A progressive district attorney in Austin, Texas dropped charges against 17 police officers involved in quelling Black Lives Matter riots in 2020 in what former Austin police have now told Fox News Digital was political smear from the start by a prosecutor bent on smearing police without calculate the impact on the lives of law enforcement.
Travis County District Attorney José Garza announced Monday his office dismissed 17 indictments against police officers after a grand jury indicted 19 of them in February 2022 on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after non-fatal shots were fired into a crowd.
“Our community is safer when our community trusts enforcement. When it trusts law enforcement to follow the law and protect the people who live here,” Garza said at the time. “There can be no trust if there is no accountability when law enforcement breaks the law.”
The indictment was filed despite the officers being cleared of wrongdoing by the Austin Police Department and critics of Garza, who is backed by liberal mega-donor George Soros, pointing to his campaign promise to prosecute police officers and progressive ideologies that accuse him of waging “war.” to the police.”
“This has nothing to do with justice, nothing to do with any wrongdoing,” Austin Police officer Justin Berry, one of the indicted officers whose charges were dropped last week, told Fox News Digital in 2022. “This is just about politics and a political agenda that has happened with this radical liberal district attorney.”
Travis County District Attorney José Garza announced Monday his office dismissed 17 charges against police officers. Travis County DA’s Office
Dennis Farris, president of the Austin Police Retired Officers Association, told Fox News Digital it’s “stupid to think that those officers are going out there with the idea that they’re going to hurt people.”
“That was not the intention. The intention was to protect the police station and protect themselves from rocks, bottles, bottles of frozen water, bottles containing bodily fluids being thrown at them, some bottles containing bleach — they even had a guy trying to light a molotov cocktail. .”
The city has paid more than $18 million to settle civil suits related to the protests and eight civil suits are still pending, FOX Austin reported.
Former and current law enforcement officials who spoke to Fox News Digital said that Garza’s decision to prosecute these officers caused “irreparable damage” to their lives.
“What Garza did to those officers was a travesty,” a current Austin police officer who wished to remain anonymous told Fox News Digital. “Most will never understand the psychological, physical, financial and other effects of going through such an unjust nightmare. They will never be the same. More broadly, it has a huge negative impact on police morale, playing a role in the transfer of officers from PPE, and consequently make our city less safe.”
“The sooner Garza goes, the better. It’s time to get back to real public safety in Austin.”
The indictment involves quelling Black Lives Matter riots in 2020. AP/Ricardo B. Brazziell
Berry issued a statement after the charges were brought against him saying that Garza charged him “not based on facts” but “on unfiltered emotion to support his personal agenda.”
“His pursuit of political power caused me and 20 other officers to have their civil rights violated, our liberties and constitutional rights violated, and our reputations tarnished.”
“Jose Garza has known for a long time that none of us have broken any laws, yet continues his personal punishment,” Berry continued. “As I was told in these early days, ‘the process will be punishment.'”
In all, more than 20 Austin police officers have been indicted by Garza’s office and four officers remain indicted by Garza’s office.
Austin-area attorney Doug O’Connell, who represents 9 of the officers whose charges were dropped, told Fox News Digital that prosecuting the police officers was Garza’s “highest priority” and that the evidence never supported the charges.
Charges were filed despite the officers being cleared of wrongdoing by the Austin Police Department. AP/Ricardo B. Brazziell/Austin American-Statesma
“We realized early on that the evidence did not support an allegation or conviction on that substance,” O’Connell said.
“The dismissal of 17 of the 21 underscores and supports what we’ve seen from the beginning, which is that this is a political indictment,” O’Connell’s colleague, attorney Ken Ervin, told Fox News Digital. “We don’t think they’re really interested in seeing them through.”
In all, more than 20 Austin police officers have been indicted by Garza’s office and four officers remain indicted, including clients O’Connell and Ervin.
Despite dropping the charges, Garza’s office asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into the officers’ actions and the Austin Police Department’s “pattern-or-practice.”
“No parent should fear that if their child chooses to voice their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble, they will walk away with serious bodily harm caused by the very person who is called upon to protect them,” Garza said.
“We expect the Department of Justice to take our request seriously, and we look forward to working with Mayor Watson, interim APD Chief Robin Henderson, and the City Council to ensure full cooperation with the DOJ investigation. We will also continue to hold law enforcement that violates the law accountable.”
More than 20 Austin police officers have been indicted by Garza’s office and four remain indicted. AP/Eric Gay
Ervin told Fox News Digital the letter to the DOJ was just Garza’s attempt to “save face.”
“They need some kind of reason why they’re dismissing most of the cases and that’s it until they say, we think it’s a systemic problem, It’s in the Austin police department and so we’re going to deal with the Austin Police Department as a whole,” Ervin said. ” But that could have been done four years ago or three years ago, two years ago, a year ago. That is why it is a false excuse.”
“I think that the political game is, push 17 now and then down the road, come up with other reasons why they push more than that. They will be very difficult to prove and get a conviction [them] because of what the officer did. You know, using less than lethal bullets on a mob, more than half of the department did it for three days.”
Farris agreed and told Fox News Digital that Garza “must be very embarrassed.”
“Any time they want to say hey we’re doing something, they hand it over to the feds,” Farris said.
“Even though it was a good day and these 17 officers were cleared, it doesn’t make them whole,” Farris said. “They have been living under this black cloud for almost two years. The thought that they will be convicted and possibly sent to prison for life for doing their job. It does not make this officer whole. They will never be whole. They are basically used as political pawns by the DA.“
Regarding the investigation and the resulting charges against the police officers, Garza’s office told Fox News Digital in a statement that “The process for this case occurred as it does in every criminal case in Travis County.”
“It was evident throughout the two-year investigation at the Austin Police Department that there is an urgent need for systemic reform to prevent this from happening again in our community. The most effective way to achieve systemic change within the Austin Police Department is through an investigation conducted by the Department of Justice,” the DA’s office said.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
