AUSTIN, Texas — Following Tuesday’s series of crimes that spanned San Antonio and Austin and claimed the lives of six people and injured others, some have questioned why police didn’t do more to warn people about the situation as it was unfolding.
Among them is state Rep. Vikki Goodwin, D-Austin.
“I am particularly angry because I called and asked DPS why they had not sent a text alert to the community after the school shooting with the shooter on the loose. We passed that law to save lives, it’s time to enforce the laws we pass,” Goodwin wrote on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter.
Goodwin was referencing House Bill 103. The Texas Active Shooter Alert system was signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year.
As the name implies, it’s designed to notify the public in the instance of an active shooter. Similar to Silver Alerts and Amber Alerts, people are supposed to be notified when there is an active shooter within a 50-mile radius.
The Austin Police Department, in a news release, addressed the decision not to issue an alert.
“Because this was not an active shooting event, we did not utilize the TX HB 103. This was a series of events which took place in several different locations across the city with various or unknown motives and no specific commonality,” the department wrote. “It is not common practice for APD, or any other law enforcement agency, to issue any sort of alert for every shooting that happens in their jurisdiction with an unidentified shooter.”
People also questioned by a Blue Alert was not issued. According to the Department of Public Safety, “Blue Alerts are designed to speed in the apprehension of violent criminals who kill or seriously wound local, state, or federal law enforcement officers. During a Blue Alert, the public receives information regarding the suspected assailant, facilitating tips and leads to law enforcement.”
According to APD, “Blue (and Amber) alerts require some sort of actionable intelligence. Merely sharing that an officer was shot does not give the community anything to ‘look out for’ or action items to take to be safe. There was no specific suspect or vehicle information to share, which would meet our threshold for moving forward with a Blue Alert.”
The department said that when it was investigating the shooting of a police officer in an Austin high school parking lot, it didn’t immediately know that was connected to a double homicide that took place a short time later.
“Shortly after this incident happened, another incident took place in a different area of Austin that involved a double homicide. At that point in time, we focused on the new shooting incident as we would any normal homicide,” APD wrote. “Based off the preliminary information that was collected at both scenes, there was no immediate indication that led us to believe the two incidents were connected, but we did not dismiss the possibility. As our investigators continued to review evidence from both scenes, it was determined that the two incidents could potentially be linked.”
“An important thing to note, these incidents did not take place in one specific area of Austin, and the initial evidence we had did not show any similarities,” the department continued.
The suspect, 34-year-old Shane James, of San Antonio, is accused of killing his parents in Bexar County and four people in Austin. Police caught him when he crashed his car. James has a history of mental health problems and a prior arrest on charges of assaulting family members, authorities said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
