October 2024 Police Contract
On Thursday October 24, City Council voted 10-1 FOR a police contract that threatens implementation of the APOA and costs an eye-popping $218M. The coalition of groups for this very expensive deal included RECA, the Chamber, the business group Downtown Austin Alliance, Gary Farmer’s Heritage Title and California-based glass tower owners Kilroy Properties. Between Tuesday’s work session and Thursday’s meeting at which Council voted, more than 250 Austinites testified, mostly in person. The nine hour hearing on October 24th featured vocal opposition from labor, environmental groups, social justice groups, parents, elders and residents of every district. It was quite literally the people vs big business. But this fight is NOT over. We are taking it forward in several ways. Check out our endorsements for City Council and vote your values!
https://equityactionatx.org/equity-action-2024-general-election-endorsements/
Here is some digested information about this contract and why we opposed.
Background Documents
Text of the Austin Police Oversight Act
Text of the Tentative Police Contract
Equity Action Legal Memo to City
Equity Action Proposed Changes and Appropriate Cost
Altamirano Critique of Budget Assumptions to Clear $218M Cost Without Deficit
After Court Ruling Manager Moves to Eliminate Secret Police File
Officers to get largest pay raise in decades, secrecy for police files reinstated
Police Union says proposed contract reinstates secret police file for all existing records
Police Union reverses and agrees that g-file not made secret by provision
Police Allow Officer to Resign Before Discipline, Files Still Kept from Public
Equity Action Letter to Council — Impact of the contract on the voter mandates including g-file
Ultimately, the police want to move forward even with a deeply unclear provision about the g-file, because they hope for a “change of venue” on the final decision. They lost with the voters. They lost with the courts. Now they hope this contract will let them take the dispute to a police union approved arbitrator, who will interpret the meaning based only on the words in this contract and not on the voter approved ordinance.
And there’s more. Developed in secret, the words on the page were not available for analysis until Sept. 26. With time to read it, other issues have emerged. The grievance provision will illegally allow police to take many issues with the voter approved ordinance to an arbitrator based on confusing language in the contract. Issues with the still not launched Commission, issues with the OPO’s investigatory authority and more.
For example, the contract says the officer’s statement and answers to questions are not included in the definition of “investigation,” a remarkable move with major implications for both the Office of Police Oversight and the Commission) and their ability to make recommendations about discipline — a core function of both entities.
The City MUST NOT vote for a contract that violates the voter mandates because the Charter prohibits any change to a voter approved ordinance in the first two years. The city wasted 18 months of that time simply ignoring the most important provisions of that voter approved law. Now that it is moving forward with implementation, this contract would illegally limit that implementation.
Cost of the Deal
AFSCME opposes contract, demands visibility into impact on other departments, other staff
33 Community Organizations Say Austin Values Demand No on Proposed Deal
Even worse, the city is about to pay $218 million for the privilege of again failing to hold officers to reasonable transparency and accountability standards.
$218M is so much money, it threatens the welfare of all other city workers and the continuation of programs and services that Austin loves and relies upon. This year, Council did not have enough money to fully fund critical public safety needs:
24/7 alternative response to mental health calls
Harm reduction for substance abuse
Emergency rental assistance and other services to prevent homelessness
Jobs and housing assistance for formerly incarcerated people
Next year, all this could be cut along with park maintenance, library hours and much more.
Community Investment Budget
With forty four endorsing and active participant organizations, Equity Action joined in a 2024 Community Investment Budget (CIB) collaboration. Together we asked Austin City Council to commit to prioritizing implementation of the climate and food plans, more EMS and mental health positions to fulfill the promise of a better response to mental health crisis, emergency rental assistance to prevent eviction, social services for those already unhoused, increased park staffing, a long-overdue increase for library materials, grants to community based service and arts organizations and much more.
Totaling about $79 million, this proposal represented a set of priorities for about 5.7% of general revenue and a vision for how the city should move forward in 2024-25. The coalition push last year faced huge headwinds from a recalcitrant Interim City Manager who governed like it was 1999. Now, a new permanent City Manager has been appointed, and despite predictions of a tight budget, we are already again seeing interest in the CIB from Council. This proposal, created collaboratively with so many of our Austin community organizations, could be mostly funded in the Manager’s “baseline budget” and we will push hard for every item. When will we address lengthening waitlists for library books, e-books and audio books? When — as our climate gets super-heated — are we going to save water by fixing those leaky pipes? And how are we going to continue to build out housing for the unhoused? The answers are NOW, NOW and by approving this community proposal.
See the full proposal here. El presupuesto completo en espanol esta aqui.
This year Equity Action built an even bigger Community Investment Budget Coalition. After a months-long collaboration, we are proud to lift up a proposal for Year 1 funding for the new Climate Equity Plan and the soon-to-be-approved Sustainable Food Plan (both getting finalized without a budget.)
And we are proud to identify themes across so many issues. For example, when something happens at night — a deadly overdose, a mental health crisis, a freeze, a flood — City response is hampered by closed facilities, lack of staff and poor communication. Historically, we papered over this problem by sending police to every kind of crisis because they are the staff we chose to have available 24/7. Instead, Austin is slowly migrating to a system that sends a response, even at night, that is better matched to the problem at hand. Our proposal also includes solutions to support and improve collaboration between flexible and resilient community based organizations that get out and deliver services 24/7 and city institutions that can provide a stable backbone for the work.
We’ve also noticed that city department budgets have lagged behind growth, and you can measure the problem in wait lists. If 1000 people wait months to borrow a book, we need more copies. If the wait list for emergency rental assistance or emergency child-care assistance has 7000 people on it, then we are not serving a measurable community need. If a migrant facing deportation cannot find legal help because every lawyer has a long waitlist, that family may lose a father or a mother. In Texas, that problem is likely to get worse in the next 12 months. We are proud to be in our third year of this collaboration, and we’ve learned a lot. This proposal is reasonable, responsible and compassionate. Let’s get it funded!
Press release and one page summary of Community Investment Budget with endorsing collaborators.
The Austin Police Oversight Act is now the law, or is it?
Equity Action has sued the City of Austin for failure to create the oversight system passed overwhelmingly by voters in May of 2023. On June 12, 2024, more than a year after the election, we finally got a hearing before a judge and we expect the judge to order the City to comply very soon.
Although it passed with nearly 80% of voters in support, and a watered down version backed by the police association failed by an even greater margin, the City of Austin has not implemented the law. Council has twice directed City Staff to implement the new law. Instead of greater accountability, it seems Austin has less accountability and less transparency than before. After a representative from the City Legal Department announced in a public meeting that the City had no intention of enacting certain critical provisions, we felt we had no choice but to sue — although we understood that was a long path. We have tried everything else.
A major issue — as described in the Austin Chronicle in December 2023 — is the “g file,” an optional secret file maintained by the police department into which go all records of actions that do not result in a suspension. Which is of course almost all of them, regardless of whether policy was violated or people were harmed. Most police departments do NOT have a g-file and operate just fine. The Public Information Act in multiple exceptions to disclosure protects material related to invalid allegations. No police departments without a g-file have an excess of transparency. But in agencies with a g-file, secrecy creates an incentive against appropriate discipline. Conduct that results in a suspension becomes public, so lesser or no discipline at all may be preferred in order to keep the conduct secret. The Austin Police Oversight Act declares that Austin shall not have one, and yet we still do.
Equity Action spent the summer 2022 gathering more than 33,000 signatures for a ballot measure that finally empowered our existing police oversight system. Our signatures were “validated” in September 2022 and the Austin City Council voted to put our ordinance on the May 2023 ballot. Despite a deceptive campaign by the police association to put a second ordinance — one with the same name, nearly the same caption, but very different content — on the same May ballot, voters overwhelmingly (80%/20%) voted FOR the REAL Austin Police Oversight Act and AGAINST the deceptive, disempowered version.
Find our Austin Police Oversight Explainer here!
If you still have questions, maybe our FAQ will answer them!
Full text of the new law here!
We believe that police brutality and misconduct are wrong and that police officers found to have done so should be appropriately disciplined, even if the act is not a crime. We know that police brutality and misconduct continue to be serious problems in the City of Austin, in part because too often police in Austin aren’t held accountable.
Now that must change.
The Austin Police Oversight Act gives the Office of Police Oversight (a city department reporting to the City Manager) unfettered access to the information it needs to review the facts of a complaint about police conduct, determine whether a full investigation is warranted and recommend next steps. The Director can also recommend the level of discipline, but the Office is merely advisory with respect to discipine. The final decision remains with the Chief.
The Office of Police Oversight will also become a repository of documents related to police conduct — including force data and public filings in lawsuits against the City over police conduct. A new consultant report estimated that lawsuits over police conduct have cost the city $70 million in recent years. Its time to shine light on the problem and fix it.
We believe police shouldn’t police themselves and Austin police — like most major departments — require external oversight to ensure accountability. We believe more records about police brutality and misconduct should become publicly accessible and records should no longer be permanently sealed — at least to the same extent that officer conduct records are public at the Sheriff’s department or DPS. But the police contract has always given police in Austin special rights, and for decades has failed to secure a strong and effective oversight system.
That’s why we created the Austin Police Oversight Act. It sets out what our oversight system can do and prevents a police contract from undermining it. For example, the new ordinance will give the Office of Police Oversight:
- unfettered access to body/dash camera video and 911 call audio,
- the ability to pose questions to witnesses
- the ability to identify additional witnesses who might have relevant information
- the right to determine whether an incident needs a full investigation based on its review of the evidence, and then participate in that investigation.
The Office of Police Oversight should be “eyes on the process” throughout the process and ensure that conduct that violates policy is met with appropriate discipline. Civilian oversight systems like the one we propose work to improve accountability in cities all across America. It is so common that there is a national association of civilian oversight systems and a detailed history about what has worked. Our Act is based on a careful evaluation of such models as well as the historic role the OPO has played in Austin in recent years.
The City recently claimed to have implemented 82% of the new law. It reached that assessment by redrafting the provisions, then claiming to have accomplished the reworked requirements. It claims to have almost completely implemented City Council’s most recent directive, known as Item 99, related to the new law by doing the same. Here is our side by side of Item 99’s requirements and the city’s rewritten provisions. And here is our side by side of the portions of the Austin Police Oversight Act where the City has claimed compliance by redrafting the requirements.