Safety Commission is a City Council advisory body charged with oversight of budgetary and policy matters concerning public safety These include matters related to the Austin Police Department, the Austin Fire Department, and the Austin/Travis County Emergency Medical Services Department.”
Posted inPolice
Will Manley be made police chief? City manager remains mum
In spite of the praise he has received from city leaders for his response to the Austin bombings, Interim Police Chief Brian Manley is not necessarily a shoo-in to be the next permanent police chief. City Manager Spencer Cronk is still in the process of deciding what to do about the vacant position, which Manley […]
Posted inPublic Safety
What happens when top public safety officials are accused of harassment?
Members of the Public Safety Commission expressed concern and befuddlement over policies that the Police, Fire and EMS departments rely on to hold their top officials accountable for harassment. “It doesn’t make sense to me that the policies are so different (between departments),” said Commissioner Rebecca Gonzales. In all of the departments, said Chair Rebecca […]
Posted inRoads
Transportation Department defends ‘speed cushions’
Transportation Director Robert Spillar showed up at a meeting of the Public Safety Commission on Monday to defend “speed cushions,” the traffic-calming devices that have infuriated motorists across the city, most notably in a Northwest Austin neighborhood that successfully campaigned to have them removed. “We hate to put them out there, but the other side […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: We’ve made haranguements
Save Our Strings… Could the city be moving toward declaring musicians as an endangered species? Not yet, but at last week’s meeting of the Austin Music Commission there was a good deal of talk about declaring the city’s music culture as a natural resource that needs to be actively protected from growing development pressures throughout […]
Posted inPolice
Police reform activists call for city-funded nonprofit for police complaints
Representatives of Austin’s police union said Monday that they’re eager to begin negotiations with the new city manager on a contract that can hopefully win approval from City Council. Ron DeLord, an attorney for the Austin Police Association, told members of the Public Safety Commission that the union had put together a new negotiation team, […]
Posted inFire
AFD aims to weigh in on developments sooner rather than later
The Austin Fire Department could soon start reviewing individual development plans much earlier in the process than it currently does. Fire Marshal Rob Vires told the Public Safety Commission at its Jan. 8 special called meeting about ongoing discussions to allow AFD engineers to have a seat at the table during the preliminary master review […]
Posted inRoads
Austin’s new ‘speed cushions’ spark outcry
Susanne Paul worries that Jester Estates, the affluent Northwest Austin neighborhood where she’s lived for nearly 20 years, may be broken beyond repair. What was once an “extremely friendly” community is now fraught with political divisions that many of her neighbors believe may make it impossible to ever return to the “happy innocence of what […]
Posted inPolice
Most Austin police officers will soon have body cameras
It may not be long before every Austin police officer is wearing a body camera. Since October, the Austin Police Department has equipped officers at three of its four substations with body cameras, Assistant Police Chief Ely Reyes told the Public Safety Commission Monday. The department plans to implement the cameras for officers at the […]
Posted inPolice
Advocates urge more assistance for sexual assault victims
A backlog of evidence going back to the 1990s is not the only major challenge the Austin Police Department has faced in prosecuting sex crimes and helping survivors of sexual assault heal. Advocates for survivors have also said the sex crimes unit is understaffed, with too few cops to investigate sexual assaults and too few […]
Posted inPolice
By outsourcing, APD has made major progress on sex assault kit backlog
The Austin Police Department’s embarrassing backlog of sexual assault kits will hopefully soon be a thing of the past. APD told members of the Public Safety Commission Monday that there are 856 kits from the backlog left to be analyzed, down from more than 2,165 in February and more than 4,000 when the police department’s […]
Posted inPolice
Commission fails to endorse police contract
Citing a lack of information, the Public Safety Commission on Monday declined to endorse the union contract recently hammered out between the Austin Police Association and city labor negotiators. In addition to concerns expressed by some commissioners about shortcomings of the contract cited by activists urging greater police accountability, some members of the commission voted […]