Nearly 300 people attended Monday night’s meeting of the Heritage Neighborhood Association, an astonishing turnout, but for the fact that the preliminary subject was the New Year’s Day murder of Esme Barrera, and the Austin Police Department response to and investigation of the crime.
HNNA President Paula Brown – who had adapted a previously scheduled NA meeting, held at the Lutheran church at 30th & Whitis, to accommodate all comers – welcomed the somber crowd, alerted by social media and eager to hear what the APD had to report about its investigation of the crime. There was not much new in the presentation – the investigation remains very fresh, and some details about the crime itself are being withheld to protect the investigation – but the meeting served to allay some fears and rumors, to answer questions from bereaved and worried residents, and to provide an overview of the circumstances.
Cmdr. Julie O’Brien led a delegation of a half-dozen police officers, and told the audience that while no possibilities are being excluded during the investigation, APD currently has no evidence that two other attacks on women which occurred nearby that night are related to Barrera’s death, except by time. Police are still processing evidence and pursuing leads – she said police have documented some 250 tips arriving from all sources, and are working their way through the list.
Officers want to “speak to” the person represented by the composite forensic drawing from a nearby attack victim, now distributed throughout the city, but O’Brien carefully avoided calling him or anyone a “suspect” in Barrera’s murder; she said investigators simply don’t know enough yet, and she welcomed the continued interest and vigilance of people in the neighborhood. She also took pains to discount an Internet-circulated graphic of a half-dozen additional composites concerning recent crimes that might resemble the one recently circulated, saying those other composites have no connection to the New Year’s crimes, portray different suspects, and that only the single composite circulated in connection with the one assault has any direct relevance to that night’s events.
O’Brien had begun to answer questions when APD Chief Art Acevedo suddenly appeared, alerted earlier by O’Brien in response to the large crowd. Acevedo deferred most specific questions about the investigation to his officers, but said the department “will not rest” until it finds Barrera’s murderer. He urged the crowd to take seriously the matter of crime prevention – Austin is generally such a safe city, he said, that residents can be lulled into complacency, but that precautions are always necessary, particularly at night. He counseled women not to run or walk alone at night – and was quickly corrected by the crowd to warn men as well – and to be alert of their surroundings at all times, and to report unusual circumstances to police. “If you see something, say something.”
In response to a question about the police response to emergency calls, Acevedo said the current average response time is seven to seven-and-a-half minutes, which can be “an eternity” if you’re under attack or in a home invasion. Acevedo turned to a favorite subject: more officers are needed, he believes, to bolster Austin’s current percentage of 2.0 officers per thousand residents. “The national average is 2.4,” he said, “and the average for cities above 500,000 population is 2.7.” (It would require 450 new hires, he said, to meet the national average.) He urged the audience to get involved at city budget time, when such issues are addressed – indirectly recalling the heated discussion of the issue last fall, when Council Member Bill Spelman suggested that APD’s resources might not be exclusively focused on the “2.0 per thousand” ratio. (See “One Cop, Two Cops … How Many New Cops,” Sept. 23, 2011.)
Acevedo did not mention that cities with much higher officer/resident ratios do not necessarily have lower serious crime rates. In any event, this was not an audience nor a moment likely to contemplate fewer cops, as many of crowd’s subsequent questions (for Acevedo, O’Brien, and other officers) explicitly or implicitly criticized APD’s response on the night of the murder and questioned whether the police resources were either sufficient or sufficiently mobilized after the initial report of an (interrupted) assault on King Street, near where and shortly before Barrera was murdered. Acevedo said the responding officer was searching the neighborhood for the attacker when the murder report came in, and was the first to respond to that call. Nevertheless, some people questioned whether one initial officer was enough, whether he should have searched on foot instead of driving through the neighborhood, and whether (as proposed by one subsequent TV report) he should have stopped and written a full report instead of relying of APD’s computer dispatch.
After Acevedo departed, O’Brien said that the officer had responded properly, but that the department is reviewing all options and considering whether its protocols need any revision, and specifically whether a more immediate report would have helped. (She said investigators had even debated whether to distribute the composite from the nearby assault or an indecent exposure incident a week earlier – because there are no certain connections to the murder – but decided on publicizing as much information as possible.) The range of audience questions reflected lingering shock and anger at Barrera’s murder – it was clear some close friends were on hand – and an understandable urge to believe that something might have been done that night to prevent Barrera’s death, or at least to immediately apprehend her murderer.
One person asked why helicopters and “tracking dogs” were not used that night in the search – O’Brien said they’re not always available, and that dogs aren’t necessarily useful in a heavily trafficked neighborhood. (Asked the same question, Acevedo said he’s trying to get more helicopters, and that “bloodhounds” are provided by a volunteer group and aren’t available on immediate demand.) One woman asked if it were possible and what it would cost to place surveillance cameras throughout the entire neighborhood – without commenting on the advisability of such a project, an officer said that digital memory is the big expense, and based on the department’s experience Downtown, $300,000 to $400,000 is a rough estimate. One person asked why more than a single officer was not dispatched to the initial assault report, and O’Brien said that without more information of an ongoing assault, the numbers depend on the known circumstances. Another man asked if the department’s holiday focus on DUI arrests diminished its officers for other problems, and was told that the DUI task force is drawn from additional officers on overtime and does not dilute other assigned staffing.
After about 90 minutes, it was time for neighborhood association to hold its own meeting – to be devoted, Brown said, to neighborhood safety issues. There were still plenty of hands, and questions, in the air – most to be answered by the ongoing investigation, others delayed to Feb. 7, when the APD will hold its next Region 1 commanders’ forum. Meanwhile, the Chronicle will feature more on the crime and the investigation in this week’s Jan. 13 issue.
This article appears in 2011.
