UT must defund UTPD as Austin Police funding increases
September 18, 2022
Content Warning: This column contains mentions of Police brutality
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, people around the world opened their eyes to the mistreatment of Black people by the police and were shocked to witness the abuse Black Americans had been accustomed to for decades. The universal outrage for police reform led cities across the country to change their law enforcement practices.
As protests across Austin increased, the Austin City Council cut one-third of the city’s police department budget, a number totaling $150 million. This decision was a response to the vast protests around the city after the murders of George Floyd and Mike Ramos, who was murdered by the Austin Police Department.
These budget cuts greatly affected the UT community’s feeling of safety around campus. Many students became worried about what the change would mean for security in West Campus, which already has a history of crime. This concern led the UT System Board of Regents to increase the UTPD budget by $8 million – a decision that was extremely polarizing for students and faculty.
The fear surrounding an underfunded Austin Police Department changed when Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law that simultaneously increased the criminalization of protestors and punished cities that reduce police budgets. This law resulted in APD receiving $442 million in funding for the year of 2021-2022, the highest ever police department funding recorded in Austin history.
Because of the vast increase in APD’s budget and the threat of over-policing on UT’s campus, the University needs to decrease the UTPD budget.
Many students around the nation, especially students of color, are wary of police in schools to begin with. There have been too many instances of marginalized students being targeted by police on college campuses. During the 2021-2022 Gone to Texas celebration, the organization Cops off Campus protested the event to show their disdain for UTPD’s increased police budget.
Johanna Oumma Befekadu, a sophomore social work major, has felt uncomfortable around police and is skeptical of how both an increased Austin PD and UTPD budget will improve campus safety.
“Personally, I don’t really like (the increased police budgets) just because having a greater police presence around campus doesn’t really make me feel more comfortable because of the actions of police,” said Befekadu. “Especially as a Black woman, I feel like I would be more targeted. And that makes me a lot more scared.”
This feeling is commonly shared among Black students, which is why many around the country are rejecting calls for increased police presence in schools. UT should defund UTPD to accommodate for the increased Austin PD budget. They should also make Black students feel more valued in their distrust of law enforcement, especially considering APD’s history of police brutality.
Befekadu also referenced the importance of improving programs that make students feel safer at night and training bias programs for police officers.
“Instead of focusing on increasing the budget for the police, I think (they should focus on) instilling better programs … for example, (for) students having to walk late at night … and more training with recognizing certain biases that some officers could have,” said Befekadu.
The diversity training of the UTPD has been called into question before due to lack of transparency about instruction related to implicit bias. UTPD has included an interactive transparency dashboard as a response to students’ and parents’ distrust as to what the UTPD does to better the campus.
In Jay Hartzell’s statement announcing the increased UTPD budget, he claimed the budget allotted them to enhance safety for students. However, it is important to consider which students reap the benefits of over-policing around campus. Many students of color, particularly Black students, on campus do not feel that they are granted safety from UTPD or APD. In fact, in 2020, UT’s Black Student Alliance released a statement in which they said, “(UT’s Black Student Alliance) demands our public officials pay attention, bring justice to the family of George Floyd, and enact change that will protect our lives against police.”
Despite multiple requests, UTPD was not available for comment prior to the publication of this article.
With the expansive increased budget of APD, it is no longer necessary to continue funding UTPD so extensively. Texas laws have greatly refunded the police since the budget’s defunding in 2020. With this in mind, the University must defund UTPD.
DuBois is a public relations and sociology sophomore from Killeen, Texas.
