Police Chief Lisa Davis (photo by Katherine Irwin)
Austin’s new chief of police, Lisa Davis, has launched a 100-day action plan which she hopes will lay the foundation for her tenure as leader of the Austin Police Department.
The plan, packaged in a sleek document shared with reporters last week, includes four objectives aimed at addressing three key priorities for the department identified by Davis: “recruitment, retention, and morale;” “community trust and crime prevention;” and “capacity for excellence and innovation.”
“Our goal at the end of this,” Davis said on Oct. 14, “is to use all of the information we gather from connections we’ve made through the 100 days and start building strategies around recruitment, retention, community engagement, and other areas.” The four objectives Davis hopes to accomplish over the 100-day period include community outreach, assessment and evaluation of existing department strategy and initiatives, communitywide collaboration on updates to those strategies, and initiation of the new plan and public communication around it.
She’ll work with the usual stakeholders, of course – the Austin Police Association, business owners, and local elected officials – but, Davis said, a vital piece of the project is working with people who have, historically, been critical of APD.
“I sat for hours hearing from groups who were against the [police] contract,” Davis said, referencing the hours of public testimony offered at City Council’s Oct. 24 meeting from people opposing the five-year, $218 million deal. “They shared issues they had with the police department and not just the contract’s cost. That can hurt to hear. But those are perspectives that need to be heard and listened to so we can work together on solutions.”
“That can hurt to hear. But those are perspectives that need to be heard and listened to so we can work together on solutions.” – Police Chief Lisa Davis
Davis said that she intends to deploy a “holistic governance” approach to developing solutions to city problems – and sometimes APD may not even play the most important role in those solutions. She talked about looking at traffic fatality data (there have been 78 fatal incidents in 2024) and seeing that several were pedestrian fatalities near highways. A majority of the victims were unhoused.
“Living under a bridge can be extremely dangerous,” Davis said. “Public safety solutions need to include us reaching out to [Homeless Strategy Officer] David Gray to work together on ways we can help people in those situations.” Helping to move people out of those situations, Davis said, is one way the city can address public safety.
Davis also said that continuing to improve the training Austin police officers receive at the Austin Police Academy would be a high priority. Efforts to implement new, community-led training programs and curriculum at the academy over the past several years have been stymied by ineffective department leadership, outside consultants have found.
But Davis said she’s hired two new researchers (one from Kroll & Associates, the consultant firm that helped City Council design the academy reforms) to help get the academy reform project back on track. “We have fantastic instructors over there,” Davis said. “We just need to make sure that what we’re delivering is what the community wants and deserves.”
At the end of the 100-day period, which formally began Oct. 14, Davis intends to update the public on what she learned and next steps she plans to take.
