State Police Partnering With APD Mostly Arresting People of Color
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By Austin Sanders, Fri., May 5, 2023
Four weeks into the Austin Police Department and Texas Department of Public Safety partnership, records show that virtually all of the arrests made by DPS troopers have been for misdemeanor offenses, most of which occurred in East Austin, with a disproportionate number of them made against Black and Latino Austinites. Neither APD nor DPS has said how many violent crime arrests have been made as a result of the partnership, which has been dubbed the Austin Violent Crime Task Force.
At City Council's May 2 work session, DPS Director Steve McCraw said that the agency has deployed 80 additional troopers and 20 special agents into Austin, each assigned a 12-hour shift. DPS data shows that those troopers have made nearly 12,000 traffic stops since the deployment began March 30 (in 2022, DPS made a total of 18,743 stops in Travis County for the entire year); about 6.5% of those stops resulted in arrest, with even fewer – around 4% – resulting in felony arrests.
Data provided by the Travis County Attorney's Office (TCAO) covering the first three weeks of the partnership shows that the misdemeanor arrests made by troopers have shown consistent racial disparity. White people accounted for just 12% of arrests, even though white residents make up about 48% of Travis County's population. Black Austinites accounted for 23% of arrests and Latinos 65%, even though they account for 9% and 33% of the county's population, respectively.
The disparities could be explained partly by location data obtained from the TCAO via a public information request that shows a majority of the arrests occurred near I-35 or east of it – and none west of MoPac. Most of the arrests occurred in City Council Districts 3 and 4, where most of the city's Latino population is concentrated (44% in D3 and 59% in D4). Few occurred in D1 and D2, where the largest share of Black and Latino Austinites live, respectively.
"None of my constituents are surprised by the disparity numbers," D1 Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison said at the May 2 work session. "It's shocking but not surprising. They're accustomed to this kind of disparate treatment."
APD Chief Joseph Chacon said "DPS has indicated a willingness" to shift their deployment strategy (which McCraw said multiple times has always been directed by APD), so "we are not having a disparate impact on our communities of color." Chacon said they're just sending troopers where the data shows police are needed – i.e., where the most urgent calls for service are originating from – and that happens to be also where most of the city's minority population resides.
The Chronicle records request also produced a spreadsheet on citations issued by DPS, compiled by Judge Nick Chu in Justice of the Peace Court 5, who coordinates administrative duties for all five JP courts. The data shows a massive increase in the number of citations issued by DPS compared to last year; from April 1 to 18, 2022, troopers issued 534 citations for class C misdemeanors (those only punishable by a fine) in Travis County, but during that same period this year, they issued 1,360 – a 155% increase. The increase in citations issued for offenses eligible under the county's "cite and release" program established by JP5 to prevent arrests for low-level, nonviolent offenses like shoplifting, possession of marijuana, or driving while license invalid, was even more striking: one issued in that 2022 time frame and 161 in 2023. Most of these cases will be dismissed.
It is unclear how many of these citations were for offenses related to driving behavior (moving violations) versus compliance violations related to paperwork, like driving without a license or insurance. In an email also obtained through the records request, Chu wrote that the "vast majority of these traffic tickets" are for compliance offenses. At Council's work session, McCraw explained that troopers do not have any discretion in issuing citations for compliance issues, but they do have discretion when it comes to moving violations. If a trooper pulls someone over who was driving without insurance, they have to issue a citation. But if they pull someone over for speeding or running a red light – the kind of violation that causes traffic fatalities and is actually a threat to public safety – they can just issue a warning.
What about violent crime? At the work session, APD Chief Data Officer Jonathan Kringen shared data showing a continued decrease citywide, but he also issued a word of caution before walking through his report. "I'm going to acknowledge that these are not the comparisons that ultimately lead you to a statistical conclusion of causality that suggests that the DPS deployment has caused a reduction in violent crime and violent crime calls for service," he said. With that caveat aside, Kringen walked Council through a chart showing the variability in crime rates. They go up and down throughout the year based on a variety of factors, but the chart he shared appears to show violent crime rates increasing before the DPS deployment and then decreasing during it.
CM Chito Vela was unconvinced that showed a causal link, however. "I am very hesitant to make any kind of conclusions based on 30 days of data," he said, "when we're talking about something as volatile and as difficult to track as crime data." Moreover, the conversation about public safety strategies should not always be about the methods used to reduce crime – it should include discussion about the social costs of those methods. Increased police patrols likely do decrease crime rates, but at what cost to the people subjected to increased police presence?
"I would ask that we're sensitive to the collateral consequences of targeted patrol in minority neighborhoods," Vela added. "We're seeing young kids pick up felony cases, get their cars towed, and these are major events and can be quite damaging for the folks involved."
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