Excessive Force Has Increased, NAACP Leader Says

Just over a year after the U.S. Department of Justice closed its book on a complaint about excessive force and other issues at the Austin Police Department, Nelson Linder of the Austin NAACP and Jim Harrington with the Texas Civil Rights Project have asked the DOJ to reopen the case, alleging that excessive force is still a major problem within the APD.

Linder says that although the DOJ made 160 recommendations for improvements at APD – including that the language in its use-of-force policy be clarified and strengthened (which has apparently happened to the DOJ's satisfaction) – most of those recommendations haven't been fully implemented. "The problem is, when you recommend 160 policy changes the issue is always going to be enforcement," he says. "You could give us 1,000 recommendations, but that only matters if they're enforced." To that end, he says he's hoping the DOJ will revisit its Austin inquiry and file civil litigation against the city that would result in a consent decree – a binding settlement agreement between the feds and the department that would ensure that certain departmental failings will be addressed.

Indeed, Linder says he believes that since the DOJ closed the case on May 27, 2011, excessive use of force by APD against Austin's minority residents has actually worsened since he and Harrington filed the complaint in 2004, and even more so since the DOJ began its inquiry in 2007. "The excessive force has actually increased," he says. He points specifically to the May 2011 killing of Byron Carter, who was shot while a passenger in a car driven by a 16-year-old who Officer Nathan Wagner said he believed would run over him and his partner, Officer Jeffrey Rodriguez. Car­ter was shot five times; the teen driver survived, and a Travis County grand jury later declined to indict him on any criminal charges.

Linder further points to the April shooting death of Ahmede Bradley, who fled from Officer Eric Copeland after having been pulled over, reportedly for a noise violation. Bradley fled on foot and Copeland gave chase. The two ended up in a fight on a neighborhood lawn; Bradley tried to strangle Copeland with the cord to his shoulder mic, police say, and Copeland shot Bradley, killing him. Both shootings raise troubling questions about how APD polices minority residents, Linder says. Indeed, he points out that in the wake of the Bradley shooting he asked APD Chief Art Acevedo to review the department's foot-pursuit policy, but nothing has changed. Yet in the uproar after the shooting of Cisco the dog, the department has changed the way it deals with animal encounters. Isn't a man's life worth as much as a dog's, Linder asks?

Frankly, says Acevedo, he finds the latest complaint frustrating. He inherited the DOJ investigation, and a "department in need of some reform," when he was hired in July 2007, and embraced it, he says – something that other cities have not done. He says he has adopted all of the DOJ recommendations, and he notes that in the wake of the investigation, the APD is "held up as a beacon of reform around the state and the country – everywhere except here." Ulti­mate­ly, he says, he believes that Linder and Harrington are "looking for a magic pill that would eliminate officer-involved shootings," and if one existed, he says, he'd definitely take it. "But that pill doesn't exist." He notes that the DOJ has already looked at the Carter shooting – they requested information for review, and APD readily provided it, he says. As for the Bradley shooting, Acevedo says Linder and Harrington have ignored the fact that Bradley was exhibiting "violent aggression" toward Cope­land that prompted eyewitnesses in the northeast Austin neighborhood where the shooting happened to call 911, asking that help be sent for the officer whose life they believed was in jeopardy.

Acevedo says he'll wait to see what the DOJ has to say about this complaint, but he suggests working on the root causes of crime and putting concerted effort into dealing "with the circumstances in communities that lead children into a life of crime," he says. "That's what we should be focusing on."