As of Monday, Austin's police force welcomed Lisa Davis as the new Police Chief, after a solid 30-year stint at the Cincinnati Police Department. In her trajectory to Austin's top cop spot, she's vowed to hone in on effective, equitable, and ethical strategies to tackle challenges like staffing and recruitment, as she stated during her August 6 city council meeting, per KVUE. Currently undergoing certification with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE), Davis is yet to be sworn in officially, with Interim Police Chief Robin Henderson holding the reins until then.

Despite the leadership change, the Austin Police Department (APD) is catching flak for a rather opaque approach to disclosing crime clearance rates—a standard measure of a department's effectiveness in solving crimes. According to a report by the Austin Monitor, APD has neglected to publish these rates for years, despite every other top 10 populous U.S. city doing so. This omission has left Austin in the dark until a recent nudge from KUT News propelled a commitment from APD to finally publish these statistics.

So, what's the big deal about clearance rates? They're essentially a report card showing how many crimes a department has solved within a year, divided into categories such as crimes against people, crimes against property, and crimes against society. These rates matter because they symbolize not just a department's capability to resolve crimes, but also its prioritization of different kinds of enforcement and resource allocation. After a noticeable absence in APD's data dissemination, a drill-down by KUT News into figures submitted to the Texas Department of Public Safety highlighted an improvement in clearance rates in 2023 across various offenses compared to the year prior.

Despite the uptick, questions remained about why APD was holding back these rates from public purview. Theories ranged from staffing issues to changes at the leadership level, with APD cycling through three chiefs in as many years. They were also working under a revamped national database system that necessitated updates in reporting crime data, which, as APD's Auzzie Krobatsch mentioned in an interview obtained by the Austin Monitor, muddied the department's processes somewhat.

Following scrutiny and critiques like those from the University of Texas Professor Michael Sierra-Arévalo, who has been advocating for disclosure of clearance rates, Krobatsch revealed that steps are underway for the department to proactively report these statistics. As the administration hopes to employ transparency in their updates going forward, the public waits with bated breath, aiming to hold the department accountable moving forward. Thomas' sentiment is that sharing this data serves not just as a tool for gauging efficiency but also as a suggestive power, hinting to potential offenders the likelihood of their apprehension.