About

Reimagining Public Safety Core Leadership Team

In June 2020, City Manager Spencer Cronk created a multidisciplinary team to spearhead Austin’s Reimagining Public Safety (RPS) efforts. The Inaugural team was co-led by the Deputy City Manager (DCM) and the Assistant City Managers (ACM) for Public Safety and Health and Environment.

The RPS core leadership team takes a holistic approach to organize resources as part of the reimagining process. Leaders from departments across the City are collaborating on this effort including the Office of Police Oversight, the Equity Office, Intergovernmental Relations, Labor Relations, the Police Department, Public Health, Law, and others.

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Advisory Working Groups

The RPS team is creating Advisory Working Groups to collaboratively drive conversations on reimagining public safety. The groups will include representatives from advocacy, faith, union, business and public policy partners in the community. The groups will also work closely relevant boards and commissions, and City Council’s Public Safety Committee. The Core Leadership Team and Advisory Working Groups will focus on answering this question: What is a ‘reimagined’ public safety system in Austin and how do we get there?

City-Community RPS Task Force

The task force brought together City staff and community members to co-create a framework recommendations for policy, cultural and structural changes to Austin’s public safety systems.

Community Input

The RPS team also oversees the implementation of all RPS related community engagement to ensure all Austinites have on-going opportunities to share their thoughts, opinions, and ideas on the reimagining process. Community engagement will be conducted on several virtual platforms in multiple languages.

Prioritizing transparency and accountability

The RPS team continues to work on fostering public trust in the reimagining process with new and strengthened transparency and accountability systems, which build on several initiatives already underway including:

• Building on the foundation of our Office of Police Oversight (OPO) by increasing its resources and authority.

• Launching the Community Police Review Commission to work with OPO.

• Creating a Civil Rights division, the first of its kind for Austin.

• Establishing a new Public Safety Committee to include additional focus on policing and public safety.

• Creating this website to track progress on all RPS related resolutions, reforms, and initiatives.