Austin finally found a homelessness program that shows some promise. Naturally, the City Council wants to hand it to an anti-cop activists to stop it. No Wrong Door is a program where cops trained in crisis response team up with medics and caseworkers to deal with the small group of people who keep showing up in 911 calls, jail and the ER, mostly homeless and mentally ill. The early results, from the city itself, shows the highest-risk people in the program had 57% fewer crisis calls. And the officers running it haven't arrested a single client. That wasn't good enough for the activist class. A few weeks ago, the ACLU, the Texas Civil Rights Project, public defenders and harm reduction groups demanded Austin pull police out of the program, or bury them in new rules, like requiring defense lawyers be notified before an officer can even talk to some participants, thus eliminating any means to actually help them in a crisis. One week later, Council Member José Velásquez proposed a new "community advisory group" to help steer the program's policies and operations. He listed who should be on it: the ACLU, the Texas Civil Rights Project, the public defenders, the harm reduction alliance. Council Member Marc Duchen asked aptly why the city would build an advisory board out of the program's loudest critics. He lost 3-1. Velásquez, Vanessa Fuentes and Ryan Alter voted yes. The full Council votes October 22. A police-led program might actually be getting people off the streets and out of jail, and Austin's response is to invite the city's most anti-police groups in to take it over and make sure cops can't do their job.

NEW DETAILS on the murder and attempted beheading of a man at a Round Rock park. Andrew James Wimsatt sat down on a bench that Monday morning in a plaid blue button-up and shorts. Three minutes later he was dead. A neighbor's camera had already caught Benedict Ogbodiegwu Jr. leaving his house that morning, walking toward the park with something in his left pocket that detectives say looked like a large knife sticking out. He stopped for a drink at the water fountain by the basketball court. Then he found Wimsatt. He came from behind, wrapped his left arm around the man, and started driving the knife into his neck. Wimsatt tried to push him off. He couldn't. He was stabbed several more times before he hit the ground. Then Ogbodiegwu walked around to his left side, knelt down, put his knee on the dying man's chest, and kept going -- sawing the blade back and forth while it was inside his neck. He wiped the blade on his shirt and jogged off toward the pool. Four minutes after he left the park, that same neighbor's camera caught him walking back home, two houses away. That afternoon he turned up at a McDonald's in a different outfit and left as a passenger in a red SUV. The plate traced back to his father's house, nine-tenths of a mile from the bench. When detectives showed him a still from the crime scene video, he admitted it was him. Then said he was never at the park. Then said he has a twin. Asked for his twin's name, he had nothing. Deputies found a trash bag by the garage. Inside: the Honda shirt he was wearing at the murder scene, grey sweatpants with red stains, size 12 Jordans, and a 5.5-inch knife with a wooden handle. The red substance on the blade tested presumptive positive for human blood. The two men had never met. He apparently decided to just stab a stranger. In January, Ogbodiegwu was arrested for theft, which was dismissed. In May, arrested for giving police a fake name - also dismissed. Years earlier, he was arrested for theft. The victim, Andrew Wimsatt, was 62 years old, and an accomplished civil engineer in Texas. He was also an avid nature and wildlife photography enthusiast. Fox News host @greggutfeld called him “supremely gentle. Willing to do just about anything for another person.” Before his murder, Andrew had just returned from visiting his mother a nearby nursing home.

AUSTIN MAN murders his parents and brother inside their home Thursday morning -- just months after prosecutors dismissed his weapons charge. Travis County prosecutors had Joshua Dahan in custody twice before. They let him go both times. March 2024: Police respond to a reckless driver call and finds Dahan unconscious in his Mercedes. The car reeks of marijuana. A Glock 23 sits in plain view on the front passenger seat. He admits the gun and weed is his. - Charge: Unlawful Carrying of a Weapon - Outcome: DISMISSED, July 2025. July 2024: Arrested again, this time on a felony drug charge -- while the gun case was still pending. - Outcome: DA REJECTED. No charges filed. So nine months after the weapons charge was dismissed, he murders his family.

Homicides in notoriously violent blue cities are dropping fast, but not so much in Austin. Compare homicides in the the five years pre-Covid vs post-Covid: - Baltimore: down 56% - San Francisco: down 49% - D.C.: down 7% - Memphis: down 3% - Austin: UP 32% DA José Garza took office January 2021. Every year of his tenure has had a higher homicide rate than any of the five years before he took office.