After a weekend shooting rampage that spanned nearly 24 hours in Austin, Texas, and left four people injured, one former police officer says left-wing city council members have “handcuffed” the city’s police department by stripping it of critical technology.
Three suspects, teenagers ages 15, 16 and 17, were taken into custody on Sunday afternoon and evening, two in Austin and one in neighboring Manor, Texas. There were 12 separate shootings during the rampage, which police say appeared random, including at a fire station.
The suspects, all unnamed due to their status as juveniles, are accused of stealing four cars during the spree.
The 17-year-old suspect, Cristian Mondragon-Fajardo, is the only named suspect, as he has reached the age of criminal responsibility under Texas law. Police say he had a warrant for allegedly previously stealing a firearm from a local store, and one 15-year-old suspect allegedly stole a weapon from the same store on Saturday.
He is expected to be charged with multiple counts related to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault/motor vehicle, deadly conduct, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, evading arrest, theft of a firearm and other related offenses.
Dennis Farris is a retired Austin police officer and current president of the Austin Police Retired Officers’ Association.
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He said last weekend’s chaos would have been a great use case for technology that Austin police were using before it was stripped from them last year.
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“At some point, the [police department], and some of the [police departments] started connecting the dots, right?” Farris told Fox News Digital. “And it took a little while longer because the Austin Police Department is really been handcuffed by its own city council from using technology that could help in stuff like this. Facial recognition technology, license plate readers, you know, specifically the one that comes to mind with everybody is Flock.”
Austin used to have a contract with Flock Safety for license plate reading technology until last year, when Farris says left-wing members of the council along with local activists succeeded in campaigning for its removal.
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One of the main issues taken up by opponents of the technology was that, in theory, local authorities could share data with federal immigration officials that could cause illegal aliens to be arrested.
Farris said the Austin Police Department rarely has contact with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“At the end of that one-year trial period, the activists decided they didn’t like [the cameras],” said Farris. “And when I say the activists, I’m talking about the 25 or 30 people that are always at city council, complaining about anything the police department does, and the activists on the council, and we have very much so an activist council.”
While he said there are a couple of council members who are not leftist activists, including Mayor Kirk Watson, he described one member of the council, who he did not name, as a “committed Communist.”
“The rest of them are just far-left liberal radicals who think it’s better to hamstrung the police and keep them from protecting the public than it is to letting them go on out and do their job, and it’s putting the citizens of Austin in danger,” said Farris.
Farris then noted that it was Flock technology in Manor, just east of Austin, that helped authorities there capture the rampage shooting suspects.
“Think about if we’d had those cameras in Austin, they would never have gotten to Manor, right? We may have caught them before they shot this — there was a poor individual walking down the street with his dog and was shot in the back by these kids,” said Farris.
“So my message to council is gonna be stop with the grandstanding, stop with the fear mongering,” said Farris. “Give the police the technology they need to do their jobs with safeguards in place to make sure that the job is done correctly. What this council needs to do is they need to take the handcuffs off the Austin Police Department, let them do the job, and let’s get this crime under control in the city before we lose the city.“
Watson said in a media briefing Sunday night that license plate readers likely would have been helpful under the circumstances over the weekend.
“As I expressed yesterday, we need to make sure Austinites are safe and feel safe. We must assure our law enforcement has the tools to make this possible,” Watson told Fox News Digital on Monday.
“The Council has passed the TRUST act, which gives us the framework and clarity needed to move forward on the use of [license plate readers] in Austin,” he continued. “This weekend’s events shined a spotlight on the real-world benefits of this technology to assist law enforcement professionals in complex and emergency situations.”
The TRUST Act stands for the Transparent and Responsible Use of Surveillance Technology Act.
It allows the city to use certain technological public safety features like license plate readers, but requires departments to seek approval from the city council before implementation, and to disclose how data will be obtained and stored, according to KVUE. It also bans facial recognition technology.
“Now that we have the framework in place, it is time we move forward. We need to give our law enforcement professionals the tools they need to make sure people are safe,” Watson said. “We must also make sure that as we move forward, we find balance between protecting the privacy of our residents with the need and desire of our residents to feel and be safe.”
Council Member Marc Duchen also weighed in.
“Protecting the safety of Austin residents is City Hall’s top priority, and I’m grateful for our police department’s swift response to these crimes and Mayor Kirk Watson’s leadership throughout the crisis,” he told Fox News Digital.
“My colleagues and I have a duty to give first responders the tools they need to prevent incidents like these. As our mayor and police chief pointed out, license plate readers would have helped law enforcement officials track down and arrest the suspects,” he said.
“Systems like these need to prevent and solve serious crimes while protecting the privacy of community members, and I remain open to discussing the use of a resource that meets these standards. No one deserves to hear that a loved one could have been saved if the right technology had been in place.”
Flock also weighed in on the controversy.
Last year, Austin turned off a tool that helps law enforcement move fast when every second matters, and this weekend showed exactly why that decision matters. While Austin was dealing with a violent shooting spree, Manor used Flock technology to identify the suspect vehicle and help get suspects into custody in about an hour after receiving information from Austin Police. That is the difference modern public safety tools can make: they give officers objective evidence so they can respond faster, stop danger sooner, and protect more people,” Josh Thomas, chief communications officer for the company, told Fox News Digital.
“Flock’s technology captures license plates in public view — information anyone can see with their own eyes — and turns it into objective evidence for law enforcement. Flock does not own the data. The city does. Cities control how it is used, who it is shared with, and whether it is used at all.
Our view is simple: residents deserve safety tools that are effective, accountable, and built with real safeguards. When violent crime is happening, the greater invasion of privacy is gunfire in neighborhoods, not a camera on a public street.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the city council and Austin police.
