AUSTIN, Texas (CN) — Last year, amid nationwide anti-police brutality protests, the Austin City Council cut $150 million from the police department, nearly a third of its budget.
The vote drew stark reactions from all sides of the debate on policing. Some lifted the city up as a shining example of how cities should reallocate police funds into the community, while others criticized the action as irresponsibly defunding the police.
A year later, Austinites have the opportunity to directly weigh in on this debate by voting next Tuesday on Proposition A, which would put more cops on the street in Texas’ capital city.
The City Council’s decision to slash the police budget was spurred by activists’ calls to defund the Austin Police Department after instances of excessive force by officers and the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Those funds were redirected to public safety programs and city departments such as Austin Public Health.
The reaction to the vote was predictably partisan. Texas’ Republican Governor Greg Abbott made it a priority in the 2021 legislative session for state lawmakers to pass a bill preventing cities from taking similar action. That effort came to fruition with House Bill 1900 ,which penalizes cities that cut police funding and requires Austin to restore the police budget to its prior level.
With APD’s funding restored and no further threat of it being cut, many are asking what the goal of Prop A is.
Cleo Petricek, co-founder of Save Austin Now, the group behind the proposition, argues the city has become less safe and the City Council is largely to blame.
“The council did restore the budget, but they never allocated or put back the 150 positions that we’ve lost and it’s been a trickle-down effect, demoralizing the police,” she said.
Prop A would require the city to maintain a minimum of two officers per every 1,000 Austinites. In addition to staffing, the measure would add 40 hours of training each year and increase compensation for officers with good conduct and bilingual skills.
This is not the first referendum Save Austin Now is responsible for. The group was behind a proposition that reinstated a public camping ban in Austin. That ballot initiative, Prop B, passed during elections back in May and reversed action from the City Council to decriminalize public camping.
Three former Austin mayors have expressed their support for Prop A. One of them, Lee Leffingwell, said at a press conference with Save Austin Now earlier this month that “there is nothing wrong with having too many police officers, but there is a lot wrong with having too few.”
Abbott voiced his support on Twitter, where the governor said, “Defunding police has been a disaster in cities across the country... vote FOR Prop A to support law enforcement & keep your community safe.”
But for people like Chas Moore, executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, Prop A is a “slap in the face” to the Black Lives Matter movement and activists speaking out against police brutality.
“Prop A is, in my opinion, the status quo in Austin and represents a residue left over by former President Trump,” Moore said in an interview. “If passed, it could be detrimental to the city financially.”
Sharing Moore’s concerns over how a bigger police force may harm the city’s wallet is the Austin Firefighters Association. The group’s president, Bob Nicks, said during an Oct. 1 press conference that the proposition “will impose a bad law that will cut programs, putting you and your families at risk."
The firefighters’ association has been running ads voicing their support for police but opposition to the measure for what the increased staffing may mean for the fire department’s budget.
The opposition campaign, No Way on Prop A, echoes this message louder, warning that the city would be required to hire over 800 additional officers, costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
A memo from the Austin Budget Office estimated that implementing Prop A could cost from $271.5 to $598.8 million over the next five years. If passed, opponents believe that money will have to come from cutting other emergency service programs.
Save Austin Now estimates that enacting Prop A would cost $54 million per year. That is $270 million over the next five years, putting the group’s estimate at the low end of the city’s projection.
Responding to these criticisms, Petricek believes that firefighters will be unaffected if the proposition passes. “What we are asking for in the staffing numbers is the exact same that we were on the trajectory of two years ago,” she said.
For Moore, the main issue is how more officers on the street in Austin might further impact communities of color.
“I don’t know of a time where more police have played out well for communities of color and poor folks,” he said.
In cities across the nation, including Austin, violent crimes such as homicides are on the rise. There have been around 70 homicides in the city this year, up from 46 in 2020.
Jesse Jannetta, a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center, stresses the importance of not over-interpreting crime trends in America. He said the increase in crime is related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Save Austin Now believes more police officers are needed to combat the rise in crime, while Moore and the No Way On Prop A campaign sees more policing as a step in the wrong direction to keep the public safe and improve police-community relations. Jannetta’s position is more nuanced.
“Violence is a complicated problem, there are many things that might reduce it, a city taking the problem seriously should be investing in multiple things to address it,” he said. “Whether police strategies can reduce violence is one question, but it’s also important to ask whether we could get those benefits through other investments.”
A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that Americans’ views on police spending have shifted since last year’s civil rights protests. Across race, age and political groups, more people are in support of increasing funding for police.
The rise in support is driven by public concern over crime trends, with 61% of survey respondents saying crime is a “very big” problem.
Early voting for Prop A ends Friday. Election Day is Nov. 2.
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