Travis County DA Unveils Citizen's Complaint Form Amid Unrest

AUSTIN, TX — The Travis County District Attorney announced this week her office would be adding a citizen's complaint form to its website for residents to report incidents involving excessive use of force by police officers.

The move comes amid civil unrest locally and nationwide over police brutality in the wake of the death of George Floyd, 46, in Minneapolis. Floyd died on May 25 after an officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes as the man repeatedly said he was unable to breathe. Locally, protesters calling for police reform already were galvanized as a result of the fatal police shooting of Michael Ramos, 42, who was unarmed during a confrontation with officers before being shot.

The new citizen's complaint form, along with other important information about how cases are reviewed by the Civil Rights Unit within the DA's Office, can be found at https://www.traviscountytx.gov/district-attorney/office-divisions/civil-rights/cru.

"We have always encouraged citizens to make independent reports to our office when they think they have been a victim of unlawful force by a public servant," DA Margaret Moore said in a prepared statement on Friday. "But we are adding an electronic form to our website that will hopefully make the process easier for the public to access and use. It will also allow our prosecutors to review the complaints in a more efficient way."

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"I think the common misconception is that these cases are easy to resolve and should be immediately presented to a grand jury," Moore said. "While I agree that the public is entitled to swift action and transparency to ensure justice for all sides, we have to make sure there is a thorough investigation into the facts of each case we receive. Sometimes this involves subpoenaing lab reports, phone records, ballistic reports, medical records, and other documents that are crucial to the case. It takes time to get these items from outside sources. To ensure the process is fair, we have to be able to anticipate the kinds of information the grand juries will want to know before we take a case before them. This is the same process that takes place in all felony cases."

Moore noted her creation of the Civil Rights Division when she took office in 2017. She added it's the only division in the office that reports directly to the district attorney.

Separately, Office of Police Oversight officials this week published complaints related to recent protests — an "unprecendented" level of such reports, officials said on the same day of Moore's announcement. The list of complaints that began being compiled on May 29 numbers 227 such reports from citizens logged at atxpoliceoversight.org range from concerns about use of force against protesters to specific complaints about injuries to individuals, officials said.

Formal complaints are organized by date and redacted to protect individual privacy, officials added. Last week, Director Farah Muscadin reported to Austin City Council that the Office of Police Oversight received an unprecedented number of complaints about interactions between protesters and the Austin Police Department, according to an advisory announcing the complaints portal. Typically — and before the protests being staged locally against police brutality — the office received some 50 complaints, Muscadin noted.