18 Austin Cops Might Soon Be Charged Over 2020 Protest Brutality

People who protested in Austin, Texas, in 2020 against police violence are still waiting for accountability for officers who allegedly used excessive force against them. Now a grand jury is finally ready to take up the cases of 18 officers who could ultimately face charges.

The Austin American Statesman reports that the Travis County grand jury is weighing evidence that could result in criminal charges against all, some or none of the officers. The results could signal how much steam the movement to hold police officers accountable for their violence still has left. This is two years after the peak in protests. Cop unions pushed back against reformist prosecutors and politicians are reverting back to tough-on-crime rhetoric after making promises to revamp policing.

Austin cops are accused of brutalizing multiple protestors in attacks that resulted in serious injuries in some cases.

From the Austin American-Statesman

• Brad Ayala, 16 at the time, was shot in the forehead May 30 with a beanbag round. Video taken from the protests shows Ayala standing alone with his hands in his pockets watching the demonstrations when he collapsed. His brother said Ayala spent seven hours in surgery. Ayala’s lawyer, Dicky Grigg, has not filed a lawsuit but said he plans to. Records show grand jurors are reviewing the actions of officer Nicholas Gebhart in the incident.
• Justin Howell, then a 20-year-old Texas State University student, was in intensive care for three weeks for a brain injury, his brother said. Austin’s police chief at the time, Brian Manley, said Howell was not the intended target of the officer who shot him. Grand jurors are reviewing the actions of officer Jeffrey Teng.
• Samuel Kirsch, 26 at the time, underwent multiple surgeries and lost some vision in his left eye after an officer shot him in the head with a beanbag round. Officer Rolan Rast is the subject of the grand jury review.
• Bomani Ray Barton, a then-23-year-old musician and sound engineer, suffered a fractured jaw from an officer’s bean bag round. Grand jurors are reviewing the role of officer Kyu An.

Those are just some of the assaults injuries allegedly caused by out-of-control cops during protests which, again, were all about ending police brutality and demanding accountability for…out of control cops.

Attorneys for the officers being investigated have made the usual defenses: officers feared for their safety because the protestors had weapons that included rocks and water bottles. It’s unclear when the grand jury will hand down its decisions.

The possible indictments are part of greater turmoil in the Austin department, which like others around the country is  trying to push back on reform and accountability efforts.

On Feb. 4, the city of Austin settled a lawsuit for $150,000 with a woman who said cops shot her in the head with a “non-lethal” weapon at a protest in May of 2020. There are eight other such suits currently in progress, according to KUT, the NPR affiliate in Austin.

In the meantime, the local district attorney Jose Garza is prosecuting Austin cop Daniel Perry for murder in the killing of Garrett Foster, who was also participating in the 2020 protests, a case that made a low-key beef between Garza and the police department public knowledge.

Austin’s city council cut the city’s police budget by as much as $150 million last year, putting the Texas city at the center of the debate over whether defunding police can actually work.