Monday, May 19, 2025, 2 p.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
Committee: Public Safety Committee
The Public Safety Committee held a special called meeting on May 19, 2025 (called to order at 2:03 pm), with the chair and Vice Chair Laine present; Mayor Watson and another member were absent, and there was no public communication. The committee approved the April 7, 2025 minutes without objection. The main item was a briefing on reexamining Austin Police Department use of force, presented by APD Chief Davis and Dr. Robin Engel of The Ohio State University, who described her review of APD use of force policy, data, training, and accountability. Engel reported significant data reliability problems — including a misleading unit of analysis on the open data portal (roughly 2,900 subjects reported publicly as 6,301 incidents), double counting across sectors, data-lag inconsistencies, and inconsistent level-four force reporting — and outlined eleven recommendations, including an internal use of force task force (co-chaired with Assistant Chiefs Mike Chancellor and Lee Rogers), reorganization of patrol commanders under one assistant chief, terminology change from 'response to resistance' to 'use of force', a data audit, and suspended public reporting until corrections are made. Council Member Duchen and Vice Chair Laine questioned the presenters on timelines, peer-agency comparisons, and deescalation training. The chair asked the task force to return to report progress, which the chief agreed to; the meeting adjourned at 3:21 pm.
0:04 Good afternoon, everybody. Um, I will now call the public safety committee to order.
0:08 It is May 19th at 2:03 pm um, and this is a special called meeting of the public safety committee.
0:16 We are at City Hall, located at 3 0 1 west second street, Austin, texas, and we have a quorum
0:22 present, uh, vice chair lane and Council Member uchin, uh, not present are Mayor Watson and Council Member
0:29 ri uh, and I will turn it over to our folks to see if we have any public
0:33 communication. No, we have no public communication.
0:39 Um, so, uh, now we need to approve the minutes from our public safety committee on April 7th, 2025.
0:45 I'll accept a motion to approve those minutes made by Council Member uchin, seconded by Council Member lane.
0:52 Uh, without objection, the minutes are approved.
0:54 Um, colleagues, now we have, our second item is a briefing.
0:58 Um, uh, the committee will not take up item number two, which is a briefing on reexamining use
1:02 of force by the Austin police department.
1:04 Uh, I believe we have chief chief davis here with us.
1:07 Um, and dr. Robin engel, a senior research scientist, um, uh, at the, at ohio state university, the
1:16 ohio state, ohio state university, the ohio state.
1:18 Um, and if we want, um, we'll just, uh, we'll let them get into the presentation and pull
1:22 up our questions after.
1:23 No, you you're fine.
1:24 Right here. Thank you.
1:25 Thank you. Uh, committee chair and council members.
1:28 Appreciate your time here.
1:29 I think this is a excellent opportunity to kind of look at our, uh, use of force, our
1:33 overview. Um, you know, one of the things when a new chief comes in is you want to
1:35 kind of bring people in to take a look at what you have.
1:38 And, um, robin, I've worked with her in dr.
1:41 Engle in cincinnati, and she is an expert in many things, including, uh, police use of force.
1:47 So she is a, a excellent person to come in here, and I think you're gonna enjoy her,
1:51 her presentation about use of force and where we are in the Austin police department.
1:55 Okay. Thank you, chief.
1:57 I appreciate, um, the introduction.
2:00 And yes, it is the ohio state university.
2:02 Um, although, apologies, apologies.
2:04 I know. No, no, that's fine.
2:06 Um, I did learn in, uh, new employee orientation that the stands for tradition honor and excellence, and
2:12 I've been told to repeat that.
2:14 So I've done my work here.
2:15 One of my colleagues calls me the José quez, so I'm assuming that's why now, <laugh>.
2:20 Exactly. Tradition, honor and excellence.
2:23 Um, so thank you so much, uh, for having me today.
2:26 Uh, it, it's, um, I think that the chief said it best is that when you come into
2:31 a new department, one of the things that you really wanna very understand right from the onset is
2:37 what your highest risk is.
2:39 And for the Austin police department and police departments across the country, one of the highest risks is
2:44 use of force. And that risk is for officers as well as the public, right.
2:49 And we wanna think about best ways that we can reduce that risk, and that we can reduce
2:55 officer injury and citizen injury, and make police citizen encounters safer for all.
3:00 And so when we do that, we really need to take a holistic look at a lot of
3:04 different components, including things like the, uh, the policy of the police department, the procedures that are used,
3:11 the accountability and, uh, oversight mechanisms that are present, um, but also first line supervision and officer training.
3:21 There's, there's so many things that are captured in this encounter that happens oftentimes in such quick time,
3:28 right in seconds can, can result, um, in a use of force.
3:32 And so we want to really best understand holistically everything that the Austin police department is doing to
3:38 try to mitigate that risk.
3:39 Um, and so chief davis asked me to come in and take a look at all of those,
3:44 um, components. Um, and when I first, uh, brought some information, um, back to her, she asked, um,
3:50 that I also brief assistant city manager, um, eddie garcia, who I believe is here with us today
3:56 as well. Um, and of course, um, the assistant city manager is no stranger to these issues in
4:02 policing. Um, and also has done a very good job, um, in prior departments.
4:06 Uh, I knew, um, assistant chief, uh, or assistant city manager, uh, garcia, when he was the chief
4:13 in san José and also in dallas, uh, and make sure that these agencies, again, are, are safe
4:18 and well for the officers, but also for the public that they serve.
4:22 So I appreciate the opportunities, um, from everyone.
4:25 Uh, so with that, I do have a presentation for you with some of my initial findings and
4:30 what we'll be doing moving forward.
4:32 I understand that you've received a, a copy of, of some of this material, and I'd like to
4:37 just take this opportunity to explain to you what you're seeing in that powerpoint presentation.
4:42 So with that, I'm gonna try to make sure that this works.
4:45 It does. Um, what I'll be presenting to you today is a review of, uh, just a, an
4:52 an assessment of what I've done so far.
4:54 Um, my summary findings, a series of recommendations that I gave to chief davis now a couple of
5:00 months ago. And she has already executed many of these, and we'll talk about that.
5:04 Um, and as part of that is a, what we're calling a use of force task force, that
5:09 task force is made up of individuals within the Austin police department, um, myself and, and some others.
5:14 And we'll talk all about that and the updates that we have to bring to your attention today.
5:19 So with that, um, I think probably best, um, given that this is a public hearing, that I'll
5:24 take questions at the end.
5:27 Um, but if you do have a moment where something's not clear, um, you know, obviously feel free
5:32 to, to interrupt and and I'll answer those questions.
5:36 So first with the review, uh, I am a researcher by training.
5:41 I've been doing this for nearly 30 years now.
5:43 I work with dozens of agencies across the country and around the world.
5:48 And one of the things that I always do is I never just look at data.
5:51 I'm trained as a social scientist trained in research, but I also know that the data doesn't tell
5:56 you everything that you need to know.
5:57 In fact, oftentimes it tells you just enough, uh, to be dangerous.
6:02 And you really have to understand what the dynamics look like on the ground.
6:07 So one of the first things I did, uh, when the chief asked me to come, is to
6:11 do a series of informal interviews, group meetings with the, uh, Austin police department with the sworn and
6:17 professional staff, including the chief, uh, chief of staff, robin henderson, who's here with us today.
6:22 Um, all of the assistant chiefs that were in place at that time, uh, when I first came,
6:27 uh, in December, the force review unit, the fru commander, uh, cruz, uh, and her staff.
6:35 I also met with siu, which is a special investigations unit, um, internal affairs, their commanders and staff.
6:42 The training commander at the time, actually, uh, is now an assistant chief who's co-chairing, uh, this work
6:49 with me. And that's, uh, Mike chancellor, who's seated right behind me, I believe.
6:54 Thank you. Uh, but I had an opportunity to meet with him and his, uh, at the time,
6:59 his staff in training, and also with the research and planning unit staff.
7:04 Um, that unit is now, uh, overseen by chief mayors harold, who is also here with us today.
7:11 Uh, chief harold, um, has been really instrumental in helping, uh, assist with all of the data, uh,
7:16 issues that I'm gonna be bringing to your attention.
7:19 So that was my first step.
7:21 Um, I also met, um, with, uh, director, uh, gail mccann, um, from the office of police oversight,
7:29 uh, the opo and some of her staff as well.
7:32 They are now involved directly in this work with a seat at the table on our use of
7:37 force task force. So this is a partnership, uh, where we're really working together, again, to mitigate risk
7:42 for our officers and for our public.
7:47 I also decided, you know what?
7:49 I need to go out there and see what's happening.
7:51 So I rode, uh, multiple shifts, uh, and opportunities to ride in george sector in particular, up and
7:57 down sixth street. In part, the reason for that selection was because, uh, a large proportion of the
8:03 use of force incidents happened, uh, with that sector and in, uh, sixth street corridor in particular.
8:09 So I had an opportunity to spend some time with the officers that are assigned there and actually
8:14 do observations in the field.
8:16 I reviewed a series of documents, a lot of documents, as matter of fact.
8:20 Um, looking at your, uh, the Austin police department's response to resistance reports from 2019 to 2022, your,
8:28 uh, force review unit, monthly reports, opo memos, I looked back, uh, five years at City Council resolutions
8:35 related to the use of force.
8:37 I also consulted with previous external reports, including the parole report, uh, that looked specifically at use of
8:44 force at the time, uh, for the Austin police department, and also had an opportunity to, uh, have
8:51 some selected body cam showed to me footage, um, but also randomly selected some use of force incidents
8:57 to review. And then finally, and this was the largest chunk of my work, um, I thought it
9:02 would be the smallest.
9:03 It turned out to be the largest.
9:04 And one of the reasons why I'm here today is the data review, working with the Austin police
9:09 department, uh, analyst, uh, a number of different analysts to help me understand how data is collected and
9:16 reported to the public.
9:18 We examined previous data reports and analyses, and also conducted new analyses to make sure that there was
9:24 consistency and my summary findings.
9:28 Then, um, unfortunately, I did find a number of inconsistencies across the Austin police department and all aspects
9:35 of use of force, including reporting, accountability and oversight mechanisms, um, and training.
9:41 Now, that might come as a little bit, uh, you know, uh, gut wrenching, um, particularly for members
9:47 of the public to hear that there are inconsistencies across the agency.
9:50 But I wanna assure you that in truth, that's, uh, there are inconsistencies in police departments in these
9:56 areas throughout the country.
9:58 And one of the things that I do, um, especially with progressive chiefs, um, like chief davis, is
10:03 to come in and figure out how do we identify what those gaps are and what can we
10:07 do about them? Because again, there's never going to be one perfect system, uh, but we can absolutely
10:13 work together to reduce risk.
10:14 And, uh, cleaning up some of these inconsistencies is, is part of that overall process.
10:20 We're really looking for continuous improvement over time.
10:23 And, uh, I'm, I'm hopeful and optimistic, uh, that the Austin police department is on the right path
10:29 for this. Um, having said that, there are significant issues in particular with the data reporting, the reliability,
10:36 and the validity of the data that's available, statistical analysis that have been conducted for, uh, for the
10:42 police department, um, and the reports that have been issued.
10:45 And I have found a number of errors, um, and other things that we wanna bring to your
10:49 attention, specifically because the counting of the use of force is how you establish external credibility and legitimacy
10:58 with your public. And we need to make sure that we get this right.
11:01 Uh, and so this is, uh, another key part of what I'll be working on moving forward.
11:08 And as part of that, I found, um, interesting, uh, a lot of agencies that I go in,
11:13 I often see, um, an underreporting of use of force.
11:17 Um, here I've, I've discovered that there's potentially, uh, an overreporting of use of force incidents.
11:23 Now, um, there's a lot of reasons for this, um, and we need to really think through how
11:28 that data is pulled together, presented, analyzed, and pushed back out to the public.
11:32 And so I'll get into greater detail here in a moment, but these are the summary findings that
11:36 I brought to chief davis, which is why she asked me to then, uh, brief, um, uh, you
11:42 folks here today. So, um, just to level set, um, these numbers have changed, um, just in the
11:53 course of my examination multiple times.
11:56 So the fact that we have trouble just counting the number of use of force incidents, um, in,
12:02 in a particular time period has been a challenge.
12:04 And I'll explain why in a moment.
12:05 But we believe that these numbers are accurate to date.
12:10 This is for last year, 2024, the number of u the number of subjects, individual subjects who had