DAA: Downtown safety team helping with loitering, drug, harassment issues

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- The Downtown Austin Alliance's (DAA) Downtown Safety team is now fully staffed with 23 members.

While they don’t have the authority to make arrests, they can assist in getting people off of private property if issues arise and bridge the gap between the community and the police department.

The program launched earlier this year with just a few officers and became fully staffed in October.

"They're wearing bright yellow shirts, they're trying to assist people on the street," said Bill Brice with the DAA. "To increase perceptions of safety downtown but also to address low level non-emergency issues with non-emergency resources."

This includes making sure there's no harassment, illegal loitering or illicit drug use, which are issues downtown businesses have repeatedly reported to the Austin Police Department.

Brice said the safety team has had more than 7,000 interactions with people about these issues. Of those instances, people complied 90% of the time.

"It is working," Brice said. "We've demonstrated that just by having people on the street, asking people to change their behavior. It's working effectively."

While these initial results are a plus side, the team was born out of necessity, Brice said.

"Part of this was because we had such a decline in police resources and visible police presence on the street," Brice said.

Safety team members still have to rely on APD, as they serve as a safety supplement and to help with non-emergency issues.

"We need more police out here because I've been assaulted, chased with pepper spray, chased with knives, as well as spat on out here," said Reggie Diggins, one of the safety team members, during a city council meeting as he spoke in favor of a police contract.

The DAA said it currently does not plan to expand the safety team past its current 23 members, in hopes of APD beefing up staff under the new leadership of Chief Lisa Davis and the new police contract. However, the DAA will re-evaluate this next year if APD doesn't hit its recruiting numbers.