Is It Safe To Walk Around Austin At Night? What About Downtown? | Home By Four.

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Austin has alot of homeless people. Most of them are either drug addicts or alcoholics or both. Avoid downtown late at night especially after the bars close. By comparison, just 19 percent of Austin residents responding to the survey felt unsafe walking in downtown Austin during the day.
 
 

Is downtown austin dangerous. Staying in downtown Austin, is it safe? – Austin Forum

Last spring, just before South by Southwest, the city’s public safety entities began to notice a disconcerting surge in bad reactions to the drug K2. That winter, the substance — tobacco or another plant matter that gets sprayed down with a synthetic cannabinoid — had been causing masses of people to get sick.

In a cycle now familiar to those who live and work Downtown, the cases slowed down for a few months before jumping back up to its two-year peak.

K2, which looks like marijuana but gives users a high that’s more akin to smoking Drano, has been around for years, but by last March had grown into something more ceaseless; Downtown paramedics and firefighters were responding to as many as 10 related calls per day. Austin Police arrested street dealer after street dealer, and yet medics with Austin-Travis County EMS continued to drown in the deluge of new calls. Reactions to K2 vary by the chemical compounds providers used to fertilize their flammable substance.

It can draw people into catatonic states, and make them either stand rigid in place like zombies or drop to the ground with no warning. But effects can also be more violent, and cause seizures, elevated blood pressure, and aggression.

What medications are they on? What medications are they supposed to be taking that they aren’t taking? And until the state changed the law in to account for chemical developments, manufacturers had figured out a way to consistently produce new strains, staying one step ahead of law enforcement. ATCEMS started tracking reactions back in , and estimates its medics have responded to 7, calls since then. The department says it didn’t develop a reliable way to track related cases in real time until last year.

Most of those cases have occurred within the city’s Downtown area, particularly along the Red River district that includes both the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless and the bustling entertainment district that borders the ARCH to its south and east. Last February, Chronicle Music columnist Kevin Curtin reported several members of that community at their wit’s end with the way K2 was wreaking havoc on the area.

Barracuda co-owner Jason McNeely reported seeing dealers dole out K2 and other drugs just beyond his Seventh Street club at all hours of the day, leaving people incapacitated on street corners, sidewalks, alleyways, or wherever they happened to be when the effects took hold from a fateful puff.

For those living unsheltered within the area and struggling to get back on their feet, the constant chaos proved a disruption to their cause. Here is how the story goes: It’s the middle of an afternoon, and a man walks out of Brackenridge Hospital and steps out onto the sidewalk.

Moments before, he’d been in the emergency room being treated for a bad reaction to K2. And yet just as soon as he said goodbye to the hospital staff, he was sparking up again, naturally with the same results: The man was back inside the emergency room within minutes. Though that’s one of the more dramatic tales you’ll hear from paramedics who work Downtown, it’s not far off from what they see each day.

And for the city’s three public safety entities, the constant deluge proved a strain on coveted resources. Medics in particular reported the exhaustion that comes from responding to people in distress and transporting them to the hospital only to see that same person just hours later trembling from more K2.

The department saw its first big reaction spikes in the fall of But until recently that data was painstakingly tabulated by medics working in communications. That yeoman’s work didn’t go unnoticed in public safety circles across the country. It’s barely striking us to the extent that it’s becoming an obvious hazard to public health and public safety. That sentiment was correct; the problem would only intensify. Monthly response call totals began to climb again in May of , eventually reaching its peak one year later at total calls.

The old process, in which medics would identify a K2 call, relay it to a communications officer, who would then add it to their tabulation to send out to the rest of the agency, would be no more. Tracking in real time gave the department a new way to look at trends, target resources, and — perhaps most importantly — communicate with the media and get the word out about new spikes as well as the general dangers of K2.

And so it starts the chain of events again. The goal, though, is to prevent it from getting to the point where it starts up again. One persistent problem Benavides and Noak note is the lack of state-level leadership. The state does virtually nothing to keep track of these cases, and it shows in their recordkeeping.

That network has noted just 4, such cases, only a fraction of the 7, reported cases here in Austin, a figure that certainly excludes cases that were never determined to be caused by exposure to K2. Last fall while Newsom was down in Houston helping with rescues after Harvey, he noticed first responders attending to K2 cases.

He took it as another sign that the drug won’t be going anywhere in Austin anytime soon. APD has known that large supplies of K2 come through the ports in Houston, and its narcotics unit has doggedly pursued the dealers coming into town on major highways.

Those efforts have led to some results: In November, after learning that a group had been busy moving massive amounts of K2 around the city, the department’s Organized Crime Division coordinated with the Houston Police Department’s Kush Task Force to haul in pounds of product. The profit margin continues to reward dealers who fall through law enforcement’s hands. But APD cannot depend on big busts alone to stop the problem. And so last April, City Council passed a resolution to direct resources toward an education campaign that would help alert the community to K2’s risks.

APD also invested heavily in an increased patrol presence around Red River. Five officers and a sergeant were tasked with staying in the area to not only act as a deterrent for dealers, but also engage with the homeless community on the issue.

Newsom helped with the broader education campaign, speaking to groups at the ARCH and answering questions about K2. Unfortunately, that pilot program was only temporary — and also quite costly. Because you can’t sustain the same level of enforcement and direction on one particular drug in one particular location forever. Our resources are limited.

We have other drugs. The same narcotics unit that put all that effort into working down at the ARCH, there’s other neighborhoods with drug problems that they need to get to at some point. We can’t maintain the sergeant and [five] officers on overtime. Lack of funding isn’t just a problem for APD. Austin Public Health still needs an epidemiologist to reckon with the impact of K2 throughout the city; the problem is not simply confined to the Downtown area.

K2 calls did go down for a time after reaching that call apex last April. The number fell to in May and continued to decline for the next several months. But as expected, K2 has hardly gone away, a truth that proved quite evident when I revisited the area last week. While there hasn’t been anywhere near the number of reactions that there were last spring, McNeely has noticed a heightened amount of activity since January.

They kind of run the hood. They’re very predatorial. It’s a living nightmare. McNeely said APD’s enforcement measures functioned the way a cork would plug a dam. Once the police exhaust their overtime resources, there’s little stopping those bad actors from returning to prey on the homeless community.

Newsom agreed with McNeely’s assessment that permanent officers would do a great deal to improve the quality of life for everyone who lives and works around Red River. But APD doesn’t have enough officers to staff that area for long — hence the periodic crackdowns producing dramatic results — so those hours have to be filled through overtime, making the fight against K2 more or less a financial issue: If City Council ponied up the funds, APD could find officers to take that position.

Like so many issues within the city, it’s a matter of prioritizing, one of the reasons EMS has worked to get these numbers and stories into the hands of local media. I could fill it every single day if I had the money to do it. Got something to say? The Chronicle welcomes opinion pieces on any topic from the community. Submit yours now at austinchronicle. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press.

Support the Chronicle. Information is power. Support the free press, so we can support Austin. Image via Austin Police Department.

The city averaged 26 calls per month over its first two years before a pattern of peaks and valleys emerged.

The city saw its worst month last April, with suspected cases. APD cannot depend on big busts alone to solve the problem.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 16, with the headline: Just One Puff. K2 Rampages Red River. Puzzling over a variance on Avenue D, and spending the first of the bond funds. Bring Your Own Brains. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center.

Quesoff at Mohawk. Subscribe to All One click gets you all the newsletters listed below. All rights reserved.

– Is downtown austin dangerous

Jacob Asmussen February 19, Even worse, what the homeless man said to Brown that evening is actually right—currently, this is Austin, thanks in large part to city officials. To understand, rewind the clocks to June of last year, when the Austin City Council made it legal for vagrants to camp, sit, and lie down in public spaces across the city.

Almost overnight, Austinites saw their streets, sidewalks, and highways littered with campsites, trash, and tent cities. Citizens also packed townhalls over the summer, testifying to the harmful consequences of the law and angry that registered sex offenders were among those now allowed to sleep directly next to apartments and elementary schools.

After four months of public outcry, safety risk, and council inaction—and a public warning from Gov. In November, Abbott intervened , instructing state agencies to clean up encampments under highways and to direct homeless individuals to nonprofits for immediate help. Abbott also established a state campground near downtown, where homeless people could receive assistance.

Last week, a knife-wielding man believed to be homeless was chased down and arrested after yelling at young children on a church playground, threatening to kill them. Numerous citizens have been assaulted, including in January, when a homeless man fatally stabbed a restaurant manager in broad daylight. Also, several recent public fires have been started by homeless people. According to the data, there is a 23 percent increase in homeless-to-homeless violent crime, and a 6 percent increase in homeless-to-nonhomeless violent crime.

On top of that, a new city study revealed more and more Austinites are concerned about the rising danger. The number of people who feel unsafe downtown during the day also jumped by 10 percent.

You never know what might happen. Took a stabbing in our parking lot to get an aide of [Council Member] kathietovo to call back. Despite months of countless stories and citizens speaking out, the Austin City Council has so far refused to do anything else. Citizens have organized a petition campaign to remove Mayor Adler and five of the city council members from office, and Gov.

He attended the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and in earned a double major in public relations and piano performance. Yet recently, a spate of incidents, assaults, and tragedies has reignited the community outrage.

At least 10 Texas school districts are asking local voters to approve higher property taxes.

Is it safe to walk in downtown Austin? – – {dialog-heading}

 
 
Austin has alot of homeless people. Most of them are either drug addicts or alcoholics or both. Avoid downtown late at night especially after the bars close. By comparison, just 19 percent of Austin residents responding to the survey felt unsafe walking in downtown Austin during the day.