AUSTIN, Texas — There are mixed feelings across Austin after Travis County District Attorney José Garza dismissed the cases of 17 Austin Police Department (APD) officers. The charges were for excessive force and seriously hurting protestors by using less-lethal bean bag rounds during the 2020 social justice protest.
Attorneys Doug O'Connell and Ken Ervin, who represent most of those APD officers, said they're not surprised that Garza dropped cases. The pair said they expected the dismissals to happen earlier in the year.
"Here we are two years later and the case is finally dismissed," O'Connell said. "The damage has already been done. What's clear about this is these indictments were strictly political from the very beginning."
Michael Bullock, the Austin Police Association's incoming president, said the officers and their families can finally stop living in limbo, and the officers can get back to patrolling the streets.
"All these officers, they dealt with unprecedented challenges," Bullock said. "As was shown today, they acted within the law and they upheld their oath to protect this city. Thus far, the district attorney has failed to prove in any instance that officers have committed any wrongdoing. So I'm hoping this is the start of a trend where he wants to maybe work with us instead of targeting our department and waging what seems like a war on officers right now here in Austin."
Not everyone agreed with Garza's decision to drop most of the charges.
"Hearts going out to the victims today who are learning that there won't be any accountability for the people that harmed them during the protests," said Chris Harris with the Austin Justice Coalition.
Harris said he's been fighting for accountability for APD's role in the protests.
"I think that the City's role in this screams hypocrisy when they have not held one officer or APD leadership member accountable for any of the conduct that they're now requesting a DOJ investigation into," Harris said.
The DA and the City of Austin seek a federal investigation into whether the department engaged in a pattern of racial bias and unlawful force during the protests. Right now, four APD officers still face criminal charges. O'Connell said two of them are his clients, Jeffrey Teng and Chance Bretches.
"So we've been unable to figure out why these two officers' cases were not dismissed, but the other 10 officers we represented have been dismissed," Ervin said.
KVUE also spoke with the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT). They, too, were happy the charges were dropped for most of the officers.
"Someone purchased ammunition that wound up being deficient and hurt someone. No street cop is ever going to have knowledge, or the experience, or the decision-making power on anything regarding that," said Charley Wilkison, CLEAT's executive director. "So that is up to others. But the fact that you go out and you set out to find the people following orders and you would set out to prosecute them criminally and put their lives upside down, their family's lives upside down for two years, shows you what kind of character this district attorney has."
KVUE reached out to the victims' lawyers, but we have not heard back yet.