City of Austin strikes new four-year deal with police union

Austin, Texas. The City of Austin has reached an agreement with the Austin Police Association (APA) for a new four-year contract with the police.

The city said the agreement includes provisions for oversight and efforts to increase recruitment for the Austin Police Department to deal with an ongoing officer shortage.

The current contract expires at the end of March, and this new agreement is yet to be approved by the city council.

“This is the result of over a year of work as both sides have worked hard to come to this agreement,” APD chief Joseph Chacon said at a press conference on Thursday. “Both the association and the city government have considered and weighed all the issues, and we have come to an agreement that, once approved, will provide a significant increase in salaries and benefits for police officers, as well as significant improvements in the police department. operations.”

Chacon said improvements are included in the promotion process to ensure that APD promotes its “best and brightest” to leadership positions, as well as to increase leadership diversity. Chacon also said the agreement provides a system of police oversight that is “unmatched”.

“Since the establishment of Austin Police Oversight more than 20 years ago, no such progressive step has been taken to hold the police accountable through an independent department that has more capacity to monitor police complaint investigations than ever before,” Chacon said, adding: “It’s important to note that it satisfies as many tenants as possible of the citizen-initiated petition, in accordance with the law and without a protracted legal battle.”

Thomas Villarreal, president of the APA, said the association “isn’t afraid of oversight” and firmly believes that “the people of Austin, the city of Austin itself, the department, our members are better off working under contract.”

In recent months, the city and the union have not agreed to the contracts.

Last December, the APA tweeted that city officials and the city manager attacked APD employees as they continued to disagree with police oversight.

“We created the most robust oversight system in the state, but it still wasn’t good enough,” APA tweeted, adding that city manager Spencer Cronk “wants to arm a system that makes officers political pawns.”

The APA concluded by saying it “keeps going while the city goes.”

Later, in a statement to KVUE, the city said police oversight was never discussed at the time of the contract. The city has stated from the outset that oversight will be removed from the contract, and that the plan has always been to make oversight part of a separate program.

The city and the APA have been negotiating the contract since late September 2022. Around the same time, APA executives told KVUE that the termination of the contract would cause serious problems for the police department, including exacerbating staffing shortages. The APA said that the APD may have to temporarily suspend some police units, which could lead to a massive layoff of officers.

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