Four of APD Chief Chacon’s Biggest Controversies

Austin Police Department Chief Joseph Chacon announces his retirement during a press conference on August 21 (Photo by John Anderson)

The nearly two years Joseph Chacon spent as Austin Police Department chief were controversial, and the Chronicle has been all over it.

Here, we take a look at a few of the most troubling challenges of his tenure. He talked a good game about reforming various practices of APD – and he did implement some, changing body cam video release policy, for example – but by and large, he's had trouble building the kind of consensus on the force that would lead to adoption of some important reforms. Perhaps it would be impossible for any chief to have created change in the current environment but, regardless, Chacon leaves the force more or less the way he found it.

Black Lives Matter Protests: “Mistakes Were Made”

Chacon was hired in October 2021 as the city was still processing APD’s violent response to the Black Lives Matter protests, in which dozens of Austinites were injured by officers wielding shotguns modified to shoot bags of lead shot. Chacon admitted that “mistakes were made” by his officers. But when Travis County DA José Garza indicted 19 of them for assault with a deadly weapon, Chacon spoke against the indictments, suggesting that the victims should be paid off by the city and the cases against the officers dropped. Most of the criminal cases remain unresolved.

Police Academy Resists Reform

Council initiated the process to reform the Austin Police Academy in 2019 to address racism and sexism uncovered by former cadets and to shift the way patrol officers approach the job from a "warrior" to "guardian" mindset. But three years later, they've made little progress. The academy has recently graduated more female and minority officers, but a third-party report published in March found APD continues to resist reform "partly due to a lack of executive leadership," the report said.

Prosecuting Police

Travis County District Attorney José Garza has had a difficult relationship with APD ever since he took office in January 2021 and began presenting cases to grand juries who then indicted cops for violent acts. Chacon has been silent as union leaders, police attorneys, and prominent officers accuse Garza of persecuting the police for his own political gain.

Sex Crimes Unit Scandal

At the time of Chacon’s hiring, APD’s Sex Crimes Unit was mired in scandal – there were long delays processing rape kits, to the point that they became unusable in court, and police were identifying too many cases as “exceptionally cleared” (meaning cleared without solving the case). After 15 survivors of sexual assault sued the city and the department in 2021, Chacon told the victims, “I am committed to working directly with you and other stakeholder groups to establish a path forward that is in the best interest of survivors and the community." When the city settled the lawsuit for a combined $875k, the lead plaintiff, Hanna Senko, said, “I learned that apologies were harder to come by than dollars.” Later, a report published in 2022 found a decline in "exceptional clearance" cases. But the decline didn’t demonstrate that more cases were being solved, rather that more cases are now classified as “suspended.”