APD And City Hall Try To Get Their Eighth Street Protest Stories Straight – Austin Chronicle

In December 2020, six months after the violent police response to Black Lives Mat­ter protesters at the Austin Police Depart­ment headquarters on Eighth Street, the city of Austin announced that then-police Chief Brian Manley “completed his review of all known complaints/incidents from May 30 and 31 and has issued discipline to 11 officers.”

The announcement made national news, much like the recent settlements between injured protesters and the city – more than $13 million in payouts so far, with more to come – and a special grand jury’s indictments of 19 officers, each on two counts of felony assault with a deadly weapon, in connection with the Eighth Street shootings. But which officers were disciplined, and what they were disciplined for, has never been made public – and as it turns out, that may never happen.

The statement announcing 11 officers had been disciplined, issued Dec. 1, 2020, also said “additional updates will be forthcoming.” But those updates never arrived – until Feb. 24 of this year, when APD corrected the city’s statement in response to inquiries from the Chronicle for a different story. “The Department recognizes a statement to this effect was previously provided in December 2020 however, the information in the statement was incorrect,” an APD spokesperson wrote. “Former Chief Manley did not discipline 11 officers. One officer was formally disciplined in 2020, and no additional officers have been formally disciplined for actions taken during the May 2020 protests since that time.”

The one disciplined officer was Ryan Seweryn, who was issued a 10-day suspension on Nov. 25 for referring to a protester as “a gay dude” on May 30. He is now back on active duty. An additional 12 officers (not 11) received “informal” discipline – a reprimand, either oral or written – for their actions during the protests. Informal discipline, as opposed to the suspensions and demotions outlined in Texas state law, are considered to be more corrective than punitive. They are typically handed out to officers who commit relatively minor infractions, such as speaking rudely to people or forgetting to turn on their body-worn cameras, but who are otherwise in good standing.

With informal discipline, the aim is to correct behavior before it rises to the level of warranting formal action, Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday told us. “Not every policy violation needs to be punished with days off,” Casaday explained, using the common APD insiders’ term for suspensions. “If we have a good officer who made a mistake, sometimes they just need to be corrected.” Informal discipline goes into the officer’s file but typically does not impact potential promotions or transfers.

The city had not acknowledged that its Dec. 1, 2020, statement was misleading and inaccurate until we asked about it. “We provided the information we had at the time,” a city spokesperson told the Chron­icle Tuesday, March 15. “We regret the confusion on our part.”

“We can have a debate on the justice system being the right way to address these problems, but when the city refuses to hold the department accountable, it is our last resort.” – Just Liberty’s Kathy Mitchell

The public is unlikely to learn which 12 officers were disciplined or which APD policies they violated during the protests. APD doesn’t have to share details of such incidents with the Office of Police Oversight to post publicly. “Informal discipline records are held within personnel records of the officers, maintained by APD, and are thus not available for public release,” an APD spokesperson said, as releasing the names of informally disciplined officers, or details of their conduct, would violate state law.

An exception to this rule exists within the police contract (the meet-and-confer agreement) between the city and the APA: If disciplinary action (from an oral reprimand all the way to “indefinite suspension,” i.e., firing) was initiated by an external complaint filed through OPO, details can be made public. According to APD, five of the 12 officers were the subject of external complaints, but OPO has not made the findings public other than for Seweryn. The lightest form of discipline – “education-based discipline,” such as watching a training video – does not stay on the officer’s record. According to a Sept. 20, 2021, report from OPO, APD Internal Affairs investigated 27 complaints referred by OPO (out of 202 total), and 21 complaints made within APD (out of 21). If an officer is found to have used excessive force, it would almost always result in a suspension and be made public.

Meanwhile, for 10 of the 19 officers indicted in February, police Chief Joe Cha­con has not yet decided whether they violated department policy and should be disciplined internally, as is typically the case when an officer is facing criminal charges for on-duty conduct. Chacon and City Man­ager Spencer Cronk said when the indictments were made public that they knew of no conduct that rose to the level of a criminal violation (which is not really their call to make), but whether it merits suspension or worse won’t be finalized until the criminal cases are decided, as state law allows.

According to criminal defense attorney Doug O’Connell, who along with Ken Ervin is representing eight of the 19 indicted officers, some may have already been cleared: “Each of our clients was cleared by Internal Affairs,” O’Connell said at a Feb. 21 press conference.

For justice advocates like Kathy Mitchell of Just Liberty, this is precisely why Travis County District Attorney José Garza‘s willingness to prosecute police for alleged on-duty crimes is so vital. “The only person standing up for the rights of the protesters is our D.A.,” Mitchell told us. “If these officers were cleared by IA, the city has cleared them of the most devastating harm committed against protesters during that weekend, and a dozen others were given a slap on the wrist. We can have a debate on the justice system being the right way to address these problems, but when the city refuses to hold the department accountable, it is our last resort.”