Determined to change policing in Texas’ capital city, the Austin City Council last August voted to cut one-third of its police budget to fund mental health programs, a hotel for homeless people and other alternative public safety measures.
Only a year earlier, the council had resoundingly rejected a proposal to divert a tiny fraction of that spending.
Then came the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which radically expanded the ideas Americans are willing to contemplate to transform policing.
“It’s clear that millions of people marching in unison and calling for change really pushed elected officials to make more transformative change,” said Greg Casar, the Austin City Council member who proposed the cuts. “My office alone received about 20,000 calls and e-mails from Austinites in the week where protests and marches were most heightened in Austin asking for change to the budget.”