Former Austin mayor Gus Garcia struck and killed a pedestrian with his car in an accident Sunday evening on North Lamar Boulevard....

Common sense would tell most folks who hire hookers to pay in cash. Not so for a recently accused Austin Police Officer and a dumb kid from WilCo....

Artist sketch courtesy UTPDThe University of Texas Police Department would appreciate your help in finding a man linked with a certain "terroristic threat" that occurred last Wednesday. The University of Texas at Austin Police Department needs assistance with identifying an individual who is a person of interest or witness in an investigation into a Terroristic Threat. The incident occurred on December 5, 2007 at The University Teaching Center (UTC). We are asking that anyone with......

Photo by swanksalot on flickr After losing a chunk of the AT&T account, this week local ad firm GSD&M could layoff up to 15% of their staff. Today's standoff at Webberville and 12th ended with the suspect in custody. Austin Police Association is filing a grievance against the city and requesting an independent review, saying that private information regarding the officer who shot Kevin Brown shouldn't have been released. Austin Cantina in Seattle plays Austin......

This fall, you may begin noticing our local law enforcement looking a bit more, well, stylish. Austin Police Department is revamping its uniforms and vehicles, in the hopes of "creating a new version" of the organization, says Police Chief Art Acevedo. Part of the changes include larger badges, which will feature the Star of Texas above the Capitol. Gone are any traces of red on the uniforms themselves—in some cases, they'll be replaced with a......

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Austin Police need your help in finding a teenager believed to have murdered a Southeast Austin man last Sunday. Edward Nicholas Tovar Jr., 17, stands 5'4" tall and weighs approximately 120 pounds. He goes by "Eddie" or "Chup," and sports a "Southside 44" tattoo on his neck. Anyone with helpful information should call (512) 477-3588.......

Austin police nab the asshole who (allegedly) pretended to sublet several campus-area apartments to unsuspecting folks, who'd later discover they'd been dupedHaving temporarily lost their brand new skate park, kids in Round Rock promise to behave A Fort Worth cop who slapped a girl's ass after catching her fooling around with her boyfriend in a parked car gets arrested Two con artists in North Texas are convicted for scamming would-be vacationers out of over......

Local media discovers, loves Craigslist 41-year-old drunk driver manages to slam into two houses in North Austin Just one of the sixteen amendments proposed for the November ballot in Texas: stripping the constitutional powers of the Inspector of Hides and Animals Roughly four percent of Texas bridges are considered "structurally deficient," says the Texas Department of Transportation Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo announces his executive staff A lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission calls......

The Spicewood bar where an Austin Police commander and her husband, also an officer, were drinking before dying in a motorcycle crash was shut down by the TABC Today was the 41st anniversary of the UT Tower shootings Six cases of human West Nile Virus have been reported in Texas this year After the scandal earlier this year where UT's financial aid chief Lawrence Burt had improper dealings with a student loan company, the......

The 81-year-old Austin Athletic Club is set to be demolished to make way for a skate park Dennis Wayne Harvey Jr., a carjacker who shot a woman in the chest last November while attempting to steal her car and subsequently forced another woman to drive him to Downtown Austin, was given a life sentence [Edited -- see comments] A toddler in Kyle was killed after being accidentally run over by his mother Austin's quirkiest......

A little over a week before the third season of Weeds is set to debut, Austin Police last Saturday raided a South Austin home where they discovered 185 marijuana plants, all apparently healthy. Arthur Bass and Oscar Borjon Lopez, both in their early fifties, were arrested and charged with possessing controlled substances. Also found in the house on Lunar Drive were cocaine and alprazolam, a prescription drug used to treat anxiety disorders and depression. No......

In observation of July's "Watch Your Car" month, Austin Police Department is offering free vehicle identification number (VIN) etching services this week. It's a minor deterrant for would-be car thieves, and could possibly lower your auto insurance payments. Not too shabby. From APD:All vehicles have a federally assigned vehicle identification numbers (VIN). The etching of a VIN on the windows of a vehicle deters thieves because it is more difficult to dispose of property that......

Horrified though we were that a woman was killed by a flying tire on I-35, we chalked it up to a random freak tragedy—the kind that gets coverage on the national news because of its wholly unbelievable nature. This might not be the case. Shortly after Monday's incident, a woman on internet activist site Actt Up posted about a strikingly similar accident that happened to her three weeks ago, also on I-35: My name is......

Austin's 37th traffic fatality of 2007 is also one of our Top 5 Things That Terrify Us About Driving. 49-year-old Rochelle Jones was heading north on I-35 on Monday evening when a flying tire slammed into her Hyundai, smashing the driver's side. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Austin Police are still unsure of the errant tire's origins. "We don’t know if it was actually on a vehicle, or it might have been......

After an intensive manhunt to find the perpetrators of the Juneteenth murder of David Rivas Morales, Austin Police announced on Tuesday that they've arrested the man believed to have delivered the fatal blow that left Morales unconscious. Kurtiss Colvin, a 20-year-old former high school athlete, has been charged with manslaughter—a second-degree felony—as well as several lesser charges. His bail has been set at $215,000. Morales was leaving a Juneteenth celebration when the Ford Taurus he......

After holding a few public forums, having Austin staffers visit the home cities of the finalists and mulling over the results, City Manager Toby Futrell has decided on our new chief of police: Art Acevedo from Los Angeles. The official announcement will be made at noon today. We read yesterday that among the finalists for the position, Acevedo was a strong favorite (along with Richard Wiles from El Paso) of the Austinites who attended......

Austin Police need your help to identify a man who attempted to molest a 4-year-old girl. The incident took place at the Half Price Books on South Lamar (next to Chotchkies) at roughly 8:30pm last night last Tuesday. A father, taking his child to the bookstore, noticed a suspicious-looking man following the two as they went about their browsing. At one point, while the father was retrieving something from the bookshelf, "the other gentleman lifted......

Police officers at the University of Texas have responded to an undisclosed "low-level threat" on campus. The following email was sent out earlier this morning: At about 9 a.m. The University of Texas at Austin Police Department (UTPD) received a report of a low-level threat to the University Teaching Center (UTC) near the intersection of 21st Street and Speedway. Police are investigating and sweeping the building with officers and their dogs in accordance with their......

Following up on this weekend's announcement that the Austin Police Department has come under invesigation by the Justice Department, a two-part documentary was posted to YouTube today. Created as a student film class project at UT, the short film casts a critical eye on APD's recent accountability and use of force problems. (from Grits for Breakfast......

Austin city leaders announced late Friday afternoon that the U.S. Department of Justice is starting an investigation into the Austin Police Department and its use of force, specifically when dealing with minorities. "We are obliged to determine whether APD is systemically violating the Constitution of the United States," read the letter sent to the city from the Justice Department. In 2004, the Austin American-Statesman analyzed police data from 1998 to 2003, revealing that Austin police......

City officials have turned away FOX's crapfest viewer-favorite Cops, which was supposed to start filming here very soon. A couple years ago, Travis County Sheriffs were featured on the ultimate reality show (and plan to be on the show again), but Austin officials aren't allowing APD to get involved with it. While some in the Austin Police Association are disappointed, it may be best that America is spared seeing another half-naked drunk person being......

Attention, super-involved citizens! Yesterday, the City of Austin announced that all of us will have an opportunity to meet the five finalist candidates for the office of Chief of Police for the Austin Police Department next month. Throughout June, three "community forums" will be held at the Palmer Events Center, and these events will be completely open to the general public. According to the City, "feedback from these sessions will be utilized in making......

A woman in South Austin was taking out the trash yesterday when she stumbled upon a suspicious-looking device outside her house. This contraption, a metal pipe wrapped in electrical tape, turned out to be what Austin Police are calling an "improvised explosive device," essentially a catch-all term for a homemade bomb. Austin Police Department's Bomb Squad safely detonated the explosive. It's currently believed that yesterday's discovery was unrelated to last week's attempted bombing of the......

A prominent official at the Austin Museum of Art (AMOA) and his wife were arrested this weekend, after the two were caught trying to make off with paintings from the Fine Arts Festival. Austin Police Commander Michael Jung was on patrol near Republic Square Park early Sunday morning when he found a suspicious-looking Alexandra Sheppard, wife of former AMOA finance and operations director Nathan Sheppard, wandering around the Fine Arts Festival tents. In the process......

For those of you brave enough to drive into downtown this week, Austin Police Department wants to warn you about fakester parking attendants: The Downtown Area Command would like to advise the public that there are subjects wearing “safety glow vests” and pretending to be valet parking attendants for the entertainment district. Vehicles are parked on public streets in marked spaces and drivers are being charged a parking fee. Individuals who come to the entertainment......

While the final figures are just now coming out, last week already seems like a distant memory. Estimated amount, in cubic yards, of sanding material used to clear street locations: 1,349 Austin Energy customers who experienced a power outage: 35,000 Water mains repaired by Austin Water Utility: 16 Calls to EMS dispatchers and Austin Fire Department: 2,133 Calls to 311: 11,370 Collisions reported to the Austin Police Department: 599 Estimated number of canceled flights......

An man collapsed in a 6th Street bar and later died in a nearby hospital early Sunday morning, according to the Austin Police Department. Officers were investigating a disturbance at The Co-Op Bar, at 6th and Nueces, and talking to individuals involved when one of the men "passed out." After begin rushed to the hospital, the man--who remains anonymous pending notification of family members--was pronounced dead. Authorities are awaiting autopsy results before discussing the......

"UT spied on its non comformists and dissident students"Your every move is being watched. Scary thought, right? A thought we like to associate with Orwellian sci-fi or Alex Jones, but in recent years we've seen this idea become a reality. Little black boxes with blinking red lights are at traffic spots, street corners or up in trees making sure you're not up to any funny business. Now, in a democracy sans Habeas Corpus, we......

A Travis High School math teacher was arrested this past weekend after allegedly taking "improper" photographs of his female students. Thirty-eight year-old Page White was nabbed while on a field trip in San Antonio, and has since been placed on administrative leave. AISD and the Austin Police Department have yet to release additional information, as the case is still under investigation. The Statesman reports that the students were unknowingly photographed, clothed, while on campus and......