A group of Austin, Texas police officers were indicted Thursday for excessive use of force during George Floyd-related protests in 2020, officials said.
“Our community is safer when our community trusts law enforcement,” said Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza. “There cannot be trust if there is no accountability when law enforcement breaks the law.”
Garza would not give specifics on how many officers were indicted, pending a decision on how many will actually be charged, but the Austin Police Association said that at least nine have been indicted.
The indictments come on the same day the Austin City Council authorized $10 million for settlements with two men who were shot by Austin police officers with bean bags, according to KUT.
Justin Howell settled with the city for $8 million after sustaining brain damage, and Anthony Evans settled for $2 million after he was shot in the head with a police bean bag.
“Something went wrong here because no one should be injured merely for exercising their constitutional rights,” Austin Mayor Steve Adler said in reaction to the indictments. “Our police department said, right after that weekend, that never again would we use such weapons for crowd control. I wish that city policy had been in place before this event.”
Despite the indictments and Mayor’s comments, Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon pushed back, saying he didn’t know of any activity by any officer that would rise to the level of criminal charges.
“As a department, we asked these officers to work under the most chaotic of circumstances in May of 2020 and to make split second decisions to protect all participants,” said Chacon. “The size, scope and tenor of the crowds was underestimated by management. Officers were prepared for hundreds when instead they faced thousands, placing them in potentially the worse possible circumstances to mange.”
In many cases, Chacon said the officers were responding to violent and riotous crowds who might have hurt others and did destroy property.
He said even Austin’s police headquarters had a Molotov cocktail hurled at it.
Chacon called the district attorney’s handling of the grand jury indictments “disappointing” and said he hopes police officers are afforded presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
