Showdown between Austin mayor and Texas State Troopers

The mayor of liberal Austin, Texas, is invovled in a high stakes showdown with state troopers, who he wants to kick out of the city after accusing them of pointing a gun at a 10-year-old boy.

Mayor Kirk Watson had called the Texas Department of Public Safety in to help as the city deals with a shortfall of some 400 police officers, but when the gun claims emerged this week he sought to end the city’s relationship with the agency.

“From the start of this partnership with DPS, I said I wanted Austinites to feel safe and be safe,” Watson said in a press release.

“Recent events demonstrate we need to suspend the partnership with DPS,” he added.

However, DPS troopers hit back by showing a video that they say proves troopers did not aim a gun at the boy, as was claimed by his father, after he had been pulled over on July 9, according to the local Fox station.

The video showed DPS officers pointing a gun at the father after he got out of the car, which was pulled over for not having license plates, local media who viewed the video said.

In the video, DPS troops attempt to pull a car driven by Carlos Meza over, and it pulls into a driveway.

The cops follow it onto the driveway at which point the passenger door is opened by Carlos’ son, Angel, who makes to get out, according to local station Fox 7.

As the door opens, the state troopers come out of their vehicle with their weapons drawn, pointed to the ground.

Carlos emerges from the car and they point their weapons at him, according to the station.

Meza later claimed his paper license plate had come off during a power wash.

Watson himself had invited the troopers to Austin in March to help with the public safety crisis which was largely created by the city’s woke anti-police policies.

Those policies have left the department depleted by nearly 400 officers and Austin’s police force is stretched so thin detectives have been pulled off cases to patrol streets, and it often takes local cops hours to respond to 911 calls for robberies in progress or people hit by drunk drivers.

In the announcement ending the partnership with DPS, the city of Austin acknowledged that troopers have helped bring crime down.

“The support has resulted in a decrease in violent and gun crime, fewer traffic fatalities, shorter response times to calls for assistance seizures of significant amounts of illicit drugs, including fentanyl and heroin,” the press release stated.

Despite the mayor’s claims of ending the partnership, DPS have said they arent leaving the state capital, and pointing out the troopers fall under the authority of the Republican governor Greg Abbott, who backed them up.

“The mission of the Texas Dept. of Public Safety is to serve and protect,” Abbott tweeted.

“Their jurisdiction is every square inch of Texas.”

The police association representing local cops thanked DPS for staying in Austin and called the mayor’s decision to end the partnership “absolutely unconscionable.”

“Based on the City of Austin’s minimum staffing projections, we are currently 500 officers short,” the association claimed, citiing their own figures.

“This decision is just another in a long line of decisions that demonstrate to the hardworking woking men and women of the Austin Police Department and the law-abiding citizens of Austin that public safety is not a priority to this city.”

The Austin Police Department itself has stayed silent on the issue.