Prop A Won, Yay! What’s Next

In the May 6 election, Austin voters supported stronger police oversight and transparency (Prop A) and crushed the Austin Police Association’s effort to scam everyone into weak police oversight (Prop B) by 80%-20% on both items. Preventing police abuse and violence and holding cops accountable remains popular with Austin voters, while trying to deceive people remains unpopular.

So what’s next? How does the City actually get the oversight and transparency people clearly want?

First, while they lost the election in a landslide, the police association has been busy trying to pass a bill at the Texas legislature to preempt Prop A, which needs to be defeated. This bill — Senate Bill 2209 — wouldn’t just stop Prop A from being implemented. It would gut police oversight around the state and keep any person that isn’t police from viewing any document about police conduct until after the police have completed their own investigation. In basic terms: It would preserve police policing themselves exclusively statewide.

But we can still beat this bill. The deadline for it to pass is quickly approaching, and it currently sits with the Texas House Calendars Committee. If they don’t put the bill on the calendar for the full House of Representatives to vote on, then it can’t pass. You can help make sure this bill fails by:

• visiting all of the members of this committee at the Texas Capitol between now and Monday, May 22,
• asking for a “red card,” and
• filling it out with your name and the bill number (SB 2209).

This will take about an hour, but it’ll have a HUGE impact. Here’s a list of the members and their office numbers. We recommend going in this order as it takes you from the top of the building on the 4th floor to the bottom of the extension.

Vice Chair Toni Rose (D) — 4N.5

Rep. Ed Thompson (R) — 4S.3

Rep. Ana Hernandez (D) — 1W.11

Rep. Charlie Geren (R) — GW.15

Rep. Jared Patterson (R) — E1.310

Rep. David Cook (R) — E1.402

Rep. Ann Johnson (D) — E2.412

Chair Dustin Burrows (R) — E2.610

Rep. Cole Hefner (R) — E2.718

Rep. Shelby Slawson (R) — E2.804

Rep. James Talarico (D) — E2.902

If we can defeat this bill, the next step is to ensure the City of Austin implements Prop A fully. We’ll be in touch to inform you how you can get involved to ensure police violence and abuse sees the light of day, receives a thorough investigation, and is deterred.