Police Chief Vows Crackdown On Downtown Austin Violence

AUSTIN, TX — After two straight weekends of gunfire shootings in the downtown entertainment corridor, Police Chief Brian Manley said on Monday that even more officers will be stationed in the area and more lighting will be installed in an effort to deter further violence.

Recent incidents of violence have marred revelers' festivities in the downtown sector in the last couple of weekends, but growing violence there has raised concerns. Before the most recent pair of incidents, the second weekend of SXSW proved an especially violent period marked by several shootings, as the chief reminded.

Yet it was the consecutive nature of the recent shootings on separate weekends that has prompted police to take substantive action. This past weekend and last have been marked by gunplay:

• The first incident occurred on July 21 just before 3 a.m. at 7th and Red River streets involving a disturbance among three people that originated in a nearby nightclub. The violence was captured on cell phone video that was uploaded to YouTube, showing the suspect shooting the female victim who had previously fought with another woman. In the video, the suspect is seen fleeing the scene after shooting the woman. He is still at large, and police have identified him as Reginald Thomas, 29. He asked anyone with information as to his whereabouts to contact police.
• Less than a week later, a man was shot in the leg after getting into a confrontation with another male suspect. The second incident occurred on July 27 at around 9:40 p.m. along the 500 block of East 7th Street where two men got into an argument after one told the other he was infringing on his area. A physical confrontation ensued, prompting the suspect to retrieve a gun from his car and shoot the victim. Police have since issued an arrest warrant for Moses Mojinga for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, Manley said.

"Our immediate response to this uptick that we're seeing will be all downtown patrol shifts will go to mandatory 100 percent staffing, plus additional officers will be added to each shift," Manley told reporters at a Monday afternoon press conference. "Plus, additional officers will be added to each shift. That will begin this upcoming weekend, and carry on for the weeks to follow until we feel we have addressed the issue or until we have identified ways to maintain the safety in this area."

Manley said additional lighting will be added to the entertainment district wherever possible as a way of increasing visibility to an area constantly monitored by a network of police cameras. The surveillance network is known as High Activity Location Observation (HALO), consisting of strategically placed surveillance cameras that are continuously monitored.

In addition to those steps, Manley said officers working on the street narcotics beat and those monitoring gang activity also would be dispatched to the downtown trouble spots in an augmentation of other officers' patrols there.

Manley noted the downtown entertainment district already is the most heavily policed area of the city on weekends given both its growth in intervening years and a five-year trend of upward violence.

"I do think it's important to note that the downtown area does have the heaviest concentration of officers based on the size of the area," Manley said. The downtown entertainment district once limited to East 6th Street — "dirty 6th, as it's known in the local nomenclature — has since expanded to West 6th, 4th Street and Rainey Street, the latter that was once a residential area before being overrun with trendy bars and restaurants that dot the popular area in a city that is gentrifying at a brisk pace.

"The area has expanded, so we're adjusting our plans to meet this growing need," Manley said. "The plans as laid out will be evaluated on an ongoing basis, and we'll make adjustments as necessary."

What one notices while traversing 6th Street is officers stationed at street intersections with a smattering of police presence at some points within the perimeter of the blocked-off artery — a vantage point that may have enabled the suspects in both recent shooting to flee before police arrived. Rarely, if ever, does one see an officer near the entrance of clubs dotting the artery. Manley did not address if the officers' positioning would be adjusted to deter further violence.

Police monitor crowd activity on a recent night on 6th Street. Photo by Tony Cantú/Patch staff.

While the consecutive nature of the most recent shootings has raised concern, violence in the downtown entertainment district pre-dates the past couple of weekends. On July 7, a man and woman were shot outside the Terminal 6 bar by a suspect still at large.

Before that, in the winding down of SXSW — the massive annual conglomerate of film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences that lures thousands of people from all over the world to downtown Austin — several shootings had police scrambling.

Related stories:

Police Respond To Downtown Austin Shooting

Man Sustains Serious Injuries In Downtown Austin Shooting

2 Seriously Hurt In 6th Street Shooting: Austin EMS

SXSW Festival Ends With A Weekend Of Violence In Austin

Austin Mayor, Governor Clash On Homeless Issue

Late Saturday, March 16, a man was shot on East 6th Street after a previous night that saw four other injuries. The next morning, a fender-bender along 7th Street led to gunfire between the vehicles' occupants, including shots fired by four police officers who who reportedly fired at during the incident.

Just before midnight on that Saturday, a man in his 20s was rushed to the hospital after being shot near the 300 block of East 6th Street at San Jacinto Boulevard. The area was closed off to traffic as it usually is each Saturday night, but crowds along the entertainment corridor were larger than usual given the ongoing arts festival still taking place.

Manley was compelled to address that earlier violence as well:

The most recent violence occurred in the midst of recent city council action designed to ease ordinances related to the policing of the homeless population — a segment of the population often used as scapegoat when violence erupts, whether detractors' assertions in ascribing such blame are factual or not. The Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH) at 500 E. 7th St. is located in the same area of the recent violence, leading critics of eased policing of the segment to extrapolate some measure of blame on the homeless population.

Led by Austin Police Association President Kenneth Casaday, members of the police union have led the charge in demonizing the homeless population for the rising violence while taking potshots at council members' efforts to ease restrictions on disenfranchised members of society.

"Downtown officers worked another shooting this morning at the ARCH," Casaday recently wrote on Twitter in the wake of the recent violence. "The six-block area around the ARCH and dirty 6th could be one of the most violent places in the State of Texas."

While Manley takes steps to confront the violence with more robust policing, the Austin Police Association has politicized the issue. In a recent Facebook post, the union took to Facebook to decry council's relaxed ordinances relating to activities of the homeless.

"The shootings, stabbings, and other violent crimes that happen around the ARCH are one of many reasons South Austin residents are enraged that the next homeless shelter is going in their backyard," the union's post read. "City council has ruled with an iron fist. South Austin wasn't allowed any input into the oddly secretive process of picking a new shelter. Community process is the best way to make changes and we are sure something could have been worked out if city council would have utilized that process."

Gov. Greg Abbott also has jumped on the anti-homeless bandwagon — blaming a recent road accident on homeless people darting into traffic — while decrying the actions of a progressive Austin City Council. In a tweet posted July 2 — the day following city council's revamped ordinances in dealing with the homeless — Abbott re-tweeted in assigning blame: "Look at this insanity caused by Austin’s reckless homeless policy," he wrote, before adding. "The horror stories are piling up."

Police later confirmed the road incident occurred when a motorist ran a red light, and no homeless people were involved. Despite the debunking, Abbott never did take down his erroneous post on Twitter.

During his press conference on Monday, Manley made a point to note that neither of the two recent incidents of violence involved homeless people. "Although these individuals do frequent the area of the ARCH, they are not believed to be homeless or receive surfaces from the ARCH," he said of the July 21 incident. The same goes for the July 27 incident, Manley added: "In this instance also, neither the victim or the suspect were homeless or utilized services from the ARCH based on information at this time.

As closing time nears every weekend along 6th Street, mounted police parade across the street — barricaded to block traffic to ensure revelers' safety — on horseback, loudly blowing whistles along the way to let people know it's time to go. At Manley's press conference addressing rising violence, it's clear he's poised to bring out the cavalry in myriad other ways.

As part of their weekend routine on 6th Street, mounted police remind revelers it's time to go come closing time. Photo by Tony Cantú/Patch staff.