Capital Metro took a major step toward establishing its own police force Monday, swearing in the transit agency's first-ever police chief, Eric Robins, and his two top deputies. They'll be responsible for hiring officers and training them to patrol buses and trains starting summer 2025.
"The decision to build a transit police department wasn't taken lightly," Capital Metro CEO Dottie Watkins said before the swearing-in ceremony at the agency's headquarters on East Fifth Street. "I think we might have studied it for somewhere close to 20 years before we finally did it."
Along the way, CapMetro faced skepticism from activists worried that sending armed officers into the transit system would result in overly-aggressive policing that targets riders. One early controversy revolved around whether the new police department headquarters should have holding cells — a decision CapMetro reversed after public disapproval.
Capital Metro has sought to blunt the criticism by inviting public feedback on policing policies and establishing a committee of social and criminal justice advocates to advise the department.
"The leadership here is going in the right direction," Nelson Linder, president of the Austin chapter of the NAACP said, adding that he's impressed with the new police chief. "He's a very good listener. He's done his homework. [He] has a lot of experience."
Robins was recruited from the Houston suburb of Sugar Land in June 2022 where he had served as police chief. For the past two years, Robins has been building the department, establishing protocols, obtaining clearance from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement and securing a new police department headquarters.
Robins was sworn in Monday alongside Assistant Chief Joseph Rose and Captain Jeremy Benoit.
"The most important thing is that [transit police officers] will be focused specifically on our needs in CapMetro," Robins told KUT News before the ceremony, referring to the current arrangement in which off-duty Austin police officers are hired to patrol the system. "Our focus will be the safety of our ridership, the safety of our staff."
The transit agency's leadership is convinced that some people in Austin aren't riding the bus because they don't feel safe. Earlier this year, CapMetro deployed private security guards to busy bus stops after what it said were a flood of complaints about safety.
"We want to attract additional ridership. We're not going to do that unless we have safe, secure buses," said Chito Vela, an Austin City Council member who sits on CapMetro's board of directors.
"The reality is that the Austin Police Department is understaffed and [CapMetro has] not been able to get the same amount of coverage from off-duty Austin Police Department officers as we did in the past," Vela said.
The union representing transit bus drivers has also been pushing for the establishment of a transit police force, arguing that front-line employees are targets of abuse and are often fear for their safety.
"My operators are the backbone of this agency, and it's important that we support them any way we can," said Brent Payne, president of Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 1091. "With the new transit police officers, our operators can be focused on their job duty and not worry about their safety."
Growing the force to its planned size of about 50 officers could take a while. Robins said he was planning to hire 12 officers by the end of the year and train them to start patrolling by June 2025.
