Police Monitor Releases 2010 Report

A couple months ago, we wrote about Austin’s Office of the Police Monitor six-month update, which was released in April. At that time, the OPM was particularly concerned with the amount of reports about officers being rude and discourteous to citizens. In fact, in only the first six months of 2010, over 800 people contacted the OPM with grievances.

Recently, the Office of the Police Monitor released its annual report. The second six-month period of 2010 saw fewer officer grievances, bringing the total for 2010 to 1,497, which is down 9% from 2009. The report also revealed that a disproportionate amount of these complaints were lodged against younger, newer members of the Austin Police Department.

The report contains other revealing statistics, including the frequency that a police searches a car belonging to a minority. According to the report, Caucasian drivers are more likely to be pulled over, but African-American and Hispanic drivers are subjected to many more searches—most of which reveal no criminal activity.

Though the number of grievances is lower than in 2009, many Austinites are concerned about the other issues that the report shows. The Austin Police Monitor claims that they will promote mediation and hopefully teach newer officers how to better interact with citizens.