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Editor-in-Chief: ALLEN Y CHEN
Publisher: GOTHAMIST

Entries from Austinist tagged with 'policedepartment'

January 7, 2008

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

Continue Reading "Former Austin Mayor Involved in Traffic Fatality"

December 11, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "Man Wanted in "Terroristic Threat" on UT Campus"

October 24, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "APD's Sartorial Sensibilities"

October 15, 2007

August 22, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "Extra Extra"

August 16, 2007

The Statesman's just reported that a former pastor in Round Rock has been arrested on felony theft charges. 48-year-old Donald "Roddy" Clyde, a pastor of Fellowship at Forest Creek since 1992, is accused of embezzling over half a million dollars from the church. Suspicions were first raised by the church's accounting department, which found "questionable activity" in their ledgers. Recognizing that their Senior Pastor was likely misappropriating these monies for other non-church purposes, they contacted......

Continue Reading "A Plan Less than Intelligently Designed"

July 24, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "APD Wants to Tap That Glass"

July 5, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "Arrest Made in Juneteenth Murder"

June 11, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "Two Buildings at UT Evacuated After "Low-Level Threat" Received"

June 5, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "YouTube Austin: APD Documentary"

June 4, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "APD Under Federal Investigation"

May 22, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "Meet the APD Police Chief Candidates Next Month"

May 1, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "Second Bomb Found In As Many Weeks"

March 22, 2007

Spring Break is over and the students at The University of Texas have reclaimed their city--things are slowly coming back together. However, before the break, one would assume that these future leaders of tomorrow would have saved up their energy for a vacation to Cancun, a road trip to Florida or, god forbid, staying in town for that music festival that you only gets you a wristband tanline. But just months, weeks and days......

Continue Reading "Stupid Student Tricks, Spring Break Edition"

March 12, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "Beware of Parking Scammers"

January 22, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "Ice Storm 2007, By the Numbers"

January 15, 2007

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......

Continue Reading "Man Dies After Passing Out at Downtown Bar"

January 4, 2007

"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......

Continue Reading "The Spies of Texas Are Upon You"

December 12, 2006

Classes have ended at The University of Texas and winter is finally here, the time when girls trade short skirts for sweatpants and guys replace short-sleeve UT shirts with long-sleeve UT shirts. For the students at UT Austin, it's been a pretty tough year. West Campus construction has kept them up all night, their football team choked, APD won't let them party as hard, and now, starting tomorrow, it's final exam time. Where do......

Continue Reading "Stupid Student Tricks, Final Exam Edition"

December 11, 2006

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......

Continue Reading "Teacher Busted for Taking Dirty Photos"

November 22, 2006

Round Rock police spent hours last Tuesday tracking down a prank caller who'd brazenly dialed 911 emergency dispatchers nearly fifty times, each call disconnecting amid peals of laughter. The prankster turned out to be a 7-year-old asshole boy, who'd happened upon a disconnected cell phone. The aspiring felon was evidently making the calls during class at Bluebonnet Elementary School. "He was just doing it for fun because he had a cell phone," said Round Rock......

Continue Reading "Authorities Foiled By Kid Who Can't Read Good"

October 25, 2006

And you thought Mr. Holland’s Opus made you cry…listen to Richard Dreyfuss talk Middle Eastern politics at the Texas Union Ballroom on Nov. 2nd, 7 p.m. Get tickets at Student Events Center Tickets Office (Room 4.300 of The Union). Smoking is BAD. You should quit. Attend the four-session Quitters Stop Smoking Class held every Friday starting Oct. 27 at noon. Sign up at SSB 1.106. Or, if you're not into group work pick up......

Continue Reading "Campus News Bits"

October 16, 2006

Life is obviously too short to live in Houston. The Two Gallants were entertaining the crowd with their punkish alt-country Delta blues at Walter’s on Washington Friday night in Houston when a neighbor called the cops to report a noise complaint. The cops arrived, and it was business as usual all hell seemingly broke loose. Apparently Officer G.M. Rodriguez, approached management and asked them to turn down the sound. The bar complied, but as Rodriguez......

Continue Reading "This One Goes to Eleven"

October 10, 2006

Last week, The Austin Police Department announced the arrest of four of Austin's most noticeable graffiti artists, who were responsible for more than 200 hundred acts of graffiti around Austin, racking up a bill of more than $76,000 in maintenance. Last week's edition of the Chronicle reported that these four teens -- 17, 17, 19 & 16 years old -- damaged 64 private business and 67 City of Austin properties. Their tag names, which......

Continue Reading "Snapshots: Four Local Grafitti Artists Nabbed"

October 2, 2006

Reeling from the nomination as the #1 Party School in the nation, students at The University of Texas are hard at work peeing on street corners, throwing up during class and passing out on the steps of The Church of Scientology. And in recent years, we've been lucky enough to have a record of these acts, thanks to the folks over at the UT Police Department. The boys in blue release a bi-weekly campus-watch......

Continue Reading "Stupid Student Tricks"

September 7, 2006

The Austin Police Department and the party-throwers living in the campus area have always seemed to get along. If you find yourself at a party around campus and a police cruiser stops out front, no one runs--even when that sweet bubbler on the table still has smoke billowing from it--everyone just walks away calmly. APD knows they can't stop every party, arrest every weed smoker and hand out tickets to every minor, so they......

Continue Reading "Party Safety: No Longer An Oxymoron"

August 30, 2006

Note: this post has been revised after receiving additional information from the Austin Police Department. According to the Daily Texan, the body of a student from St. Edward's University -- identified by the Austin Police Department as 19-year old James Henry Leonard -- was discovered by officers at a small apartment complex at 22nd and Rio Grande, mere blocks from UT Austin, earlier this morning. Meanwhile, News 8 Austin's article claims that "party noises"......

Continue Reading "University Student Found Dead In Apartment Near UT Campus"

August 18, 2006

An 18-wheeler struck a pedestrian at the intersection of East Ben White and the south I-35 northbound service road just over an hour ago. Understandably, traffic at that intersection is extremely congested. From the Statesman's Blotter: A news release by the Austin Police Department: At approximately 2:50 p.m., APD patrol officers responded to a collision at East Ben White Boulevard and the south I-35 northbound service road. It is believed that an 18-wheeler was......

Continue Reading "Breaking News: Accident at I-35 and Ben White"

July 24, 2006

Much like their mentor Willie Nelson, the former Saxon Pub regulars Los Lonely Boys can't seem to avoid getting caught with the weed. On Saturday, Austin police responded to complaints at The Omni and arrested Boys' bassist JoJo Garza for marijuana possession... and for allegedly assaulting his fiancee Carina Lyn. While a publicist for the band has called the whole matter "a misunderstanding" and chalked the incident up to noisy partying, the Austin Police......

Continue Reading "Los Weed Lovin' Boys In Trouble Again"

July 6, 2006

KVUE reports that the fellow pictured on the right exposed his manly bits to the bargain couture shoppers at Neiman Marcus Last Call back on June 22nd, according to the Austin Police Department: Investigators say the man went into the women's shoe section and then exposed himself. He later walked out of the store and drove off in a black, 1994 Honda Civic. The license plate number was S64-VSJ. He's described as white or Hispanic......

Continue Reading "Austinite Takes Matters Into Own Hands Amidst Discount Manolos"
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