Arrested for having AP ammo??

[Burt Gummer]

You apparently have never dealt with the Austin PD. This kind of crap happens regularly in Austin. False charges are commonplace. The Neighborhood in question was annexed several years ago. It is in Williamson County and the city of Austin. I have ZERO respect for that agency. Stupid is rampant. Arrogance is issued upon Academy graduation. They have a bad rep in the community for a reason.

Wow. I hope you never have to work with APD then. I have had some bad experiences with officers of miscellaneous agencies but I would never lump them all together. Officer A who does not do something a certain way does not mean that the other 1,600 officers in APD will do it the same way.

OK. I have worked side by side with APD (I am not APD but in another large agency that basically surrounds Austin) for over 25 years.

1. Arrested a guy for Possession of a Prohibited Weapon (machine gun) for the properly registered Full Auto he had secured in his trunk with the tax stamp paperwork. It took threats of arrest of the officer and his entire chain of command by an ATF Agent for them to return his LEGAL gun and drop the charges.

2. A senior Sergeant threatened and berated one of our officers for moving two vehicles off the roadway that were involved in a minor traffic accident. Sergeant wanted to arrest our officer for "Tampering with Evidence". Yes,the law was in place instructing drivers to pull moveable vehicles off the road in non injury collisions. It took a DPS trooper, taking jurisdiction and threatening to shoot the Sergeant to get APD off the scene.

3. An APD officer told me that I had no jurisdiction to write a traffic citation in the city. My jurisdiction surrounds and overlaps theirs.

4. They arrested a woman who shot her estranged husband after he kicked in her apartment door. Charged her with Agg Assault. Grand Jury no billed at DA's request. He did it again with his arm still in a sling from the first time. Her aim was better the second time, killed him. Yep, they arrested her again. This time for Intentional Murder. Again no billed. The kicker was that in the interim the DA's office turned the gun over to us to return to the owner. Release card signed by District Judge. When APD realized she shot him again with the same weapon, their Lt. threatened to arrest our evidence custodian for releasing the gun to her. He got himself a Criminal Trespass Warning for our building from the Captain.

5. I have heard several officers say that having a long gun in a pickup is DOC (brandishing a firearm).

The list goes on and on. They have some very good officers. They also have some very arrogant, ill informed officers. As an agency they do not like for people to own firearms. When they recover a stolen firearm, they try to NOT return it to the rightful owner. When they recover one of our stolen firearms, it takes about a year and numerous phone calls for us to get it back. Manytimes they have "accidentally" sent the recovered guns to the crusher.

Yes they have a PR problemin many parts of the community. Much of it is deserved.

Wow, these stories sound very outrageous. I would like to hear about the DPS trooper threatening to shoot a fellow officer. Which newspaper is that in? Though I do not deny that there are always knuckleheads in an agency, there are many who know what they are doing. The academy is about 8 months long and I for one have been through it. I can assure you that no ignorance nor arrogance is issued there.

I will assume you work in Williamson County. If you are familiar with Travis County, you will be aware that they are two very different worlds. LE in Travis County have to follow the DA "recommendations" which are very liberal. In the case of the shooting, (your family violence incident you mentioned), an officer on scene calls the appropriate detectives. The detectives instruct the officer what to do in the situation, whether it be to arrest or simply write up a report.
I am not sure if you are aware but we are required to notify detectives and our supervisor on a felony incident. The officers are then ORDERED as to what action they need to take.

I highlighted some info about not wanting gun ownership which is very wrong. It is improper of you to believe that the whole APD agency (1,600+) officers, want there to be no gun ownership.
Additionally, it is policy to turn found/recovered guns in for ballistic testing instead of driving it back to the owners house, wiping the blood and mud off of it and turning it in. Now that you are aware of this policy, I wonder if you will re-assess that aspect.


I work for the APD and if you would like any QUESTIONS answered about the policy which the Chief, City Council and City Manager have enacted for us to follow, I would be glad to oblige. I hope you meet APD officers in the future which met your stringent standards.

By the way, which agency do you work for robocop10mm,and what location and time frame did these incidents occur? I can check with our reports system and guys in that area to get you some answers.

 

[Big country]

He works for Travis county, "my jurisdiction surrounds and overlaps theirs".
AH HA! So that's the one you work for. I thought they only allowed Glocks and M&Ps in .40 in APD how are you packin and XD?

 

[Burt Gummer]

He works for Travis county, "my jurisdiction surrounds and overlaps theirs".
AH HA! So that's the one you work for. I thought they only allowed Glocks and M&Ps in .40 in APD how are you packin and XD?

I have carried everything from Glock, 1911 to my XD's now. The new guys get stuck with the M&P's.


As for TCSO, I have met a bunch of their guys who do stupid stuff but I would never call ALL of them names for those particular knuckleheads.

 

[Big country]

Like I said I do security armed/unarmed in Austin and there are some (well one) APD officers that show up to a call that I would have punched in the mouth if they wouldn't have wearing a badge and more importantly a gun (LOL) because of how rude and arrogant they were to me a fellow security officer (how I'll admit was pretty dumb) and rude to the guy who was victimized. But I've also met with a few that were really good to deal with great guys one "discussed" the laws regarding a handgun in the car with me for an hour (I was right and his little book proved it LOL!) I mean there are good and bad officers with any agency some just have more than others I guess.

 

[Burt Gummer]

Like I said I do security armed/unarmed in Austin and there are some (well one) APD officers that show up to a call that I would have punched in the mouth if they wouldn't have wearing a badge and more importantly a gun (LOL) because of how rude and arrogant they were to me a fellow security officer (how I'll admit was pretty dumb) and rude to the guy who was victimized. But I've also met with a few that were really good to deal with great guys one "discussed" the laws regarding a handgun in the car with me for an hour (I was right and his little book proved it LOL!) I mean there are good and bad officers with any agency some just have more than others I guess.

There are turds in EVERY department. Its foolish to base the whole group on some bad experiences though.

 

[robocop10mm]

Yes we have our fair share of turds in our punch bowl. Every agency does. As our bowl get larger so do the number of turds. We do a pretty good job of filtering out the turds. The filtering process is still underway. The problem, as I see it, is as the bowl gets larger so does the size of the screen in the filter. The larger the agency, the higher the percentage of turds. The really small agencies defy this rule often times as they are sometimes all turd and no punch.

I have some friends with APD but I still try to avoid contact with that agency on or off duty. I cannot begin to count the number of times an APD officer has come off as a complete a$$hat until he realizes I am also carrying a badge. Then it is all buddy-buddy. I'm sorry, but you were treating me like excrement until you realized who I am. This goes counter to my entire philosophy of LE interaction with the public. Treat everyone and I mean everyone with respect until they prove the need to be treated worse.

Of course there are "good officers" at APD. They just seem to be in the minority. I deal with their supervisors regularly and despise them even more. When the Sgt. or the LT has that kind of an attitude, you wonder where the troops get it from?

And, no. Our officers do not regularly consult with a Detective for advise on how to handle a situation. We trust our officers to make the right call. If they are incapable of making the call themselves, we generally call them "Corrections Officers" (you CO's don't get your panties in a bind unless you work for my agency. Then you can tie them into a huge knot for all I care).

We try to get stolen guns back from APD regularly. I have yet to get one back. I have been waiting 2 years for one. No it is not evidence in a pending criminal case. If ballistics testing takes two years, you have a problem. I know of 4 handguns that were stolen and recovered by APD that they did not even notify us of the recovery. They never checked them NCIC apparently because that starts an automatic notification process. When accessing Versadex, I see the gun was recovered and destroyed w/o any sense of responsibilty to the rightful owner.

 

[Big country]

There are turds in EVERY department. Its foolish to base the whole group on some bad experiences though.

Oh I know and I'm not saying that APD is all bad either. I'm just saying I've dealt with the good and the bad as a security officer and I've dealt with some really cool guys from Travis county S.O as well. The APD officer that was disputing the handgun law was a not responding to a call or anything just poking his head in and seeing how our (there were two security officers on that post) night was going and said he was just patrolling the area and realized that we are a great source of eyes and ears when the police aren't around. Anyway he was a good guy and the whole discussion was friendly. He even said he couldn't believe he was trumped on a law by a security guard and laughing.

 

[Texas42]

Yes we have our fair share of turds in our punch bowl. Every agency does. As our bowl get larger so do the number of turds. We do a pretty good job of filtering out the turds. The filtering process is still underway. The problem, as I see it, is as the bowl gets larger so does the size of the screen in the filter. The larger the agency, the higher the percentage of turds. The really small agencies defy this rule often times as they are sometimes all turd and no punch.

This is a most interesting (and graphic) way of describing large organizations.

I like it.

 

[Burt Gummer]

Good info robo10mm, I agree that our evidence procedures pretty much suck. Something to consider is that evidence and property control folks are the ones the city starts to cut when the belt needs tightening. Your experiences with returning guns sounds very crappy on our part. The detective assigned the case should be responsible for getting the gun back to the rightful owner. Apparently that is not getting done in your cases you have seen.
The bigger the department gets, the more turds find their way in. As usual, the catch phrase in our police recruiting is not "quality", but "diversity".
You can fill in teh blanks. This from the mouth of our own chief.

 

[Big country]

Chief California! LOL I;ve heard he's not that bad. But If APD keeps doing this the department will suffer IMO.

 

[Burt Gummer]

Chief California! LOL I;ve heard he's not that bad. But If APD keeps doing this the department will suffer IMO.

Every month there is a new policy added to our phonebook sized one currently which limits our arrest/pursuit powers.
Pretty soon we will be carrying only wiffle-ball bats and wearing big purple outfits a la Barney.
Hugs for Thugs is the new policy.

 

[Texasjack]

... As our bowl get larger so do the number of turds....

Classic!

 

[Big country]

Every month there is a new policy added to our phonebook sized one currently which limits our arrest/pursuit powers.
Pretty soon we will be carrying only wiffle-ball bats and wearing big purple outfits a la Barney.
Hugs for Thugs is the new policy.

That's about what I've heard.