TAG Texas
Texans for Accountable Government

TAG, ACLU, and Community Await City Recommendations on Blood Draws

In October of 2009, Texans for Accountable Government brought a resolution before the City Council which would have put a stop to Austin’s “no-refusal” weekends and prevent Austin police officers from ever being trained as phlebotomists.  While we managed to garner the support of the Travis County, Democratic Party, Republican Party, Libertarian Party, Green Party, NAACP, LULAC and many others, we were met with much resistance from the city establishment.

At the 11^th hour our community-supported resolution was nixed and instead the council voted on a substitute resolution which merely called on the City Manager to come up with guidelines on how blood collection should occur on no-refusal weekends.  The guidelines were supposed to be presented to the Public Safety Commission by the 29^th of January however the City Bureaucracy, as usual, is behind schedule.  The findings should be presented before the Commission on Monday March 1^st at City Hall.  We’ll be there!

You can view a KVUE interview on the matter here.

The original TAG community supported resolution can be viewed here.

The resolution introduced by Councilman Spelman can be viewed here.

And the final watered down bureaucracy version can be found  here.

Tags: Acevedo, APD, blood draws, city council