Massively defunded Austin Police officers to stop responding to non-emergency calls
AUSTIN, TX October 10 2021– With a staffing crisis adversely affecting the Austin Police Department, and also being one year removed from the city council’s vote to defund the police budget by up to $150 million, officials have announced that sworn police officers will no longer be responding to non-emergency calls.
However, not all non-emergency calls will be devoid of some sort of physical response, as Austin Police officials have confirmed that certain calls may result in civilian police employees being dispatched – such as crime scene technicians for evidence collection purposes.
Starting in October, those reporting non-emergencies in Austin can expect to not see a sworn Austin Police officer responding.
Such instances would be reported burglaries that are not actively in progress and/or the suspect has left, and vehicular collisions not resulting in injury.
In these instances, and others like them, instead of Austin residents calling 911, they’re being directed to call 311 to file a non-emergency report.
An Austin Police spokesperson told Fox News that the department “regularly reviews response policies and procedures to ensure APD prioritizes calls with an immediate threat to life or property over non-emergency calls for service.”
The spokesperson named the aspects that influenced the decision on call prioritization for sworn officers:
“As a result of a recent review of APD’s patrol COVID mitigation protocols initiated in May 2020, recent staffing challenges and aligning with the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force patrol response recommendations, APD will change call routing and response for non-emergency calls for service effective October 1, 2021.”
Staffing issues have been long running with the Austin Police department, according to Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday. He stated that it has been nearly two years since Austin Police has had a police academy and there simply aren’t enough officers to respond to these non-emergency calls:
“Probably about 95% of the time our shifts don’t meet minimum staffing…and that is the reason they’ve started cutting back on what types of calls are answered.
It’s not optimal. It’s not providing a quality service to the community. But the community also needs to understand that we’re under a dire staffing crisis.”
Back in August of 2020, the Austin City Council voted to cut the police budget by up to $150 million, a figure that represented over a third of the Austin Police budget – opting to reinvest that money into other public services.
The department has since been somewhat refunded after last year’s cuts, but that refunding has yet to kick in and not every unit cut has been reestablished.
Austin Councilmember Mackenzie Kelly laid blame to “the previous council’s disastrous actions to reimagine public safety,” with respect to the active staffing crisis impacting the Austin Police Department:
“The officers today are overworked and continue to be short-staffed which leads to increased response times across the city. We need to add additional funding to immediately correct this failure for the safety of our city.”
Charles Wilkison, who serves as the Executive Director of Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, mirrored the sentiments Councilmember Kelly, noting that if more funding isn’t directed to the police budget, the staffing crisis will continue to grow:
“The whimsical reimagining of the police department has normalized violence and murder in a once safe and admired city.”
