Official portrait of Travis County DA Jose Garza. From his official government website.
There may be a movie’s worth of drama going on inside the Travis County (Texas) District Attorney’s Office. Jose Garza won that office on a platform of, basically, letting criminals go free and indicting cops. Voters should pay more attention to what local office-seekers are saying. Sometimes they actually mean it, and Garza did.
If Austin had a dashboard, all the lights would be blinking red. Austin, the capital of Texas and the heart and seat of Travis County, has suffered at least 47 homicides in 2021. Violent crime is spiking. Police officers are leaving in droves, leaving the streets much less defended from crime than before. That wasn’t Garza’s doing, Austin Mayor Steve Adler led the defunding of APD in August 2020 (and has proceeded to gaslight the city that he didn’t), but that together with Garza’s pro-release priorities are putting convicted felons back on the streets, where they are emboldened, while police officers face hostility from the Austin government, forced critical race theory indoctrination (more on that in due time), and the demoralizing prospect of facing an indictment from Garza, even if their cases have already been adjudicated.