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Happy New Year, Equity Action Team!
I hope you all were able to enjoy time away and get some rest over the past couple weeks. The whole year of 2020, and especially those last weeks, felt like everything needed done all the time, and the necessity of the work drags us ever forward. We will have an additional newsletter offering launching later this month to focus on the work of Immigrant Affairs Coordinator Rocío Villalobos. I can't share all the details right now, but be on the lookout and start getting excited for that!
There's a lot to update on, so I'll get right to it. |
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January Equity Action Team Meeting
The January Equity Action Team meeting will be held Friday, January 15th, from 11:00 AM-2:30 PM. The meeting shifted back an hour due to a recurring conflict for our Office on Friday mornings.
As a note, I heard from many of you that there were issues with accessing the Zoom link. When you receive a message that "only authorized users are allowed" all you need to do is log into a Zoom or Google account and it should let you in. I know this presents a barrier, but we're trying to balance access while also holding the space for you all to feel safe and secure.
On the agenda, we will have a dicsussion of the APD Equity Assessment Reports (see below for more info on these) and the Vaccine Distribution Plan for the City of Austin. We're excited to begin 2021 with such critical conversations, and look forward to seeing you all!
If you would like to add this meeting to your calendar, you can do so with these links:
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Update on Project Connect
We're still waiting to hear back on some of the questions and concerns raised at the last meeting, but we did want to provide a quick update to Project Connect as it continues to move forward.
There will be a number of public meetings to begin the scoping of the new transit lines, with the first being held Monday, January 25th to discuss the Orange Line, running from Tech Ridge, through Rundberg and downtown, and down to Slaughter Ln. You can register and get details on all the meetings here.
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Update on the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force
At the last meeting, the Task Force decided on workgroups to help organize and move the work forward. Each group will have members from the Task Force to help lead and facilitate, but they will also need community members with strong, critical analysis to join and provide input. The Workgroups are:
- Combined Reimagining 911 and non-Police Crisis Response
- Police Staffing: patrol and criminal investigations
- Public Health Reinvestment
- Uprooting Punitive and Harm Culture in Intersecting Systems
- Patrol and Surveillance
- Business and Economic Development
- Equity Re-investment in Community
- Meaningful Community Engagement
If you are interested in joining any of these groups, reply to this email or reach out to any of the Equity Office and we can get you connected.
There are additional ways to get involved in the broader engagement work. There have been a series of community conversations focused in City Council districts over the course of the past months. The next one will be for District 3 on January 13th, followed by citywide sessions January 16th (in Spanish), January 20th, and January 28th. Registration links and times can be found here.
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Equity Assessment of the Austin Police Department
These reports have revealed serious concerns throughout the department, with the allegations surfaced within the section on the Training+Recruiting Division in particular uncovering "significant racial and gender disparities [within its] standards and practices".
These disparities include a lack of representation within the staff of the Division, with just one Black employee out of 57 staff. The outcomes for Black cadets were also highly disprportionate. Black male cadets graduated the academy less than half the time, while White male cadets graduated at a rate over 80%. Black cadets only accounted for 5% of all graduates over the past 5 years, and all but White cadets were underrepresented in the pool of graduates.
The report then goes on to detail accounts from several cadets on the aims and practices of the academy, and I encourage everyone to read the details for themselves, but it's enough that our City is facing ongoing litigation for its treatment of cadets in the academy. The ending recommendation is for a complete rebuild of the APD Training Academy, to begin with a community-centered accounting of these harms committed, as well as visioning for what the academy could and should be.
In other areas, this report reinforces what we in the Office and community have been seeing when it comes to APD. For the Data and Planning Division, it is clear there is not interest nor capability to collect, analyze, or communicate data for improvement. When asked to take a critical lens, the responses instead reveal the Division's own disinterest in making anything accessible, transparent, or informational for both external and internal review of data.
In the Internal Affairs and Professional Standards assessment, there were again no strategies or competency for racial equity. In addition, the practice of recruiting from the pool of APD Officers ensures that the Division will have a lack of diversity, and that the toxic culture and assumptions embedded within the rest of the department will be upheld by those intended to address it.
The other divisions assessed in these reports are: Finance, Human Resources, and Victim Services. Overall these divisions had more diversity and competency around racial equity than those mentioned before. However, consistently they did lack any training or development on equity, and lacked intention to advance racial equity.
The final report contained in this a process evaluation performed by the evaluator, which will be invaluable to the Equity Office as we continue to roll out the Equity Assessment Tool to the remaining 20+ divisions of the Austin Police Department.
As we're gearing up for the new cohort of divisions, we will be sure to communicate in this space, as well as in the EAT meetings to recruit new and additional participants to serve on the community review panel. From all of us at the Office, we thank these community members for dedicating their evenings to this effort. They played a critical role in challenging the assumptions and status quo of the APD respondents, and without them we could not have reached the depth of analysis we did.
We also want to thank our facilitator for the meetings between the APD and community review panel, as well as our evaluator who analyzed the responses and wrote these reports. |
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Jobs
- Caritas of Austin are hiring for a number of positions, across Admin, Development, and Program areas. See full listing here.
- The Contemporary Austin is hiring for Designer, Director of Finance and Operations, and Development Manager positions. See listings here.
- Urban Roots is accepting applications for the Food and Leadership Fellowship, deadline January 15. See information here.
- The Shoal Creek Conservancy is hiring for a Development Manager, as well as accepting applications for two Sustainability Internships. See listings here.
- APD is hiring for a Riverside Site Coordinator to help with disbursement of Department of Justice grant fuding in the East Riverside Corridor. Applications close January 31st, see more info and apply here.
- Human Resources is hiring for a Municipal Civil Service Coordinator. Applications close 1/15. Apply here.
- The Office of Police Oversight is hiring for a Public Information and Marketing Program Manager. Applications close 1/29, apply here.
- Watershed Protection is hiring for a Managing Engineer. Applications close 1/11, apply here.
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