Residents of one Austin, Texas neighborhood are expressing concerns about worsening crime as there continues to be a serious problem with the understaffing of the local police department.
The Montopolis area in the southeast part of the Lone Star State’s capital city is worried about safety and fed up over being awakened by gunshots with criminality on the uptick in the neighborhood, just as it is in other Democrat-controlled cities across the nation.
Delwin Goss, an elderly neighborhood resident, told Austin ABC affiliate KVUE that he woke up to the sound of what he believed to be pounding on the outside of his bedroom wall at about 1:30 a.m. on Thursday.
(Video: YouTube/KVUE)
“That’s when I thought somebody was trying to break into the house,” he said. But when he took a look around he realized that the noise wasn’t coming from would-be burglars, but rather from gunshots.
Checking his home security footage, Goss heard several shots around 1:25 a.m. with another six to eight at 1:30 a.m. followed by three more afterward.
“It’s making the hair on my arms stand up,” he said. “To hear eight, nine, ten shots. Just bam, bam, bam. Where are those bullets going?”
He told the outlet that he called 911 and was told that the Austin Police Department already had officers on the scene. Goss also said that he’d spoken to another neighbor who’s a “night owl” who told him that the gunshots were a regular occurrence, two or three times a week.
“I don’t want to be shot sleeping in my bed,” he said.
Goss also told KVUE that while the neighborhood has “always been rough” it’s been going downhill in recent years.
“I’ve watched it for the last five, six, seven years just get a little worse,” Goss said. “I see more open drug use in this neighborhood, more drug dealing,” blaming the worsening situation on the lack of police presence there with the APD having severe staffing shortages.
“They’re not out here protecting me, or my 85-year-old heart transplant neighbor, or the widow that’s in her 70s next door,” he said.
In a Thursday post to X, Austin Police Association President Mike Bullock acknowledged the staffing situation, writing: “500 officers short has a real impact on businesses and Austinites who expect to be able to safely run a business and live in Austin.”
“We’re so close to having a contract that can make significant progress towards ending the staffing crisis. Question now is if the city will actually prioritize making it happen,” he said.
“Our staffing currently at the police department is a direct result of the failed policy that was passed in 2020 to remove funding for the police department,” Austin City Council Member Mackenzie Kelly told Bullock on the Austin Police Association’s podcast, identifying the root of the problem.
In 2020, there were calls nationwide to defund police departments during the violent race riots that were egged on by Democrats and the media after the death of career criminal and drug addict George Floyd who perished while resisting arrest at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
“He feels as if his part of the district, part of town, is neglected, and I firmly believe that everyone, despite what district they are in, deserves the opportunity to feel safe in their own homes,” Kelly told KVUE of Goss’s concerns.
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