OCA Audit Reports

Issued: June 2008

The objectives of this assessment were to evaluate the following factors related to police operations in Austin:

• Best practices criteria
• Performance measures (including relevance and reliability of data)
• Deployment methods and models, including overtime and staffing levels
• Alternative service delivery approaches, including cost estimates
• Budgetary practices
• Cost drivers for public safety and opportunities to reduce costs
• Cost trends
• Administrative support systems
• Best practice criteria and performance measures for a police oversight function
• Viability of combining the police groups from the Public Safety and Emergency Management Department into the Austin Police Department

OCA contracted with MGT of America, Inc. (MGT), a consultant firm with expertise in public safety operations, to conduct the assessment of police operations in the Austin Police Department (APD), Office of the Police Monitor (OPM), and Public Safety and Emergency Management (PSEM) Department.

We found that APD should organize its units and divisions based on a common mission. In addition, APD should work to improve coordination, cooperation, and communication with other police operations groups as well as external stakeholders. Finally, APD should improve efforts to establish, track, and communicate meaningful measures related to demand and performance and use the information in its decision-making process.

We also found that the City of Austin’s police oversight function can be strengthened by providing OPM with better access to APD data and by providing the Citizen Review Panel with adequate training and preparation time prior to reviewing cases.

Finally, we found that consolidating the PSEM police functions with APD would create organizational challenges, result in increased costs, and not be consistent with the practices of cities surveyed as part of this project.

The MGT report included 123 recommendations, including 107 for the APD, 8 for the PSEM, 7 for the OPM and one for the City Manager’s Office. APD concurred with 89 recommendations, PSEM with 7, OPM with 7 and the City Manager’s Office did not concur with its recommendation.

Download the entire text of our Public Safety Assessment: Police Operations in Adobe Acrobat. You will need Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view these files. Or request a hard copy of this audit report, No. AU06118, by submitting this audit report request form.

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