Grits for Breakfast 4/28/2020
Police shooting triggers calls for widespread culture change among Austin PD leadership
"Off with their heads," the Queen of Hearts famously declared in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass."
Yesterday the Austin Justice Coalition, more than two dozen other community groups including Just Liberty, and numerous other community leaders (many of them appointees to city boards and commissions) made that same declaration, calling for the firing of Austin police chief Brian Manley, his chief of staff, the assistant city manager in charge of public safety, and for the reassignment of city legal staff advising the department.
See the letter here, and some
initial press coverage. I'd encourage anyone interested in the topic to read the whole thing, it conveys quite a compelling indictment of policing in this town, including a litany of specific complaints against the Austin PD leadership team.
The letter was issued in the wake of Austin PD killing a man named Mike Ramos on Friday evening, although the critique of the department was much more wide ranging than just that incident.
Ramos was standing next to his car with his hands up when Mitchell Pieper, a rookie officer three months out of the academy, fired a shotgun at him using a bean bag round. Ramos retreated into his car and tried to drive away when another officer, Christopher Taylor, fired three shots with a rifle, killing him. Taylor, who had been on the force for five years was involved in
another questionable shooting at a downtown Austin condo in 2019.
Notably, former Chief Art Acevedo had forbidden officers from shooting at moving vehicles in 2012 unless they were part of a unit specially trained to stop vehicles. But Chief Manley reversed that policy, one of
a series of
regressive policy changes he's made in recent years. As a result, Mike Ramos is dead and, if there's any justice in the world, Manley should lose his job.
More:
https://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2020/04/police-shooting-triggers-calls-for.html
