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APD’s Re-Org Creates New Neighborhood Alliances

By Lori C-Renteria, volunteer editor, Crime-Safety Chair, East Cesar Chavez Neighborhood

 

On January 2nd as part of the Austin Police Depart

ment’s strategic vision Bureaus, geographic boundaries

and personnel alignments throughout the department

changed to improve operations. Instead of having 3

Bureaus with Area Commands, we’ve got 4 Regions

with Patrol Sectors. Sector boundaries were shifted to

make each Region have more sensible alliances

between neighborhoods as well as to balance Sector

resources more fairly based on response time, number

and severity of calls. Every effort was made to keep

neighborhood planning areas and associations in the

same Sector. Unlike re-orgs in the past, this realign

ment was data-driven using COMSTAT, the new real-

time software for tracking crime and analyzing trends.

All Commanders were involved in negotiating these

changes with Chief Acevedo over six months of

planning. Commander Ockletree of the old Central

East Command, advocated long and hard on our behalf

and we appreciate his efforts.

 

Commander Ockletree told us at our January Forum that while we lost some territory and gained some neighborhoods south of the river, overall our new Region 3 gained 1 additional officer and since the new patrol area is smaller, we are in better shape. Each Region now has an additional Commander, Lt. and Sgt. responsible for tactical operations. We welcome back Commander Michael Nyert who was one of our longest-serving Area Commanders to lead our officers on patrol and special operations. Commander Ockletree can now focus more on his primary duty providing community support using Detectives and District Representatives.

 

District Representatives (DRs) are now your main contact with the police department to help you solve neighborhood problems. The DRs are enhancing patrol efforts, attending neighborhood association and school meetings to educate communities about safety and crime prevention, solving non-emergency problems, and helping neighborhoods become self-reliant. Your DR can help you with these: Neighborhood Watch programs, Citizens On Patrol (COPs), Apartment Residents On Watch (AROW), abandoned and junk vehicles, graffiti, abandoned residences and buildings, illegal dumping, crime prevention, problem solving, and city representative complaints.

 

We are now aligned with Montopolis and East Riverside neighborhoods in Region 3 but the East Cesar Chavez Neighborhood and the OCEAN/Guadalupe Neighborhoods were aligned with the downtown patrol to alleviate some of the crime in these neighborhoods resulting from increased enforcement downtown on drug dealing and public drinking and the ill effects of the encroachment of the downtown entertainment district into these adjacent neighborhoods. This should improve response time and accountability for downtown’s frequent offenders who use I-35 as a kind of “no man’s zone.”

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