really bad at his job. Like, the worst . Just kidding!
Lots of people know this now, as the nation watched the 87th Texas Legislature end up in a ditch filled with brambles and foul wing-nut flop sweat and stuff that died in the big freeze. Yes, the session did make Texas more ready for the Rapture with no abortions and unlimited firearms, which makes some conservatives happy, but even Republicans couldn t disguise their frustration and disgust with the Lege s outcomes, its clumsy handling of the ruling party s own agenda, and the endless petty drama and bad juju between the GOP s own most important players. And everyone knows that, despite their end-of-game walkout, it s not the Democrats fault that lawmakers will get dragged back to Austin for a special session (either before, or alongside, the bloodbath of redistricting) to handle the priorities that fell off the table.
This weekend marks one year since thousands of protesters flooded the streets in downtown Austin and demanded a series of law-and-order reforms and budget changes, some of which they ended up getting.
While the local demonstrations mirrored racial justice protests in other cities after the death of George Floyd under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, local participants also had Austin-specific reasons to be there, as they pointed to concerns they d been voicing for years about the Austin Police Department.
Bubbling with anger and viewing the moment as a vehicle for transformation, they persuaded the City Council to change the Police Department s budget by cutting $21 million outright and setting aside an additional $129 million to be vetted for potential cuts down the road. Since then, $45 million of that larger amount has been cut by moving various departments and functions out of police control.
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KUT
Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza, seen here in 2017, announced Wednesday that his prosecutors will now ask judges to require high-risk offenders to surrender any weapons as a condition of their bond.
Prosecutors with the Travis County District Attorney’s office on Wednesday will begin asking judges to require that some offenders release and surrender firearms as a condition of their bond.
District Attorney José Garza said prosecutors will make the request for people at high-risk of reoffending to ensure they “don t have access to a firearm while their case is pending, or while they are on community supervision.”
Since Tales from the Fifth Floor – home of the executive team of the Austin Police Department – is such a long-running soap opera, we ve had a chance to visit with its characters more than once over the decades. (All dates below are when we published, either in print or online, not when the events actually occurred.)
2004:
May 28: Sgt. Jason Dusterhoft figures in a kerfuffle within the Austin Police Association. A push to recall the union s then-president Mike Sheffield cites his ratting out Dusterhoft, then APA board secretary, for using his official city email and not the union s to communicate with officers.