Open Government Austin

More people every year requesting records from APD

One popular aspect of the Open Government Online charter amendment is the section opening up records about police misconduct in Austin to the same extent as the Travis County Sheriff and hundreds of other Texas law enforcement agencies.

More people every year are requesting records from APD. According to data reported to justify their budget, APD responded to nearly 2,400 open records requests in 2005 - a 54% increase in just two years. Most officers never engage in serious misconduct, so this this affects only a few cases in aggregate, but the number of requests is growing and often when families or community groups seek open records from police, it's about an incident that's critically important to them and to the community.

2003	2004	2005	2006 (est.)
1548	1913	2387	2,500

Source: APD Budget Performance Measures

posted by Gritsforbreakfast @ Saturday, March 25, 2006