Notice of complaint related to 2022-0906
Complainant alleges Austin police officers mistakenly responded to the complainant’s household.
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CUSTOMER
OFFICE OF
POLICE OVERSIGHT
FOUNDED
NOTICE OF COMPLAINT
October 14, 2022
ICMS #: 2022-0906
On October 10, 2022, the OPO received an email complaint.
The complainant alleges: Three suicide calls have been erroneously dispatched to my
home over the past
months.
Once (at the time) was accepted as being either an innocent mistake or possibly a highly
unlikely attempt at swatting.
Twice, which led to an officer climbing my locked front fence after dark-even though it
was acknowledged that a recent false suicide-attempt call was known beforehand-was
traumatizing to my family, potentially dangerous for everyone's safety, and possibly a
violation of my civil rights.
Three times occurred as of
.
The officer again noted seeing two previous false
calls to my residence in the recent past. I am not sure if he would have felt legally entitled
to climb my locked front fence had he not been met quickly upon his arrival.
Today's report should note that there was a phone number associated with the suicide
hotline contact. That number was called by the officer via speaker phone. The individual
who answered the call
(
) confirmed that he was texting with the help-line and at no
time gave a physical address. From the call to
it has become obvious to me
that this is a three-time issue originating at APD dispatch, or whatever entity feeds location
information to APD dispatch.
What is being done to prevent this serious error from happening again? At what point
does APD lose the ability to claim it has a "credible" tip and can suspend my civil
OF
GINE
SUBTOTAL
OFFICE OF
POLICE OVERSIGHT
SOUNDED
NOTICE OF COMPLAINT
rights and climb my locked fence to access my property without a warrant or
invitation?
I am a very strong supporter of the APD. It does not bring me joy to say I am ready to
utilize an attorney and every contact I have at CoA to get the City Manager's attention
regarding this issue. The other side of which is the actual three trouble hotline callers that
are being unserved while APD is repeatedly, and ineptly, "tracing" contacts back to my
address.
Please address the questions I have posed above (in bold).
This notice of complaint is a request for Internal Affairs to initiate an investigation to
determine if the employee conduct is within compliance of APD policy, Civil Service
Rules, and Municipal Civil Service Rules.