Williamson County in Texas, which includes a portion of the City of Austin, is requesting law-enforcement reinforcements after the Austin City Council voted to reduce the city’s police budget by one-third. Williamson County officials say the cuts to the Austin Police Department put more than 55,000 county residents “in great peril.”
Austin is located mainly in Travis County, but portions of the city stretch into Hays and Williamson Counties as well.
In a letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell laid out his concerns for the safety of his county’s residents:
In Williamson County, there are 55,385 residents that live within the city limits of Austin. I am concerned with these extreme budget cuts, that the citizens of the City of Austin within Williamson County will not remain protected at current levels.
Therefore, I am respectfully asking for your help as you are assigning State Troopers to fill in the void in law enforcement in Austin, that you would assign additional Troopers to work with our Williamson County Sheriff, Robert Chody, to protect our Austin area residents.
Gravell went on to say, “It is clear that the Austin City Council has abdicated their responsibility to protect their citizens and, in turn, citizens of Williamson County. I will not let politics get in the way of protecting the people.”
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Abbott blasted the city council’s decision and has promised that the Texas Department of Public Safety will “stand in the gap” to protect the city.
“Some cities are more focused on political agendas than public safety,” Abbott said in a statement responding to the city council’s actions. “Austin’s decision puts the brave men and women of the Austin Police Department and their families at greater risk, and paves the way for lawlessness.”
Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody informed Breitbart Texas that the city council’s decision will definitely negatively affect the police department’s ability to respond to crimes in the city. “Taking away replacement officers (the city council’s plan completely defunds three police academy classes and eliminates 150 vacant officer positions) only to be filled by other needed units that investigate or fight certain crime trends will certainly diminish services that will negatively impact [Williamson County] public safety.”
Austin City Council member Greg Casar said that the decision to cut the police budget was “born out of a lot of hurt in the community.”
Like many other American cities, Austin has been rocked with violence committed by Black Lives Matter and Antifa in the wake of the death of Minneapolis criminal George Floyd while in police custody in May. In July, the city was engulfed in more riots over the death of rioter Garrett Foster who, while brandishing an AK-47, approached the vehicle of U.S. Army sergeant Daniel Perry, who shot and killed Foster. Perry was not charged in the incident.
The Foster incident, along with the other related incidents, have set Austin on fire — in some cases, literally. And rather than take the chains off of their police department or calling in the National Guard to quell the violence, the City of Austin decided to surrender to the mob rather than stand up for its citizens.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler defended the council’s decision in a series of tweets in which he denied that the police department’s budget was being cut by $150 million before listing many of the ways that the department’s budget was, in fact, being cut.
$21.5 million saved by cutting three academy classes and not filling vacant positions would pay for housing for the homeless, a shelter for domestic violence victims, “mental health responders,” violence prevention programs, and increased EMS capacity. Those things may or may not be needed in Austin, but should not be paid for at the expense of police funding.
$49 million of the police cuts go to a nebulous “reimagining” of current department duties.
Meanwhile, in the last 15 years, Austin’s homicide rate has jumped an alarming 64.29 percent — the highest increase of any major American city over that time. How will reducing the police department’s ability to respond to such crimes help improve that grisly statistic?
Austin is just another example of a leftist city that has utterly caved in to the ongoing tantrums by the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter movement and its communist cronies in Antifa. When will the leftist politicians learn that such capitulation only emboldens the criminal element who engage in these terrorist tactics?
Or maybe they already know what they’re doing, and are simply playing their part in order to destroy their own cities.
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James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects. He can be reached at [email protected].
