Grits for Breakfast 4/22/2020
Grits is still catching up on all that went on while I was under the weather these last few months, and wanted to visit the new, much-worse bodycam policy enacted by Austin PD on March 16. Farah Muscadin at the city's Office of Police Oversight put out a formal objection to the new policy two weeks ago that deserves readers' attention.
Basically, APD downgraded violations of the bodycam policy and made those violations much less transparent. Wrote Muscadin, "These changes delegitimize the discipline process by trivializing conduct that has historically been treated as a significant policy violation."
In essence, this is a reaction to the (relatively) new police contract enacted in 2018. Under the revised contract, written reprimands of officers became public records for the first time. Previously, the public couldn't know about disciplined officers unless they were suspended from duty as a punishment.
Now, officers receive "oral counseling" on the first offense, get a "counseling memorandum" on the second offense, and on the third offense punishments range from an "oral reprimand" to a one-to-three day suspension.
So, as Muscadin notes, "Due to the March 16th changes, an officers third sustained violation of the [bodycam policy] now results in lighter discipline than an officer used to receive upon their first violation of those policies." And since they'll no longer receive written reprimands, the public can no longer discover these violations under the Public Information Act.
More:
https://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2020/04/austin-pd-made-bodycam-policy-worse-and.html
