Watson: Resumed law enforcement partnership to avoid 'making some people feel like their communities are being over-policed'

Local Government
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Austin Mayor Kirk Watson | City of Austin

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson assured residents over the weekend the resumption of the partnership between the Austin Police Department (APD) and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) will avoid “making some people feel like their communities are being over-policed,” according to a report from Austin CBS affiliate KEYE.

“[The] police department is badly, badly understaffed, and one of the things we want to do to assure the safety of the citizens of Austin to do something that helped us with our staffing,” Watson said in the report. “The goal being to make Austin safer but also recognize we don’t want to do something that has the undesirable effect of making some people feel like their communities are being over-policed.”

The partnership between the two law enforcement agencies was paused in May after the Trump era Title 42 expired, and DPS was called upon to assist at the U.S.’s southern border with Mexico, Austin Journal reported.

According to KEYE, Watson said the goal is to make the state capital safer, with Austin City Councilwoman Vanessa Fuentes adding APD will oversee the initiative. The mayor said a significant change to the partnership includes the shift of DPS’s scope from areas with the most 911 calls to places that register high traffic injuries and fatalities. Per KEYE, Fuentes said this was how the partnership should’ve been implemented to begin with.

Austin FOX affiliate KTBC reported that the collaboration isn’t without its critics, one of them being activist Chase Wright. Wright told the station that the homeless population in East Austin suffered more trauma as a result of the DPS presence. Per KTBC, an analysis of the six-week initiative revealed that people of color (POC) accounted for 90% of the arrests during the window.

Austin Journal reported that Austin Chief of Police Joseph Chacon said the partnership accomplished what it had set out to do in its original phase. Austin City Councilwoman Mackenzie Kelly said public input is the basis for changes made in how APD and DPS jointly operate, KTBC reported.