Discretionary arrests by Austin Police are heavily skewed by race. Here’s how.

The Austin Police Department provided the data that is summarized above. The department removed from the data sets anyone who they found had an arrest warrant, who was intoxicated, or who had a higher charge. Therefore, the data above attempts to include only those who were arrested by officer discretion.

I’ve authored a resolution — cosponsored by Mayor Adler, Council Member Garza, and Council Member Kitchen — to 1: eliminate unnecessary arrests for nonviolent misdemeanors (and just give people citations instead), 2: confront racial disparity in all our arrests, and 3: spend our police resources on more serious issues. The full City Council will vote on it this coming Thursday, June 14th. You can read that resolution here:

http://www.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=299680