The proverbial chickens come home in Austin, TX

The Austin PD is hundreds of cops short of a safe city as crime rises to dramatic heights. Of course, this was predictable after the city had undergone and felt the aftershocks of the  "Defund the Police" movement which predictably created staff shortages and thus leaving 911 callers on hold. 

Thomas Villarreal, president of the Austin Police Association, says the city council is to blame as they neglected law enforcement in the name of wokeness. On Monday, Villarreal told "Fox & Friends" the alleged screwups have created a larger problem.

"We just continue to have a city council that doesn't show its police officers that cares about them," he explained.

"Back in December 2017, we had a city council vote down a police contract for the first time in the history of negotiating contracts. And, you know, we pushed forward to 2018, tried to get back under contract. Our city decided to go through what they called reimagining police oversight. And then, you know, we got back under contract."

Well residents of Austin can now reimagine a knife held to their throat or their stores being mob-robbed.

That was before the 2020 summer riots that followed the death of the sainted thug George Floyd, Villarreal noted, adding that 20 officers were then indicted for "doing their jobs" during the chaos.

Fox News' Steve Doocy reported that WalletHub data shows Austin as 15th in the nation of the most homicides in the U.S. and notes that more than 800 cops left the force in the last six years. The hemorrhaging of officers also came as the Austin PD suffered $150 million budget cut – roughly a third – in 2020.

"We just have a backward slide. You know, we're we're a growing city, a city that should be up around 2,000 officers and growing right now," Villarreal said.

"I've got about 1,475 officers in our police department and, you know, we're moving in the wrong direction. There's less and less and less resources to go out and do the job. I've got detectives who are pulled away from their caseload to just help answer 911 calls because we just don't have the resources to adequately police the city."

Democratic Mayor of Austin Kirk Watson said last month that the city was suspending its partnership with the Texas Department of Safety, an agency whose officers respond to emergency calls to assist the police. To a visitor from another planet, this has all the trappings of a person who wants his city to fail. 

Well, at least the city has finally gotten what they voted for and they got it good and hard.

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