Updated Thursday, May 10, at 2:46 p.m. to reflect APD's progress addressing a backlog of sexual assault evidence kits. 

More than 100 people attended the first town hall discussion of interim Police Chief Brian Manley’s promotion to permanent chief of the Austin Police Department.

On April 30, City Manager Spencer Cronk named Manley a lone finalist for the position and announced a weekslong public input process that would allow Austin residents to voice their concerns and questions about policing, public safety and Interim Chief Manley’s fitness for the job.

“This is home to me,” Manley said at the event, “so this is a very important decision.”

A new vision

Manley was appointed to the interim chief position in December 2016 after former Police Chief Art Acevedo left to lead the Houston Police Department.

Over the past 17 months, Manley has led the department during a contract dispute between the city and the Austin Police Association that resulted in a reversion to state civil service law, contentious national debates around policing and racial equity and, most recently, a series of bombings that terrorized the city in March.

If promoted, Manley said his vision is of an APD “that is trusted and respected by all and that collaborates with the community to make Austin the safest city in the America.”

Prioritizing partnerships

To achieve this, Manley said he would prioritize partnerships with organizations like the Austin Justice Coalition, with which the department is working to rewrite its de-escalation policy, and working to earn the trust of Austin’s immigrant community, members of which may have come from countries with corrupt law enforcement agencies.

“If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll see that American policing has not always been on the right side of issues,” Manley added, referring to the civil rights era as well as today.

Since becoming interim chief, Manley has worked to address mistrust of the department by offering bias training to officers; evaluating officers in part on their efforts in and creating a lieutenant position devoted to community engagement; working with the city’s equity department to assess the department’s policies, practices and priorities; and working to rewrite the department’s use of force policy.

Another priority issue for Manley is diversion, or partnering with other agencies and organizations that can serve residents before a police encounter occurs.

“This often comes to bear when it comes to responding to mental health calls and when we’re dealing with mental health crises,” which police officers are not always the best equipped to deal with, Manley said.

Diversifying the Austin police force is also a goal. The department, for example, is only 10 percent women. Moreover, although Austin’s population is 10 percent Asian, only 3 percent of its police officers are Asian.

“We’re taking steps,” Manley said, “to try to bring in diversity to the department so that it reflects our city.”

Best practices

A number of audience members raised questions about the use of data.

During the Obama administration, the Department of Justice pushed to reform police departments across the U.S., sometimes through consent decrees that mandated changes in policies and practices.

APD, Manley said, wanted “in” on this initiative and continues to with the DOJ to provide and access national data on policing to learn what approaches are most effective.

“Even though [reform] may slow down at the national level, we cannot slow down,” he said.

As an example of the department's progress in terms of data collection, Manley highlighted the department's progress addressing its backlog of sexual assault evidence kits. In April, APD announced all pending kits had been sent in for testing.

Policing a growing city

One of the last questions of the night was whether someone from inside the department can effectively reform it.

Manley told this story.

When then-City Manager Elaine Hart asked him if he would take over the department following Acevedo’s department, Manley had one question: “Are you looking for a placeholder, or are you looking for a chief?”

He answered himself: “Our community cannot afford to have a police department that is idling.”

A second public engagement forum is scheduled on Thursday, May 17, at the KLRU Studio from 7 to 8:30 p.m.