The New Police Chief Was Respected in Cincinnati. Will Austin Feel the Same?

Lisa Davis fielding questions from the public before being selected (photo by Katherine Irwin)

Lisa Davis is now Austin’s chief of police.

Davis, a 32-year veteran of the Cincinnati Police Department, was confirmed by a unanimous City Council vote on Tuesday, Aug. 6 (Council Member Mackenzie Kelly missed the vote, due to a medical emergency).

Davis will be just the second woman to serve as the Austin Police Department’s permanent chief (Robin Henderson, a 26-year APD veteran who served as interim chief, will soon retire). This will also be the first time that an outsider has led APD since Art Acevedo took the reins of the department in 2007. To say she is headed to APD’s Fifth Floor at a troubling time in the department’s history is an understatement, as they struggle to hire the number of officers the department is budgeted for, as broad swaths of the community press for more accountability and oversight, and as relationships with prosecutors remain strained.

But stakeholders around the city are hopeful Davis is up to the task. “No pressure,” Mayor Kirk Watson said from the dais after the former CPD assistant chief’s confirmation vote. “The entire city is counting on you for that new set of eyes and new leadership.”

As is the case with any big-city police chief, Davis will be pulled in different directions by the various stakeholders she’ll have to contend with as she tries to meet their needs. There’s City Manager T.C. Broadnax, her boss, and the city’s 11 City Council members, who serve as his boss. On the advocate level, Davis will have to navigate the often opposing interests of the Austin Police Association, the labor organization that represents APD’s rank-and-file officers, and the city’s numerous criminal justice reform groups.

Michael Bullock, APA president, and Chas Moore, executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, have both signaled cautious optimism around Davis’ hire. “I appreciate that [Davis] has been very direct and honest with me,” Bullock said. “All officers really want is someone who’s not going to come in and immediately change everything, someone that’s going to come in and listen and hear out their concerns and then work towards the solutions.”

Moore said he thinks Davis was the better choice of the two finalists, even if he wishes the overall process had been more robust and produced a longer list of qualified candidates. “I like that she talked about expanding our definition of public safety to include more than just policing,” Moore said, referencing remarks Davis shared at a private meeting convened between community leaders and the two chief finalists. “I’m looking forward to seeing if she actually stands on that.”

Already, Davis is walking into a situation where these two key stakeholders want her to move in opposite directions. The top concern for Bullock and the APA remains staffing and, he says, the only way to address that problem is using more of the city’s budget to increase officer compensation. But to truly support alternatives to policing, Moore says, the city should devote less of its budget to the police department and more to community-based programs that can improve public safety.

To better understand how Davis might work with justice advocates and the police union, we tracked down Moore and Bullock’s counterparts in Cincinnati to ask.

Daniel Hils began his CPD career in 1987 (Davis started in 1992). He was elected president of the department’s union in 2015, a role he served in until last year. Most of Hils’ direct experience with Davis came when she was a captain in the district that includes Cincinnati’s downtown area and he was union president.

Hils feels Davis is capable of navigating the often competing interests of activists and union leaders. “When you’ve got tension between City Hall, community groups, and police, there is no magic button that can fix things,” Hils said. “But I can fully guarantee she will start moving things in a better direction.” (For the record, Hils was a major booster of Davis in her failed bid to become CPD’s chief in 2022, and he says he backed her because his rank-and-file officers did.)

Davis emphasizes listening to officers at every rank. At a press conference Aug. 6, she said her approach to resolving the tensions that have existed between City Hall and APD – primarily the result of City Council members being pulled in different directions by activists and APA – would be “just sitting down, one on one, and talking.”

It’s not just Hils, the union boss, who thinks Davis may succeed on this front. Iris Roley is in a good position to judge, too. She has been on the front lines battling for police reform in Cincinnati for two decades. In 2001, as a leader with the Cincinnati Black United Front, Roley helped win a federal lawsuit against the city that resulted in a historic agreement between the city, police union, and civil rights groups that aimed to improve policing in Cincinnati. Refreshed in 2018, the plan is still in effect today.

“I hesitate to give away credit to people who were sued in federal court to force them to improve,” Roley told the Chronicle. Still, she appreciates the way CPD has embraced a “problem-oriented” approach to policing – including through the use of a model known as SARA: Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment. Broadly, these approaches seek to deploy preventive solutions to crime that don’t always rely on law enforcement.

“I know that Davis, as captain, worked on these efforts in her district,” Roley said. “Dealing with people who advocate for their community is a gentle balance. ... Davis was able to navigate her way around that.”

But Roley also focused in on the central dynamic that makes the big-city police chief job so difficult, politically – a dynamic that has also been central to the struggle around achieving reform in Austin, too. “I do believe that Davis is progressive,” Roley said. “But changing police culture to be more progressive is difficult. You can have people hear the message but not implement it. She will have to work hard for continuous improvement.”