APD Says DPS Is Doing Great, but Are They?

Three weeks into the Texas Department of Public Safety's informal partnership with the Austin Police Department, APD officials have shared some data on the partnership – but key questions about where DPS patrols and whom they're arresting remain unanswered.

In an April 13 memo, APD Chief Joseph Chacon wrote that the weekly average of violent crimes (aggravated assault, murder, sexual assault, and robbery) in 2022 was 89, but the number of violent crimes in the first week of the APD/DPS partnership was 67. And at City Council's April 18 work session, APD Chief Data Officer Jonathan Kringen provided a year-over-year comparison: Weeks 1 and 2 of the DPS deployment resulted in a 25% and 31% decrease in violent crime citywide, respectively, when compared to the same weeks one year ago, with decreases even more pronounced in the specific areas where DPS was deployed (58% in Week 1 and 49% in Week 2). But in a phone conversation April 25, Kringen said that the data comparison provided April 13 was more robust than the year-over-year comparisons.

The "weekly average" language is a bit misleading, Kringen told us. It's not a simple average (i.e., the number of violent crimes that occurred in 2022 divided by 52), it's the product of statistical testing. "We are trying to answer the question, 'What would have happened if DPS was not deployed?'" Kringen said. The "weekly average" considers incidents of violent crime in the week before the DPS deployment and in the year before, as well as other factors, plus some of the many variables that cause crime rates to fluctuate, like changes in weather, unemployment rates, or whether school is in or out of session. "Our approach is to understand the underlying patterns with and without DPS deployment," Kringen told us. "I'm applying the best possible scientific method to do that."

But it is also true that these conclusions are drawn from only two weeks of data – a relatively small dataset (Kringen says the Week 3 data he plans to present to Council May 2 continues to show a decrease in violent crime). A larger set of data may show that the DPS deployment ultimately did not have a substantive impact (studies have shown that increased police patrols can reduce some crime, like robbery and some assaults, but have little effect on domestic violence and homicides). APD's monthly reports on crime figures also show that violent crime was decreasing in 2023 even before the DPS deployment. How much should DPS be credited for the decreases observed in the first three weeks of April? "I can say the more data we collect, the more confidence we'll have that the partnership as a whole had an effect," Kringen said.

But APD's publicly available crime data is lacking, and it's nearly impossible to check Kringen's work. We don't know which types of violent crimes decreased or where calls for service decreased, because that data is not made available in real time. Kringen said it's not that APD doesn't want to share this data, it's just that the department would need to invest tens of millions of dollars to update its technology before it could do that. At the work session, Kringen said it could take the department two years to get to this point.

We also don't know how many DPS troopers have been deployed and where, though anecdotal accounts point to increased trooper activity in East Austin (Kringen told us that "DPS is now active in all parts of the city"). We don't know how many DPS arrests were made for violent and nonviolent offenses; we don't know what probable cause DPS is pointing to when they stop someone; we don't know who, demographically, DPS is citing and arresting; and we don't know how many traffic deaths increased patrols may have prevented. On the last point, Kringen said traffic death data would be delayed three to four weeks, because the data first goes to the Texas Department of Transportation for processing, then the Austin Transportation Department, and from there it's sent to APD for analysis.

Answers to these questions are top of mind for Council members. "I want the city to remain thoughtful and deliberate about a partnership with an external police force," CM Chito Vela told us. "My priority at the moment is information. To make sound decisions based on data, we need the actual data. I don't want statistics hand-selected to give a certain impression; I want the actual numbers."

It is on DPS to answer some of these questions; of particular interest is how many arrests DPS has made for minor drug offenses – like possession of marijuana (PoM) – which the Austin community has said decisively should not be a focus of law enforcement action. DPS did not respond to questions about these arrests, but a representative is expected to be on hand at Council's May 2 work session to provide some clarity. Until then, all we have to go on is historical data.

Data obtained by the Chronicle through a public information request shows that from March 28, 2022, to March 28, 2023, DPS made a total of 535 PoM arrests in Travis County; 92% of those were for 2 ounces or less of weed. Black men accounted for about 34% of the under-2-oz. arrests, while that demographic group only accounts for about 9.4% of Travis County's population.

As the Chronicle went to press Wednesday, April 26, APD had not fulfilled a records request filed April 21 seeking the same data. But the numbers should be much lower. Data we obtained on PoM citations issued by law enforcement agencies in Travis County shows that DPS is virtually the only agency still issuing them at all. From March 28, 2022, to March 28, 2023, DPS troopers issued 94% of the 307 PoM citations issued in the county (APD issued seven, the second-highest of all agencies), according to data provided by Pct. 5 Justice of the Peace Nicholas Chu, who oversees the processing of all PoM citations in the county.

Following the Texas Legislature's legalization of hemp, which also legalized marijuana containing less than 0.3% THC, many county prosecutors stopped charging people for low-level possession cases. That's the case in Travis County, where PoM citations are automatically rejected without any action required by the defendant. But the interactions with law enforcement preceding them can be troubling for people. "Any interaction with law enforcement can make a person all the more vulnerable to some other harm," Texas Fair Defense Proj­ect interim co-Executive Director Sarah Mae Jennings told us. "Stops and interactions for suspicion of marijuana possession can also delve into further searches. It can sometimes lead to fishing expeditions."

Is that happening with DPS's increased patrol in Austin? Without enough publicly available data, we can't say for certain.