AUSTIN — Unfortunately, to paraphrase Malcolm X and Jeremiah Wright, the all-Democrat Austin City Council’s chickens are coming home to roost.
Over the past year and a half, Texas Scorecard has documented an array of the city council’s harmful decisions and consequences, from allowing lawlessness among the homeless to cutting $150 million from local law enforcement. And tragically, another worst-case scenario just became a reality.
According to an on-site briefing by the Austin Police Department attended by Texas Scorecard, a homeless man was brutally stabbed to death at approximately 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday at a downtown-area homeless encampment we have previously documented.
According to APD, the victim was a homeless male, and despite receiving triage care from bystanders, he passed away before the police arrived. The assailant remains at large.
This was Austin’s 47th homicide of 2020—the highest annual number of homicides in the past 20 years.
The city council has faced a wildfire of public backlash since the summer of 2019, when they allowed homeless individuals to camp in nearly every public space throughout the city. This led to a documented and drastic increase in the city’s homeless population, an increase in public safety risk, and a slew of law enforcement, elected officials, and more than 100,000 citizens calling for the council to reverse their decision.
Then, in 2020, after homicides increased 64 percent year over year (along with double-digit spikes in other forms of violent crime), the city council cut the police budget by one-third.
The latest homicide comes amid early voting in important runoffs for two city council seats in a different part of the city. In northwest Austin, candidates Mackenzie Kelly (District 6) and Jennifer Virden (District 10) are campaigning on pro-public safety platforms, and both want to reinstate the ban on so-called “homeless camping.” They are running against respective Democrat incumbents Jimmy Flannigan and Alison Alter.
The Austin Police Department encourages anyone with additional information on the stabbing incident to call the APD homicide tip line at (512) 974-TIPS (8477).
