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More than a week after the Austin Police Department announced its controversial partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety had come to a close, law enforcement officials on Monday briefed the city’s Public Safety Committee on the now-defunct deployment and responded – again – to City Council members’ concerns about equity and transparency.
The Texas Senate on Wednesday got closer to raising the penalty for voting illegally from a misdemeanor to a felony, as well as making it easier to convict a voter without proving they intended to cast an illegal ballot. The legislation is a priority for Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other Republican lawmakers who have pushed for it since the 2021 change lowering the penalty to a misdemeanor, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Texas.
Ample feedback was given to City of Austin leadership to review before deciding what’s next for the APD-DPS partnership. A specially called meeting of the city’s public safety committee happened on Monday, where dozens of speakers showed up to make their feelings heard. Some of those speaking out shared where they see value in the partnership while others said it’s impacting communities differently.
“Saturday, it was just like this collective sigh of relief from all of us when we realized we did it,” Castillo said. For Alycia Castillo, her fellow Equity Action colleagues and those advocating for increased police oversight, the passage of Proposition A in Austin on May 6 was a long-awaited win.
LaTosha Williams blocks a tear from slipping down her cheek as she walks toward a Cedar Crest apartment she rented nearly three decades ago. The two- story complex off Bonnie View Road in Dallas takes her back to when she was a young wife with four kids, selling drugs out of an upstairs unit. Williams, then 21, balanced two rents, leasing another home just minutes away on Humphrey Drive, where she and her family lived.
The U.S. is fighting a losing battle with the War on Drugs — arrests for drug-related offenses continue to soar and deaths from drug overdoses are only increasing. The U.S. continues to disregard how drugs impact the lives of so many in the name of justice, and a change needs to be made. Instead of contributing to the over-criminalization of drugs, lawmakers should make a more significant effort with harm reduction. Lives are at stake.
The Texas Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would eliminate a requirement to investigate all deaths in county jails, making deaths from presumed natural causes exempt. Advocates say if it becomes law, jails could escape accountability for medical neglect. The state has required an outside law enforcement agency to investigate all jail deaths since 2017, with the passage of the Sandra Bland Act.
Desperate to restore order within the walls of the five youth prisons it operates, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department has been asking judges to push more of its most troubled kids into the adult prison system.
Big changes could be coming to how unexcused absences are handled at your child's school. Some lawmakers want to increase the penalties for truancy. Not everyone is on board with this plan. Instead, wanting to address the root causes of the absences.
Texas teachers and school administrators could more easily kick misbehaving students out of class under a wide-ranging bill debated this week. In the weeks after the Uvalde massacre, a Lubbock Republican drew attention when he told his fellow lawmakers: “Not all kids belong in the classroom anymore.” Sen. Charles Perry pledged to tackle school discipline this session.
