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As promised, here is a closer look. This is the exact wording on the ballot:
A petitioned ordinance to enhance public safety and police oversight, transparency and accountability by adding a new chapter 2-16 to establish minimum standards for the police department to ensure effective public safety and protect residents and visitors to Austin, and prescribing minimal requirements for achieving the same at an estimated cost of $271.5 million – $598.8 million over five years.
What I'm seeing is:
A. enhance public safety
B. enhance police oversight, transparency, and accountability
C. establish minimum standards to protect the people
D. prescribe minimal requirements
E. this will cost more
And here is what is actually in the petition. The petition has three sections, all under "Effective Public Safety:
1. Minimum Standards and Resources (C, D, and E above)
2. Representative Community Policing (I don't see that)
3. Coordination of Oversight (B above)
So A is implied to be covered by these things.
Okay, let's look at what specifically is proposed for these three parts of the petition:
1. Minimum Standards and Resources
A. the employment of at least two sworn officers for every 1,000 residents
How does that differ from what we're doing now? Per Petition-Backed Measure To Mandate Police Staffing Will Go To Austin Voters (8/3/21) - 'The department currently has 1.7 officers for every 1,000 residents. ...The petition was a response to the Austin City Council’s decision to cut and reallocate $150 million from the police department last year. Save Austin Now argues the move led to a rash of violent crimes and the city's higher-than-average murder rate this year.
'...Opponents say Save Austin Now's ratio of officers to citizens is arbitrary because funding and staffing don't always equate to more safety. The benchmark was a suggestion from a 2012 study by a city-hired consultant.
'In a joint statement with members of the Austin Justice Coalition and the local chapter of the American Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees, former City Council Member Bill Spelman said the staffing ratio "isn't the best practice."
'"It was a rule of thumb applied in the past when APD was responding to more calls and more crimes than they are today," Spelman said. '
Per After This Weekend’s Triple Homicide, Austin’s 2021 Murders 53% Above Last Year (The Texan, 4/19/21), 'The Austin Police Department (APD) currently has 1.08 officers per 100,000 residents — well below the 2.5 per 100,000-target often used as a benchmark. There are currently 116 total vacancies and APD’s staffing level is below its 2010 amount despite having double the population.'
So what would have to change? Again, per Petition-Backed Measure To Mandate Police Staffing Will Go To Austin Voters (8/3/21), the rule-of-thumb of 2 officers per 1,000 residents that was suggested in a 2012 study by a city-hired consultant 'when APD was responding to more calls and more crimes than they are today,' would have to be applied forever.
B. full enrollment for no fewer than three full-term cadet classes for the department, until such time as the staffing levels for the department return to the levels prescribed in the 2019-2020 city budget
How is that different from what's going on now? Per APD Hits Pause on Police Academy Curriculum Review: Volunteer review committee expresses concern over stalled process (Austin Chronicle, 8/20/21), Austin is already trying to catch up on training new officers after improving the training. In fact, they started a new class before the new training was finished hoping the training would be able to stay one step ahead of the new recruits.
'The volunteers helping to "reimagine" the Austin Police Academy are sounding alarms after the Austin Police Department abruptly paused meetings of the academy curriculum and video review committees, saying that goals of each committee are unclear and that the workflow of each could be made more efficient.
'...criminal justice advocates urged Council to hold off on authorizing a new cadet class until the reviews were completed. Council ignored those pleas when they voted in May to start the 144th class in June. Now, it is unclear how much "reimagined" material cadets are actually learning ... because, in some cases, they are not meeting to provide feedback to APD on materials until just days before they are to be taught to cadets. In one instance, the committee reviewed a 500-slide presentation used to teach cadets about search and seizure – which, next to the use of force, is perhaps the greatest power police officers have – on a Wednesday, and the course was set to begin the following Monday. "It's unlikely that very much of what we said about search and seizure was implemented for the 144th cadet class, because there was practically no time to get that done," Mitchell said.
'...When Council adopted the budget, they approved funding for two more cadet classes – with the possibility of adding a third, shortened class open to individuals already licensed as peace officers elsewhere in Texas. Council also approved a budget rider from Council Member Ann Kitchen reiterating that the next cadet class will not begin until a review of the 144th class has been completed and Council votes for the next class to move ahead.
'Cadets in the 144th class are expected to graduate in January, and APD hopes the next class can begin in February.'
Per a href = "https://thetexan.news/after-this-weekends-triple-homicide-austins-2021-murders-53-above-last-year/">After This Weekend’s Triple Homicide, Austin’s 2021 Murders 53% Above Last Year (The Texan, 4/19/21) - 'The city council approved a $150 million budget cut last August and continues to suffer staffing shortages.
That included an initial termination of three cadet classes, which have since been given the green light to restart but have yet to begin.
'...City management is also in the process of hiring a permanent police chief to replace Brian Manley who retired last month after years of tension with the city council bent on fundamentally changing its police department and public safety policy more broadly.'
So it sounds to me like Austin is already working on doing this.
C. 40 hours per year of training beyond that required by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, with an emphasis on training outside a classroom setting that will equip the officers to handle evolving, fluid, dangerous situations and enhance their own safety and that of the public. The training will be developed by the commander of the department academy and emphasize skills essential to the everyday split-second decision-making officers face on the streets in areas such as critical thinking, defensive tactics, intermediate weapons proficiency, active shooter scenarios, and hasty react team reactions
How does that compare to what we're doing now? Per Austin tallied 44 homicides in 7 months. But as fingers point to why, a solution remains elusive (Austin American Statesman, 7/18/21), Austin has already responded by accelerating a violence intervention program. City Council Member Greg Casar explains '"gun violence prevention workers will be working face-to-face with neighbors, with community leaders in those neighborhoods, which are overwhelmingly Latino and Black parts of the city."
'...The city will dedicate $25 million over five years for violence reduction strategies, including the creation of the Office of Violence Prevention and its programs.
'In June, the city announced the hiring of a program manager Michelle Myles, who is the only staff member in the office right now. Casar said it's likely that the City Council will be able to take a vote to hire the needed staff for the program and deploy those dollars into gun violence prevention in the coming months.
'In the meantime, Austin police on Thursday announced an expansion of the program that will target gun crimes in the downtown entertainment district, where shootings have increased in recent months.
'...Austin police through the violence prevention initiative have seized 78 firearms and made 44 arrests related to illegal gun use.'
Per Gun Violence In Austin, Texas, Reflects Broader National Pattern (NPR, 7/24/21), Mayor Adler says, 'we're working with our police department and in greater collaboration with federal law enforcement agencies and then the prosecutors in the area, finding the illegal weapons, finding the trafficking patterns for those.'
D. enhance recruiting and retention
The proposition is to provide additional compensation or compensatory time for:
1. officers proficient in the five most common non-English languages spoken in the city, based on the most recent information available from the United States Census Bureau,
2. officers who participate in a mentoring program for cadets in the department academy, and
3. officers in good standing and eligible for an honorable conduct citation or equivalent recognition every fifth year.
What is different?
Per APD's Pay and Benefits page, there is already incentive pay of $175 for bilingual speakers. There is also an extra $175/month for Field Training Officers, which probably is not the same as a mentor; I do not see anything else for #2 or #3.
Per https://austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/922%20Awards%20and%20Commendations.pdf, an Honorable Conduct Citation is presented to employees with 10, 20, or 30 years of service, as long as the
employee is in good standing and recommended by their supervisor and 'a minimum amount of time must pass between a dishonorable event and consideration for the Citation,' such 6 months for a written reprimand, and 1 or more years for suspension, depending on how long that was. "Recipient will receive a medal, ribbon and certificate for 10 year award and subsequent star device and certificate for 20 and 30 year awards." No monetary award is mentioned.
2. Representative Community Policing
A. Work to recruit, hire and maintain a police force that reflects the racial, ethnic and gender diversity of the city.
What is different?
Per https://www.statesman.com/news/20161224/for-last-decade-police-had-more-whites-fewer-hispanics-than-city-has, Hispanics are underrepresented, but Austin already has a diversity working group "to make sure that the Police Department, the Fire Department and Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services are trying to attract a diverse pool of qualified candidates."
B. Establish a system that, to the extent practicable, ensures officers representative of, and proficient in the most common non-English languages spoken in, neighborhoods within the city regularly and consistently patrol those neighborhoods.
What is different?
I don't know. Per https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/General%20Orders.pdf, officers receive bilingual pay only if they actually "utilize their bilingual communication skills when requested by the Department.'
In other community policing news, per https://www.kvue.com/article/news/community/austin-police-community-policing-audit-city-2020/269-68b31ba4-034f-495f-aace-b4169d63adb4, "In 2016, APD hired Matrix Consulting Group (Matrix) to assess its community policing efforts. As a result, Matrix gave the department over 60 recommendations to improve those efforts. In August 2019, the City reported that APD had implemented 40 of those recommendations.'
An audit released in May 2020 found mixed results and determined that "APD needs: additional, more specific measures to determine whether organizational changes to support community policing efforts have been effective; a better process of documenting successful and unsuccessful community policing strategies; and a better process for involving and reporting to the community.
'...In its 2016 study, Matrix found APD officers didn't routinely engage the community outside of required services. Matrix set a specific goal for officers to have 35% to 45% of their time uncommitted, or not responding to calls, in the hopes they would have more time for community engagement.
'APD reported an increase in uncommitted time citywide from 22% in 2016 to 27% in 2018. But according to the audit, there are issues with the uncommitted time measure that prevent it from accurately representing the time officers can spend on community engagement, including that uncommitted time isn't available as a single block of time during an officer's shift and that officers have many responsibilities to complete beyond responding to calls.'
3. Coordination of Oversight
A. The mayor and council members, their assistants and members of their staffs, and the director of the office of police oversight must complete the Citizen Police Academy and participate in the Ride Along Program.
B. So do people appointed to the Public Safety Commission, the Community Police Review Commission, and their successor boards.
What is different?
It looks like these trainings are not currently required. The goal of the Citizen Police Academy 'is to educate the public about the Austin Police Department and to increase the rapport between citizens and police officers." It is 14-week, 56-hour course, currently suspended due to covid.
Per Texas Monthly, 'According to interviews with four students who’ve taken the CPA in the last four years, the program reinforced some participants’ sympathy and support for the police, particularly regarding situations when officers use lethal force. But students, including Nortey, said some of the classes also seemed to downplay community concerns about systemic racism and police brutality and that critical questions were met with defensiveness.'
The Ride Along Program 'is designed to give citizens a first-hand view of police work' and is required of all police officer candidates. It was also supsended due to covid but has been reinstated.
However, none of this has anything to do with the normal definitions of oversight.
The reason we would want oversight, transparency, and accountability is that "Too often, police departments and officers violate their role in the community and abuse their power by engaging in acts of excessive force; acting in an increasingly militarized capacity; abusing asset forfeiture policies; and routinely stopping and frisking entire communities, among other practices." - Transform the System.org They recommend such measures as civilian oversight; independent prosecuters to hold law enforcement officers accountable; requiring police departments (not just cities) to pay some of the fines from lost cases; reducing the standard for qualified immunity; policies that require police officers to provide their name, badge number, and an informative card on how to report complaints to people with which they interact; wearing body cameras with adequate privacy protections for the public; strengthening the right of civilians to record police interactions; and rewarding and incentivizing training in civil rights and de-escalation, stronger scrutiny of racial inequities and excessive force, and greater community accountability and oversight.
Open Gov Partnership.org recommends such measures as standardizing how data is collected and shared, involving citizens early when collecting data, making data accessible, organized, and following standards for ease of comparison.
The United Nations says 'accountability is defined as a system of internal and external checks and balances aimed at ensuring that police carry out their
duties properly and are held responsible if they fail to do so. Such a system is meant to uphold police integrity and deter misconduct and to restore or enhance public confidence in policing. Police integrity refers to normative and other safeguards that keep police from misusing their powers and abusing their rights and privileges.'
They recommend such measures as reliable statistics on police performance, related both to effectiveness in dealing with crime and public order, as well as to their integrity and public confidence; opportunities for the public to voice their concerns; priorities on how to deploy police capacity; monitoring of police actions and operations by both police leadership and external organs; complaints procedures, both for making complaints to the police directly and to independent bodies; fair and effective procedures and policies on how to deal with misconduct, including both disciplinary and criminal codes; adequate investigative capacity; procedures for punishment and appeal procedures; an independent body to oversee such procedures; and scrutiny and oversight involving feedback to the police in order to improve future activities and prevent future wrongdoings.
For more information:
* Group Behind Police Staffing Petition Sues City Of Austin Over Ballot Language (8/16/21) - The city changed the wording given in the petition trying to make it more accurate and got sued. See the original and edited version. The final version is the original plus a sentence about costs.
* Per Fact-check: Have police cuts in Austin led to a 'doubling of murder (Austin American Statesman, 6/14/21) - This claim is rated half true. 'The city recorded 19 murders in the first five months of 2020, and 33 murders in the same five-month span of 2021, which is a 74% increase.
However, experts say that because these crime totals are low numbers, using percent change comparisons can easily mischaracterize or distort increases.'
* "Austin's homicide, violent crime numbers go up, but may not mean what you think it means" (5/21/21, https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/austins-homicide-violent-crime-numbers-go-up-but-may-not-mean-what-you-think-it-means) - President of the Austin Police Association Ken Casaday says APD is understaffed and also blames the lack of prosecution of violent cases. 'But while the numbers are going up -- the crime *rate* may not be. That's because Austin's population is booming.'
* Per KUT's APD should follow national best practices on use of force and make guidelines clearer, watchdog says (10/13/21) - 'The Austin Police Department's policies governing when an officer can and can't use force don't align with Austinites' expectations, according to a new report from the city's independent police monitor.'
Examples:
* the department's policies don't explicitly ban officers from using chokeholds
* the department's policies don't explicitly require them to use de-escalation tactics
* the department's policies don't explicitly require them to intervene in cases of excessive force.
* 'APD's current guidelines to require an officer to warn someone before shooting them are "ambiguous." The office suggested APD's guidance for so-called less lethal uses of force were more detailed than its lethal-force policy.'
'"Far too many of APD's policies are unclear and unaligned with national best practices in policing," OPO Director Farah Muscadin said in a press release announcing the study results. "Our goal was to provide an opportunity for community members to share their concerns about APD's use of force policies and better align policies with community expectations and best practices."
A petitioned ordinance to enhance public safety and police oversight, transparency and accountability by adding a new chapter 2-16 to establish minimum standards for the police department to ensure effective public safety and protect residents and visitors to Austin, and prescribing minimal requirements for achieving the same at an estimated cost of $271.5 million – $598.8 million over five years.
What I'm seeing is:
A. enhance public safety
B. enhance police oversight, transparency, and accountability
C. establish minimum standards to protect the people
D. prescribe minimal requirements
E. this will cost more
And here is what is actually in the petition. The petition has three sections, all under "Effective Public Safety:
1. Minimum Standards and Resources (C, D, and E above)
2. Representative Community Policing (I don't see that)
3. Coordination of Oversight (B above)
So A is implied to be covered by these things.
Okay, let's look at what specifically is proposed for these three parts of the petition:
1. Minimum Standards and Resources
A. the employment of at least two sworn officers for every 1,000 residents
How does that differ from what we're doing now? Per Petition-Backed Measure To Mandate Police Staffing Will Go To Austin Voters (8/3/21) - 'The department currently has 1.7 officers for every 1,000 residents. ...The petition was a response to the Austin City Council’s decision to cut and reallocate $150 million from the police department last year. Save Austin Now argues the move led to a rash of violent crimes and the city's higher-than-average murder rate this year.
'...Opponents say Save Austin Now's ratio of officers to citizens is arbitrary because funding and staffing don't always equate to more safety. The benchmark was a suggestion from a 2012 study by a city-hired consultant.
'In a joint statement with members of the Austin Justice Coalition and the local chapter of the American Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees, former City Council Member Bill Spelman said the staffing ratio "isn't the best practice."
'"It was a rule of thumb applied in the past when APD was responding to more calls and more crimes than they are today," Spelman said. '
Per After This Weekend’s Triple Homicide, Austin’s 2021 Murders 53% Above Last Year (The Texan, 4/19/21), 'The Austin Police Department (APD) currently has 1.08 officers per 100,000 residents — well below the 2.5 per 100,000-target often used as a benchmark. There are currently 116 total vacancies and APD’s staffing level is below its 2010 amount despite having double the population.'
So what would have to change? Again, per Petition-Backed Measure To Mandate Police Staffing Will Go To Austin Voters (8/3/21), the rule-of-thumb of 2 officers per 1,000 residents that was suggested in a 2012 study by a city-hired consultant 'when APD was responding to more calls and more crimes than they are today,' would have to be applied forever.
B. full enrollment for no fewer than three full-term cadet classes for the department, until such time as the staffing levels for the department return to the levels prescribed in the 2019-2020 city budget
How is that different from what's going on now? Per APD Hits Pause on Police Academy Curriculum Review: Volunteer review committee expresses concern over stalled process (Austin Chronicle, 8/20/21), Austin is already trying to catch up on training new officers after improving the training. In fact, they started a new class before the new training was finished hoping the training would be able to stay one step ahead of the new recruits.
'The volunteers helping to "reimagine" the Austin Police Academy are sounding alarms after the Austin Police Department abruptly paused meetings of the academy curriculum and video review committees, saying that goals of each committee are unclear and that the workflow of each could be made more efficient.
'...criminal justice advocates urged Council to hold off on authorizing a new cadet class until the reviews were completed. Council ignored those pleas when they voted in May to start the 144th class in June. Now, it is unclear how much "reimagined" material cadets are actually learning ... because, in some cases, they are not meeting to provide feedback to APD on materials until just days before they are to be taught to cadets. In one instance, the committee reviewed a 500-slide presentation used to teach cadets about search and seizure – which, next to the use of force, is perhaps the greatest power police officers have – on a Wednesday, and the course was set to begin the following Monday. "It's unlikely that very much of what we said about search and seizure was implemented for the 144th cadet class, because there was practically no time to get that done," Mitchell said.
'...When Council adopted the budget, they approved funding for two more cadet classes – with the possibility of adding a third, shortened class open to individuals already licensed as peace officers elsewhere in Texas. Council also approved a budget rider from Council Member Ann Kitchen reiterating that the next cadet class will not begin until a review of the 144th class has been completed and Council votes for the next class to move ahead.
'Cadets in the 144th class are expected to graduate in January, and APD hopes the next class can begin in February.'
Per a href = "https://thetexan.news/after-this-weekends-triple-homicide-austins-2021-murders-53-above-last-year/">After This Weekend’s Triple Homicide, Austin’s 2021 Murders 53% Above Last Year (The Texan, 4/19/21) - 'The city council approved a $150 million budget cut last August and continues to suffer staffing shortages.
That included an initial termination of three cadet classes, which have since been given the green light to restart but have yet to begin.
'...City management is also in the process of hiring a permanent police chief to replace Brian Manley who retired last month after years of tension with the city council bent on fundamentally changing its police department and public safety policy more broadly.'
So it sounds to me like Austin is already working on doing this.
C. 40 hours per year of training beyond that required by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, with an emphasis on training outside a classroom setting that will equip the officers to handle evolving, fluid, dangerous situations and enhance their own safety and that of the public. The training will be developed by the commander of the department academy and emphasize skills essential to the everyday split-second decision-making officers face on the streets in areas such as critical thinking, defensive tactics, intermediate weapons proficiency, active shooter scenarios, and hasty react team reactions
How does that compare to what we're doing now? Per Austin tallied 44 homicides in 7 months. But as fingers point to why, a solution remains elusive (Austin American Statesman, 7/18/21), Austin has already responded by accelerating a violence intervention program. City Council Member Greg Casar explains '"gun violence prevention workers will be working face-to-face with neighbors, with community leaders in those neighborhoods, which are overwhelmingly Latino and Black parts of the city."
'...The city will dedicate $25 million over five years for violence reduction strategies, including the creation of the Office of Violence Prevention and its programs.
'In June, the city announced the hiring of a program manager Michelle Myles, who is the only staff member in the office right now. Casar said it's likely that the City Council will be able to take a vote to hire the needed staff for the program and deploy those dollars into gun violence prevention in the coming months.
'In the meantime, Austin police on Thursday announced an expansion of the program that will target gun crimes in the downtown entertainment district, where shootings have increased in recent months.
'...Austin police through the violence prevention initiative have seized 78 firearms and made 44 arrests related to illegal gun use.'
Per Gun Violence In Austin, Texas, Reflects Broader National Pattern (NPR, 7/24/21), Mayor Adler says, 'we're working with our police department and in greater collaboration with federal law enforcement agencies and then the prosecutors in the area, finding the illegal weapons, finding the trafficking patterns for those.'
D. enhance recruiting and retention
The proposition is to provide additional compensation or compensatory time for:
1. officers proficient in the five most common non-English languages spoken in the city, based on the most recent information available from the United States Census Bureau,
2. officers who participate in a mentoring program for cadets in the department academy, and
3. officers in good standing and eligible for an honorable conduct citation or equivalent recognition every fifth year.
What is different?
Per APD's Pay and Benefits page, there is already incentive pay of $175 for bilingual speakers. There is also an extra $175/month for Field Training Officers, which probably is not the same as a mentor; I do not see anything else for #2 or #3.
Per https://austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/922%20Awards%20and%20Commendations.pdf, an Honorable Conduct Citation is presented to employees with 10, 20, or 30 years of service, as long as the
employee is in good standing and recommended by their supervisor and 'a minimum amount of time must pass between a dishonorable event and consideration for the Citation,' such 6 months for a written reprimand, and 1 or more years for suspension, depending on how long that was. "Recipient will receive a medal, ribbon and certificate for 10 year award and subsequent star device and certificate for 20 and 30 year awards." No monetary award is mentioned.
2. Representative Community Policing
A. Work to recruit, hire and maintain a police force that reflects the racial, ethnic and gender diversity of the city.
What is different?
Per https://www.statesman.com/news/20161224/for-last-decade-police-had-more-whites-fewer-hispanics-than-city-has, Hispanics are underrepresented, but Austin already has a diversity working group "to make sure that the Police Department, the Fire Department and Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services are trying to attract a diverse pool of qualified candidates."
B. Establish a system that, to the extent practicable, ensures officers representative of, and proficient in the most common non-English languages spoken in, neighborhoods within the city regularly and consistently patrol those neighborhoods.
What is different?
I don't know. Per https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/General%20Orders.pdf, officers receive bilingual pay only if they actually "utilize their bilingual communication skills when requested by the Department.'
In other community policing news, per https://www.kvue.com/article/news/community/austin-police-community-policing-audit-city-2020/269-68b31ba4-034f-495f-aace-b4169d63adb4, "In 2016, APD hired Matrix Consulting Group (Matrix) to assess its community policing efforts. As a result, Matrix gave the department over 60 recommendations to improve those efforts. In August 2019, the City reported that APD had implemented 40 of those recommendations.'
An audit released in May 2020 found mixed results and determined that "APD needs: additional, more specific measures to determine whether organizational changes to support community policing efforts have been effective; a better process of documenting successful and unsuccessful community policing strategies; and a better process for involving and reporting to the community.
'...In its 2016 study, Matrix found APD officers didn't routinely engage the community outside of required services. Matrix set a specific goal for officers to have 35% to 45% of their time uncommitted, or not responding to calls, in the hopes they would have more time for community engagement.
'APD reported an increase in uncommitted time citywide from 22% in 2016 to 27% in 2018. But according to the audit, there are issues with the uncommitted time measure that prevent it from accurately representing the time officers can spend on community engagement, including that uncommitted time isn't available as a single block of time during an officer's shift and that officers have many responsibilities to complete beyond responding to calls.'
3. Coordination of Oversight
A. The mayor and council members, their assistants and members of their staffs, and the director of the office of police oversight must complete the Citizen Police Academy and participate in the Ride Along Program.
B. So do people appointed to the Public Safety Commission, the Community Police Review Commission, and their successor boards.
What is different?
It looks like these trainings are not currently required. The goal of the Citizen Police Academy 'is to educate the public about the Austin Police Department and to increase the rapport between citizens and police officers." It is 14-week, 56-hour course, currently suspended due to covid.
Per Texas Monthly, 'According to interviews with four students who’ve taken the CPA in the last four years, the program reinforced some participants’ sympathy and support for the police, particularly regarding situations when officers use lethal force. But students, including Nortey, said some of the classes also seemed to downplay community concerns about systemic racism and police brutality and that critical questions were met with defensiveness.'
The Ride Along Program 'is designed to give citizens a first-hand view of police work' and is required of all police officer candidates. It was also supsended due to covid but has been reinstated.
However, none of this has anything to do with the normal definitions of oversight.
The reason we would want oversight, transparency, and accountability is that "Too often, police departments and officers violate their role in the community and abuse their power by engaging in acts of excessive force; acting in an increasingly militarized capacity; abusing asset forfeiture policies; and routinely stopping and frisking entire communities, among other practices." - Transform the System.org They recommend such measures as civilian oversight; independent prosecuters to hold law enforcement officers accountable; requiring police departments (not just cities) to pay some of the fines from lost cases; reducing the standard for qualified immunity; policies that require police officers to provide their name, badge number, and an informative card on how to report complaints to people with which they interact; wearing body cameras with adequate privacy protections for the public; strengthening the right of civilians to record police interactions; and rewarding and incentivizing training in civil rights and de-escalation, stronger scrutiny of racial inequities and excessive force, and greater community accountability and oversight.
Open Gov Partnership.org recommends such measures as standardizing how data is collected and shared, involving citizens early when collecting data, making data accessible, organized, and following standards for ease of comparison.
The United Nations says 'accountability is defined as a system of internal and external checks and balances aimed at ensuring that police carry out their
duties properly and are held responsible if they fail to do so. Such a system is meant to uphold police integrity and deter misconduct and to restore or enhance public confidence in policing. Police integrity refers to normative and other safeguards that keep police from misusing their powers and abusing their rights and privileges.'
They recommend such measures as reliable statistics on police performance, related both to effectiveness in dealing with crime and public order, as well as to their integrity and public confidence; opportunities for the public to voice their concerns; priorities on how to deploy police capacity; monitoring of police actions and operations by both police leadership and external organs; complaints procedures, both for making complaints to the police directly and to independent bodies; fair and effective procedures and policies on how to deal with misconduct, including both disciplinary and criminal codes; adequate investigative capacity; procedures for punishment and appeal procedures; an independent body to oversee such procedures; and scrutiny and oversight involving feedback to the police in order to improve future activities and prevent future wrongdoings.
For more information:
* Group Behind Police Staffing Petition Sues City Of Austin Over Ballot Language (8/16/21) - The city changed the wording given in the petition trying to make it more accurate and got sued. See the original and edited version. The final version is the original plus a sentence about costs.
* Per Fact-check: Have police cuts in Austin led to a 'doubling of murder (Austin American Statesman, 6/14/21) - This claim is rated half true. 'The city recorded 19 murders in the first five months of 2020, and 33 murders in the same five-month span of 2021, which is a 74% increase.
However, experts say that because these crime totals are low numbers, using percent change comparisons can easily mischaracterize or distort increases.'
* "Austin's homicide, violent crime numbers go up, but may not mean what you think it means" (5/21/21, https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/austins-homicide-violent-crime-numbers-go-up-but-may-not-mean-what-you-think-it-means) - President of the Austin Police Association Ken Casaday says APD is understaffed and also blames the lack of prosecution of violent cases. 'But while the numbers are going up -- the crime *rate* may not be. That's because Austin's population is booming.'
* Per KUT's APD should follow national best practices on use of force and make guidelines clearer, watchdog says (10/13/21) - 'The Austin Police Department's policies governing when an officer can and can't use force don't align with Austinites' expectations, according to a new report from the city's independent police monitor.'
Examples:
* the department's policies don't explicitly ban officers from using chokeholds
* the department's policies don't explicitly require them to use de-escalation tactics
* the department's policies don't explicitly require them to intervene in cases of excessive force.
* 'APD's current guidelines to require an officer to warn someone before shooting them are "ambiguous." The office suggested APD's guidance for so-called less lethal uses of force were more detailed than its lethal-force policy.'
'"Far too many of APD's policies are unclear and unaligned with national best practices in policing," OPO Director Farah Muscadin said in a press release announcing the study results. "Our goal was to provide an opportunity for community members to share their concerns about APD's use of force policies and better align policies with community expectations and best practices."