José Garza faced intense criticism for the policy after Austin’s police union said it had retained legal counsel for the three officers
Three Austin police officers saved countless lives on Sunday when they shot and killed Ndiaga Diagne, the suspected gunman who had a Quran in his car as he opened fire in a packed bar while wearing clothing that read “Property of Allah” and displayed the Iranian flag. Then they spent the next two days contending with the possibility that their heroic actions could lead to a criminal indictment.
That’s because Austin-area district attorney José Garza, who was elected in 2020 with the help of outside support from a PAC funded by billionaire George Soros, has a policy of bringing “all officer involved excessive force cases to the grand jury,” regardless of whether he believes officers’ actions constitute criminal conduct. For this reason, the Austin Police Association announced it proactively retained legal counsel for the three police officers who put a stop to Diagne’s killing spree, with the expectation that Garza could bring the officers before a grand jury. That policy prompted widespread criticism on Tuesday, including from Texas governor Greg Abbott (R.), who pledged to intervene in favor of the officers if necessary.
Responding to the criticism, Garza released a statement late Tuesday saying his office would not be seeking any charges against the three officers, whose identities have not been made public. “The accounts to the contrary are false, intentionally false, and are being peddled for obvious political purposes,” Garza said.
Austin Police Association president Michael Bullock said his organization’s worries were hardly political but based on the “dysfunctional and distrusting relationship with law enforcement” that Garza has built during his time in office. Bullock noted in a post on X that the district attorney did not definitively rule out the possibility of referring the officers to the grand jury.
“I appreciate that DA Garza has publicly stated he will not seek any charges against our officers,” Bullock said. “Yet he still hasn’t clarified if that means he will continue on with the grand jury process or decline to present.”
In an April 2021 memo Garza issued shortly after taking office, he said he would take “all officer involved excessive force cases to the grand jury so that the community can determine whether their actions constitute criminal conduct.”
“We do not expect every case that we present to result in an indictment, however we do believe it is important that it is the grand jury who decides,” Garza wrote.
Garza has followed through on that policy. Between January 2021 and January 2024, the district attorney’s office referred 98 cases against police officers to the grand jury, 65 of which resulted in no indictment, according to figures released by his office.
“With the open hostility displayed by the DA, this is obviously a stressful time for the officers, waiting to be cleared,” Bullock told the Washington Free Beacon just hours before Garza announced he wouldn’t pursue charges against the officers. “Since Jose Garza has taken office it often takes one to two years from the date an officer involved shooting happens for it to get to a grand jury. Anything can happen in a grand jury proceeding as they are secret and entirely controlled by the DA.”
Doug O’Connell, one of the attorneys representing the three officers, said in a post on X that a criminal investigation follows every officer-involved shooting in Austin. O’Connell said the policy is the product of Garza’s work with the Wren Collective, a consulting firm funded by left-wing billionaires that has embedded itself in the offices of 40 progressive prosecutors across the country. Working in those offices, it has quietly helped to craft soft-on-crime policies that now affect 48 million Americans, including those living in Austin.
Diagne, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Senegal, killed 3 and wounded 14 others when he opened fire inside a crowded bar Sunday morning, just one day after the United States and Israel initiated a joint military campaign against Iran with a round of strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of other regime leaders. Authorities have not yet announced a motive, but the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating the shooting as a possible act of terror.
Garza’s office did not return requests for comment.
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