Austin police and court officials are moving forward with a pilot program that would allow the city to completely run initial bail hearings for some arrests – a process that has been a city of Austin and Travis County collaboration for years – and now we know a little more about what it will look like.
The “virtual magistration” pilot program – that is, ability for the Austin Police Department and Austin Municipal Court to conduct bail hearings completely virtually and independently of the county – could launch in as soon as two months, though stakeholders know little about what it will look like. When the Chronicle discovered the plan through a public records request and first broke the story online last week, APD hadn’t met about city-run magistration with the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, which runs Central Booking, and stakeholders worried that the mostly quiet plan could lead to more expensive bonds and more people jailed in the county. In an interview, APD Chief of Staff Jeff Greenwalt said it’s all about cost savings and that APD has no ulterior motive in rolling out the pilot, as some have speculated. “A lot of people are assuming the wrong thing or just don’t think we’re being quite honest,” Greenwalt told the Chronicle.
Greenwalt referred specifically to fears that the pilot program would provide an avenue for patrol officers to circumvent the arrest review policies implemented by Travis County and the district attorney to prevent unnecessary jail stays. He said officers can already get around arrest review if they want by delivering their probable cause affidavits (PCA) directly to the municipal judges who conduct magistration hearings – rather than giving it to the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, who then supplies it to county attorney and D.A. staff for review. (It’s unclear how often this happens, but prosecutors will eventually review all PCAs and can dismiss any case.)
“But bottom line is if we can virtually magistrate [arrestees] before we book them into jail,” Greenwalt said, “we don’t have to pay Travis County anything at all. It would be a tremendous cost savings for taxpayers.” Currently, the city pays Travis County about $7 million a year to book people arrested by Austin police officers into jail. City officials learned this summer that the county would be increasing the price of their services by $2.6 million. The city had already been working on a virtual magistration plan, but seeing the new price tag pushed them to start working with the City Council-appointed municipal judges on the pilot in earnest.
What is that extra $2.6 million paying for? A County spokesperson said the contract amount hasn’t increased since 2020, but magistration costs have. The increase would cover expenses the county has been covering, including changes to mental health services and recruitment efforts at TCSO to improve staffing at the jail. Part of what the city pays the county for are various “pretrial services” that can help people obtain personal recognizance bonds ($0 bonds), which keep people out of jail who don’t need to be there. When someone is arrested and brought to Travis County’s Central Booking facility, they undergo a variety of interviews and screenings to help judges make more informed decisions about whether a $0 bond is appropriate.
As we reported last week, prosecutors and defense attorneys alike are concerned that the APD plan could result in less robust magistration. “Stakeholders and local elected officials are moving in a direction where judges would have better and more information at hearings,” Bradley Hargis, executive director of Capital Area Private Defender Service, the local nonprofit that provides defense attorneys to indigent clients, told us. “Based on what we know, this plan will move us in the opposite direction.”
“A lot of people are assuming the wrong thing or just don’t think we’re being quite honest.” – APD Chief of Staff Jeff Greenwalt
Greenwalt is confident, however, that the city will still be able to provide the same level of screenings and assessments that the county does – and at a lower cost – but he’s not sure yet who will actually perform that work. “It’s probably going to have to involve city staff,” Greenwalt said, “but we’re still working out the details. That’s one of the reasons why we plan to launch the pilot in late fall or early January.”
The pilot will begin with two shifts (about 10 officers in total) processing arrests for “simple” offenses through virtual magistration. Greenwalt did not define what constitutes a simple arrest, but said it will not include complicated cases like family violence or driving while intoxicated, both of which require more time and paperwork to process. The pilot will begin with the Downtown day shift, because arrests made by those officers are typically near APD headquarters and are for offenses that “require less communication with judges.”
Greenwalt also reaffirmed what a department spokesperson told us last week – the pilot will not require the city to open a new jail. But, Greenwalt acknowledged, people under arrest and undergoing virtual magistration will have to be held in APD custody for longer. “On a quick and easy charge, it could be just an extra 10 minutes in a patrol vehicle on the scene where they’re arrested,” Greenwalt said. “On a more complicated case, we might have to go back to headquarters and let them sit in an interview room where it’s more comfortable.”
But, as with any pilot program, the goal is to see if the plan can be expanded. “If we move forward and invite all officers to do this on every single arrest, we may look at some sort of temporary arrest processing facility – not a detention center.” Such a facility would be air-conditioned and provide bathroom access, Greenwalt said, but it would not be a jail because it would only be used to hold people for “one or two hours max while we do paperwork.” Then they would be transferred to jail (how that would work is among the details to be worked out). “Once you get into the detention center business,” Greenwalt said, “it’s a whole extra cost and can of worms.”
Council members tell us they knew little about the plan and want to know more before it proceeds. We contacted every City Council office to ask about the proposed pilot. Most offices did not respond to our interview requests, but those that did said they had little or no awareness of the program before our story was published and that they wanted to know more before commenting on any details.
“I want a presentation about this to some degree,” Council Member Mackenzie Kelly, who serves as vice chair of Council’s Public Safety Committee, told us. “It should come before PSC, at the very least, because we handle municipal court issues.” Mayor Kirk Watson, who chairs the PSC, did not respond to our interview requests.
Assistant City Manager Bruce Mills would not commit to a Council briefing. “We haven’t put a lot of thought into that beyond the experiment,” Mills told us. “Obviously, we have all kinds of processes in place to inform our Council of major decisions. Certainly, they expect city staff to look at any opportunities to improve efficiencies in the way we carry out our obligations to the community.”
CM Chito Vela, who has worked as a criminal defense attorney in Travis County since 2010 and in other parts of Texas for even longer, had many thoughts to share about the concept of city-run magistration. “The partnership between the city and county is one of the best magistration processes in Texas,” he said. “Any changes will require the full participation of law enforcement, city and county judges, court staff, the Travis County Sheriff and Commissioners Court, prosecutors and defense attorneys, and the Austin City Council.”
Vela acknowledged that the broader agreements that govern the city’s participation in magistration – which the Texas Constitution states is a county responsibility – are currently under review by both entities and that the pilot program should be evaluated in that context. “It is a good time for the city and county to consider whether the current practice is still the best model moving forward,” Vela said, adding that as a CM and a criminal defense attorney, protecting due process rights is a high priority and that changes to magistration should be made “deliberately and transparently.”
This article appears in October 6 • 2023.