Government
BY BEN THOMPSON
Q&A: Austin police Chief Lisa Davis on first 100 days, public safety Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis has completed an action plan for the Austin Police Department’s staffing, public safety and innovation efforts informed by her first months on the job. Davis spoke with Community Impact about her approach and next steps. Residents scored Austin’s safety at 6 out of 10. How do you see the perception versus reality of public safety here? I look at it as 4 people out of 10 do not feel safe in this city. And so to me, that’s unacceptable. And how do we get better at that? Not only just com- municating what our crime really is, I think that’s important—where our hotspot locations are, what we’re doing about it, how we’re addressing crime.
Looking at the data, would you say Austin remains relatively safe among major cities? Yes, absolutely. And I know Austin likes to think of itself as a small town and a small city, but you’re not. Austin’s a big city. And so to have 1 million people and a crime rate that we do—not that I’m happy with that; I’ll never be happy with that, any time there’s lives lost and there’s shootings those are things we will deal with—but I think overall, yes, Austin is a very safe city. How will you build collaboration in the community? When we look at the way we’re going to change some staffing here, getting some more district rep- resentatives out into the sectors, those community liaison workers there, that’s important stuff. And so when you can look at that whole list of who we need to partner with, I will certainly be meeting with a lot of them—I already have, a lot of them—but how do we partner with them on a sector level? Does the sector commander meet with them? And all of that stuff’s important. This is a job, as far as reducing crime, the community engagement part, it is every officer’s role to do that.
BEN THOMPSON/COMMUNITY IMPACT
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version, visit communityimpact.com .
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