Incoming APD Chief Lisa Davis Can Seize Opportunity by Rebuilding Department
By Cleo Petricek, Dennis Farris & Matt Mackowiak
The hiring of the permanent police chief was our city’s most important hire in the last two decades.
Put simply, our city could not afford for City Manager T.C. Broadnax to get it wrong.
But he got it right.
Lisa Davis is a Navy veteran and has had a distinguished 30-year career in law enforcement, rising through the ranks of the Cincinnati Police Department to Assistant Police Chief. She was a finalist for their permanent Police Chief. Cincinnati’s loss is Austin’s gain.
Davis has a fantastic reputation in Cincinnati, built on a passion for community policing, serving others, and instilling a guardian’s mentality and a warrior’s preparation in her fellow officers. In 30 years, she has never had a serious conduct complaint. In her bid to be APD Chief, she impressed council members across the spectrum, as well as community leaders.
She arrives in Austin at a moment of crisis for APD.
When the defund the police vote was taken in 2020 (passing 11–0), it set off a staffing crisis that has engulfed the entire department and up until now has been irreversible. At the time of that vote, Austin had 1,800 available officers and a mutually agreed upon city budget that would build to an authorized strength of 2,000 officers, roughly two officers per 1,000 residents.
Today we have roughly 1,300 available officers (500 fewer than four years ago) and we may be at 1,200 officers by year’s end.
How has this happened?
It’s a math problem.
APD has lost 15 officers a month on average every single month since the defund vote was taken. And we gain roughly 30–40 officers each year when a cadet class graduates. This means we lose an average of 140 officers a year. Without a bold plan, we will never get ahead of this cascading disaster.
For Chief Davis, we respectfully offer the following advice:
1) Make final passage of a four-year labor agreement your most urgent priority. The certainty that comes with such a contract benefits everyone. The police union seeks guarantees on pay and benefits and the city seeks implementation of the oversight ordinance. Reports indicate they are very close to a final agreement, which will require concurrent passage by both the police union and the City Council. Recruitment is nearly impossible without such a contract.
2) Improve retention and boost recruitment. We must shrink our monthly attrition and boost our annual recruitment. This will not just slow the rate of decline, but turn the staffing crisis around. On retention, leadership can make the difference. Officers want to know that the Police Chief has their backs, will fight for them, and can effectively lead the organization at a difficult time. On recruitment, Austin needs to join the ranks of America’s major cities by allowing concurrent classes, night classes, and more modified classes (shortened to bring police from other jurisdictions into APD). The goal for 2025 should be no net loss in available officers for APD, with a goal of building back our ranks toward 1,800 officers over the next five years.
3) Rebuild the bonds of trust with the community. Policing is built on the social contract that police are there to protect us and that the community trusts that they will. All police departments can improve and APD is no exception. Davis can rely on the proven current leadership team to assess APD’s organizational structure and policies and propose a plan for its future that will unify the Mayor, the City Council, business and community leaders, and APD’s rank and file behind a common vision for APD’s future.
Lisa Davis has the experience, the record, and the passion to lead APD into a new chapter. We know she will rise to this challenge.
We hope our entire city supports her in this endeavor.
Cleo Petricek and Matt Mackowiak are the bipartisan co-founders of Save Austin Now, a nonpartisan organization focused on improving quality of life for all residents. Dennis Farris served at APD for 25 years and is now president of the Austin Police Retired Officers Association, which has 1,150 members, whose motto is “served and protected”.
