It's Official: APD Chief of Staff to Take Reins at UTPD

David Carter

University of Texas officials said Tuesday that Austin Police Department Chief of Staff David Carter is the pick to take on the job of top cop at the UT Police Department. Carter has accepted the job and will take over in June.

Carter, a 27-year department veteran, will take the reins from retiring UTPD Chief Robert Dahlstrom, also a former APD chief of staff before taking on the chief job at UT.

Carter got the nod of the chief selection committee after face-to-face interviews with four top notch candidates for the job, selection committee chair, professor Michael Lauderdale, who also chairs the city's Public Safety Commission, said. Among the finalists was another from APD, Assistant Chief Raul Munguia, along with a female candidate from the Los Angeles PD and the chief of police at Miami University of Ohio.

After the interviews, Lauderdale said the committee had to think carefully about what UT would want, and need, in its next chief. Among those qualities, Lauderdale wrote in an email to his colleagues, would be a candidate with unassailable integrity, a readiness to take on the 365-day-per-year job, and experience at every level of policing with "experience at successfully higher levels of responsibility in police administration," among other qualities. In the end, Carter got the nod of the committee, which recommended him to Vice President Pat Clubb and on to UT President Bill Powers.

Dahlstrom officially leaves his post May 31; Carter will take over sometime in June.