The Austin Police Department investigates an incident on Research Boulevard in Northwest Austin in which a man died after an officer used a Taser on him on Oct. 3.
Ricardo B. Brazziell/American-Statesman
Austin police leaders say a sweeping overhaul of how the department measures use of force is producing a clearer picture of officer behavior — one that shows force is being used less frequently, even as arrests rise.
The Austin Police Department implemented the new reporting system on Jan. 1 following a yearlong review of its policies and data practices by an academic researcher who retroactively reanalyzed data from 2023 through 2025 using the same methodology. The results, presented to council members Tuesday, suggest prior data significantly overstated how often force was used.
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At the center of the change is a shift in how incidents are counted. Previously, every individual action — for example, a tackle followed by a Taser deployment — was recorded as a separate use of force. Under the new “subject-level” approach, all force used against a single person during an encounter, even by multiple officers, is counted as one incident.
That adjustment alone cut reported use of force incidents roughly in half across the three-year period, according to Robin Engel, the Ohio State University researcher who led the yearlong review. Engel described widespread “inconsistencies” in how the department had been tracking force, affecting reporting, accountability and training.
The revised data reframes a key metric: how often force is used relative to police activity. While raw counts appear lower under the new system, Engel emphasized the more important trend is the declining rate of force as arrests increase.
In 2025, for example, use of force incidents rose about 9% compared with the prior three-year average — but arrests increased 24% over the same period. The 2025 data also showed force incidents dipped slightly, down about 1%, while arrests climbed 13%. Together, those figures indicate force is being used in a smaller share of encounters.
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Engel said the earlier data had created a misleading baseline.
“When I first saw that about 10% of arrests involved use of force in Austin, that’s more than double what you would expect in a city your size,” she told council members. “That’s when we realized it was, in part, a measurement issue.”
Police Chief Lisa Davis said the previous system also captured lower-level interactions — such as wrist manipulation to gain compliance — as standalone force incidents, inflating totals compared with other departments. Those interactions are still documented and reviewed by supervisors, she said, but no longer counted in the same way.
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The overhaul aligns Austin with national best practices, Engel said, and allows for more accurate comparisons with other cities.
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis speaks during a press conference on Thursday, March 5, 2026 at APD headquarters.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Still, the changes drew criticism from some advocates who argue the new method reduces transparency by collapsing multiple actions into a single count.
Savannah Lee, director of policy and operations for Equity Action, told council members the shift makes it harder to assess how force is used within individual encounters and how many officers are involved.
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“It is going to result in an undercount of use of force incidents and a lack of specificity,” Lee said in an interview after the briefing, “particularly in understanding how force escalates.”
Council members largely supported the changes but pressed for more detailed breakdowns, including how often force is used against people experiencing homelessness.
The updated analysis also revisited longstanding concerns about geographic and racial disparities. The department’s George sector — which includes downtown and Sixth Street — recorded the highest number of incidents, a pattern Engel and Davis attributed to dense nightlife activity, higher police presence and more frequent encounters with intoxicated individuals.
On race, Engel said earlier analyses overstated disparities by failing to account for key factors such as whether a person was armed, had an outstanding warrant or was facing misdemeanor versus felony charges. When those variables are included, she said, disparities largely disappear.
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“What we see across these benchmarks,” Engel told council members, “is racial and ethnic disparities that are not substantively significant or meaningful.”
The new reporting framework, officials argue, does not reduce oversight but instead corrects flawed measurements — and, in doing so, shows a department using force less often than previously understood.