Farrukh Abadi
Texas State Troopers with the Department of Public Safety (DPS) have returned to Austin after a brief absence. The troopers were away on border deployment to harass and abuse the masses of mainly Latin America who were attempting to enter the United States. Ten days after the City reinstated DPS patrols, Austin City Council attempted to end the patrol, but DPS has refused, with Governor Abbott increasing the number of DPS officers in Austin by 30%.
On July 9th, Carlos Meza, a south Austin resident, was coming home from a neighborhood pool with his ten-year-old son in the car. The car, recently acquired by Meza, lacked license plates. This minor infraction led state troopers to follow and harass Meza and his son. Lacking any situational analysis, the troopers drew firearms on the child as he exited the vehicle outside his own home. It was this racially-charged act of terror and intimidation that compelled Austin city leaders to suspend their partnership with DPS.
DPS patrols in Austin and other cities have been met with anger and controversy. DPS is by any measure more reactionary, brutal and harmful to the people of Austin than the already ultra-reactionary AustinPolice Department. 9 out of 10 people arrested by DPS are Black or Latino, and in Dallas DPS left the city after murdering a Black man during a traffic stop over his turn signal.
The patrols themselves are a direct retaliation for the Uprisings in May 2020 in Texas,catalyzed by the police murders of George Floyd and Michael Ramos, which resulted in minor slaps against the Austin Police Department as well as changes in city government. The APD has also claimed massive staffing shortages following the Uprisings. As of April, they cite more than 300 vacancies in the department and this number is expected to increase.
The presence of DPS in the city as well as their refusal to stop patrols indicate the reactionization of the bourgeois state. It is a situation where power is taken from the city government and concentrated more in the hands of the state, and ultimately greater power in the hands of the executive branch of government. Abbott has claimed that DPS’ “jurisdiction is every square inch of Texas,” a statement which nullifies the very existence of city laws and city law enforcement. In reality, DPS is charged with enforcement of state laws, guarding state buildings and driver’s license administration, not to patrol city streets in order to terrorize children and parents for riding in a car without plates.
The city government initially wanted the patrols to do the police’s dirty work and clean the image of the APD, assigning them to patrol Black and Latino neighborhoods specifically. It is evident that now city officials are hamstrung, but more importantly they lack the energy and enthusiasm to really fight the presence of DPS in the city.
Such a fight is the duty of the people. When working people took to the streets in great numbers and with even greater fighting energy in Austin during the 2020 Uprisings, DPS ran with bleeding heads from their jurisdiction around the Texas State Capital and sought protection at APD headquarters. Such enthusiasm from working people might just be the thing to get this agency off Austin’s streets.
Photo: Texas DPS, Bodycam footage from the July 9th traffic stop
