Behind Unified Front, Generational Divide at Austin City Council on Policing

Austin City Council voted unanimously Thursday on a set of resolutions to rein in police power, ban chokeholds and tear gas, and set in motion budget cuts for the Austin Police Department.

But behind the unified front, there are real differences among Council members over how far to go in the direction of depolicing, and whether to push out Police Chief Brian Manley.

On the one side are liberals mostly in their 50s and 60s who remain committed to the idea of a traditional police department, on the other side are council members in their 40s or younger who envision more revolutionary solutions to what security could look like for the city.

Within the package of resolutions passed this week are items requiring followup that likely will divide the City Council. “These votes were easy compared to the ones coming up,” said Council Member Delia Garza, 44. “Our community is at a boiling point.”

Agenda Item 96, for example, directed city staff to plan for substantial cuts to the police department’s budget. But actual decisions on that will not be made until the fall when the city passes an annual budget.

The resolution “eliminates the sworn positions that the Austin Police Department cannot reasonably fill in FY2020–2021 and reallocates those unused funds to alternative public safety and public health strategies…”

However, because the Police Department already has 142 unfilled sworn officer positions, this resolution just sets up a fight over whether to delay cadet classes, preventing vacancies from being filled over the next year, and thereby eliminating these positions by a process of attrition.

The City Council repeatedly has caused delays to cadet classes, demanding investigations into racism and homophobia before the classes can continue. In April, outside auditors concluded that they were largely unable to corroborate claims of racism and homophobia made against senior officers. In the wake of that report, some Council members wanted to green-light a June cadet class, while others wanted it further delayed.

Austin’s City Manager, not the Council, makes decisions about that. But he reports to the City Council and faces competing demands from members.

Mayor Steve Adler, 64, said at Thursday’s meeting, “This Council is not calling to abolish or to defund the police. We are asking the manager to give us a budget that shows the budget possibilities, how critical and important functions can continue in a reimagined way, which functions might be better served by potentially being handled elsewhere.”

Adler signaled his willingness to consider “millions” of dollars in police cuts, but not the full $100 million that advocates have demanded as a first step toward abolition of the police, representing a quarter of the police budget. The mayor commented, “I believe that millions of dollars might be able to be redirected to important services for people and neighborhoods, and it’s time for us to determine if that possibility exists…”

By contrast, Council Member Greg Casar, 29, voiced support for a larger cut. Casar said, “Our community is calling on us now to be transformative. We’ve been called to completely reevaluate the way that we define public safety and the way that we think about our budget. So I agree with advocates that we should do everything we can to try to move that $100 million dollars from policing as our primary response to social problems over to other forms of community support and emergency response and community safety.”

“That means a renewed commitment to invest in homelessness prevention, violence intervention, family violence shelter, treatment for addiction, affordable housing, mental health.”

Council Member Pio Renteria, one of the older Council members, who represents East Austin’s earliest historical Latino neighborhoods, said it would be “crazy” to defund the police department, as some are advocating. He voted earlier in the week to accept a new state grant to help prevent car theft, and providing matching city funding.

Renteria said his constituents were “constantly” getting their cars stolen. “I had a teacher across the street who got her car stolen,” he said.

The four members voting against accepting the state grant for anti-robbery efforts were among the youngest on the Council: Greg Casar, Delia Garza, Natasha Harper-Madison, and Jimmy Flannigan.

Alison Alter, who straddles the generational divide but politically leans more toward the conservative wing, said that she agreed to a process of “reimagining” policing in Austin, but wouldn’t commit to budget cuts yet. She proposed introducing “outcome-based budgeting and zero-based budgeting as tools we can use to reimagine public safety.”

Originally published at https://www.honestaustin.com on June 13, 2020.