Austin is a city with several reputations. From the live music capital of the world to the little pocket of California-style hippie liberals nestled deep within a Southern red state, the quirks, charms and characteristics of Austin abound. What the city is also less known for, however, is its reputation as one of the safest cities in Texas. It has the lowest murder rate of Texas's big cities and boasts comparatively small percentages of violent crimes and thefts.
Perhaps this perception of safety is what brough such shock to the community during a string of package bomb attacks last month.
Another aspect with which a city's safety can be examined is its rate of police officer involved shootings. Police shootings have been at the forefornt of both national and local media coverage for the past few years. Many argue the increased coverage stems from a stream of unarmed black men who've died at the hands of police.
How does the safe haven of Austin fare when it comes to officer involved shootings?
Mapping Police Violence, a research collaborative that collects and analyzes data on police killings, listed Austin 16th out of the 60 largest cities in America by rate of police killings per one million people in 2015. Austin tied, statistically, with Atlanta, but was not one of the 14 cities that exclusively killed black people.
What did Austin's rate of police involved shootings look like before examining this occurance became mainstream?
Just fewer than 100 officer involved shootings took place between 2000 and 2014. Approximately 16 percent of ended in the death of the subject. Explore the data below to learn more about Austin Police Department shootings that took place over a decade and a half prior to the explosve coverage of hostile encounters with police.
The Outlier: Elgin, 2006
The Outlier: Elgin, 2006
It was a few degrees warmer than average in the greater Austin area this late-Winter Wednesday afternoon. 47 year old Terry Michael Miller is in the small town of Elgin, just east of Austin, visiting his grandchildren. Unbeknownst to him, a small legion of law enforcement official are waiting just outside his family's home to serve an arrest warrent.
While the presence of law enforcement just feet away may have gone unnoticed by Miller, he surely knew they were looking for him. In early 2006, Miller had a dozen prior felonies to his name, including attempted murder.
Eight members of the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force were waiting for Miller to emerge and arrest him for parole violations. APD officers, Texas Rangers and Elgin Police were all on hand if the encounter went south. It did.
Miller exited the house, and the task force flipped on their lights and sirens and pulled into the drive way. By the time the officers exited their vehicles and converged on Miller, his truck was running and, according to police testimony, he was looking over his shoulder. The trucks tires began to squeal, and the vehicle sped towards the officers, clad in bulletproof vests with guns drawn.
Officers Robert DeSoto and Christopher Limmer opened fire, with DeSoto's shot hitting Miller, forcing his hands off the wheel. The truck careened into a ditch and flipped. Officers pulled Miller from the vehicle, and he was sent to an Austin-area hospital and treated for severe injuries.
This incident didn't end with Miller's hospitalization and subsequent arrest, however. Sentencing and appeals carried on for more than three years after that intense encounter. Miller was indicted with two counts of attempted forcible assault against federal officers engaged in their official duties by use of "dangerous weapon," his truck being the weapon. This garnered him a 300 month prison sentence.
Miller contested he was merely trying to evade the task force by driving through a narrow gap between patrol vehicles, court documents show. Further, he claimed he wouldn't have nearly hit the officers had he not been shot and knocked unconscious. He claimed that the nature of the task force's engagement with him outside his family's home in Elgin prompted the initial indictment for attempted assault of a federal officer, and that that indictment swayed judgement for the second.
Miller went on to win his appeal and have his sentences commuted.
Officer Limmer, who fired but did not hit Miller, found himself in the headlines once again more than a decade after the incident in Elgin. He's accused of tazing a suspected burglar who was unarmed and not resisting arrest.
Limmer's misteps led to a department wide review of tazing protocol, and Limmer spent several months on professional probation pending the investigation of the incident. Documents from the Austin Police Retired Officers Association show Limmer has since retired.
