Art by Zeke Barbaro / Getty Images (Photos by David Brendan Hall and John Anderson)
At their April 20 work session, the members of the Austin City Council certainly sounded thankful for the recommendations the City-Community Reimagining Public Safety Task Force had just laid at their feet. Vanessa Fuentes expressed her gratitude. Ann Kitchen promised to study the recommendations. Alison Alter praised the task force members for pouring themselves into the work.
Those whom they d praised – the community activists the task force comprises – were quite untouched. With the three-hour meeting wrapping up, they wanted to know where they stood. It s imperative that we see the city manager s office, staff, council, and the city as a whole make a public commitment, said Monica Guzmán of Go Austin/Vamos Austin.
Is it time to put APD s police horses out to pasture? (Photo by David Brendan Hall)
When it was first conceived last summer, the City-Community Reimagining Public Safety Task Force was expected to deliver its final report in March, the middle of the city s budget year. This would allow the panel s recommendations to be followed by amendments to
this year s budget that would ideally add up to the $150 million or so that City Council, and particularly its left wing, wanted to reallocate from the Austin Police Department
this year to show that it heard and felt the swelling pain and outrage of a city that had taken to the streets with unprecedented vigor to demand that Austin s relationship with its police force change