Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis has reshaped the executive team at the Austin Police Department.
Six of the seven assistant chiefs who currently serve on Davis’ executive team are on their way out of the building following a job re-application process initiated by the chief, an APD spokesperson has confirmed to the Chronicle. Not all of the departing assistant chiefs wanted to leave.
Assistant chiefs Jeff Greenwalt and Gizette Gaslin re-applied for their jobs but did not make the cut. ACs Eric Miesse and Eric Fitzgerald opted for retirement rather than re-applying for jobs they already held, while Lee Rogers and James Mason both re-applied successfully. Robin Henderson, who stepped aside as interim chief when City Council confirmed Davis in August to serve as Davis’ chief of staff, will stay on in that role.
“It is not uncommon when a new chief takes the helm for them to reevaluate the assistant chiefs already in place,” the department spokesperson said in a statement. “Chief Davis thoughtfully considered the thoughts and ideas of each candidate while also reflecting on the community … she looked for individuals who truly align with her vision – whose unique skill sets complement one another, and whose proposed ideas are realistic and can be readily implemented.”
Greenwalt and Gaslin are now retiring. Though both have spent their entire careers at APD, Gaslin has mostly stayed out of the headlines as she was promoted up the chain of command. In the early 2000s, as a patrol officer, Gaslin was selected as one of seven officers to pilot a neighborhood policing program in North Austin. In 2023, she was the AC who signed off on an internal investigation into an APD commander accused of sexually assaulting a civilian employee within the department (the commander resigned one day before he was set to be fired following the investigation).
Greenwalt’s time in APD leadership has been a bit more eventful, however. Last year, he was subject to an outside investigation after Chronicle reporting revealed that he had texted a former employee within the Travis County District Attorney’s Office asking her to “anonymously share” stories about the office. APD leadership has had a fractured relationship with DA José Garza since he was elected in 2020, and the DA viewed Greenwalt’s overture as an attempt to gather damaging information while Garza was campaigning for re-election. The outside investigation deemed that the allegations were unfounded, according to an APD spokesperson.
Throughout 2023, Greenwalt was pushing behind the scenes for massive changes to the process that follows the arrest of someone in Austin. Currently, the process is a joint effort between the city and the county, but a plan pushed along by Greenwalt would have given the city – and, primarily, APD – more control over the process. Stakeholders in the county, in the courthouse, and at the city were skeptical throughout, and the plan never got off the ground.
Meanwhile, Davis has promoted Commander Mike Chancellor, Executive Lieutenant Angie Jones, and Lieutenant Sheldon “Scott” Askew to AC positions. All three have had lengthy tenures at APD, though neither Chancellor nor Jones have been in the news much.
Askew has made headlines, however. Notably, he was involved in the first murder trial for former Austin Police Officer Christopher Taylor, who shot and killed Michael Ramos while on duty in 2020. Prosecutors revealed that Askew and Taylor were family members and that Askew not only worked in the specialized unit tasked with investigating officers accused of criminal conduct at the time that Taylor was investigated, but that he was one of the first people to talk with Taylor after the fatal shooting. (Askew recused himself from the investigation into Taylor; that trial ended with a hung jury and the charge was eventually dropped, though Taylor was later convicted of deadly conduct for a separate fatal shooting in 2019.)
In 2021, per the Statesman, Askew also offered testimony at a contract arbitration hearing between the city and the Austin Police Association. There, he alleged that the Office of Police Oversight (the civilian agency tasked with investigating officers accused of misconduct) overstepped its investigative authority. The arbitration process resulted in a ruling that severely weakened OPO, which served as one of the catalysts for police oversight advocates to write and pass the Austin Police Oversight Act into local law.
Speaking of the leadership changes overall, the department spokesperson said that Davis’ “expectations for executive management are clear: leaders in our Department must foster a positive environment that promotes mutual trust, respect, honesty, compassion, hard work, and integrity – qualities these individuals exemplify.”
This article appears in May 2 • 2025 and April 25 • 2025.