By Steve Pomper
APD Sgt. Josh Blake, his wife, and their daughters (Screenshot/Anedot, NCPD)
The NPA has been checking in on the horrendous tenure of Travis County (Austin, TX) Soros-funded, DA José Garza and his charging of 19 Austin PD officers. He’s so bad, in 2021, an assistant DA resigned. She accused Garza of asking her to delete evidence to benefit a defendant in a child sexual assault case.
I’ve recently written about Garza declining/refusing to charge BLM and Antifa militants but eagerly charging Austin cops for alleged “police brutality” committed while trying to protect Austin from those militants.
As I wrote for NPA in November 2022, “Back in Austin, like other activist DAs across America, Garza seems to prefer prosecuting cops over criminals. FOX reports, “More than two dozen police officers have been indicted during Garza’s first two years in office, including 19 who are facing charges for their alleged misconduct during social justice protests in 2020.”
We must cast a blue spotlight on every cop Garza has targeted for his malicious persecution. The more we do this, the better chances officers will be acquitted for something that shouldn’t have been charged.
Earlier this year, the NPA published an article, “Austin, Texas Social Justice Prosecutor Rebuffed Again. Accused Former Officer Acquitted.” Officers’ lawyers alleged Garza ignored a court order and continued charging officers in a manner banned by the court.
I wrote, “FOX’s Louis Casiano wrote, ‘A Texas court has ordered Travis County District Attorney José Garza to record all grand jury proceedings related to investigations into use-of-force by law enforcement, said attorneys for a police officer charged in connection with allegedly assaulting a man.’”
“The motion filed by Doug O’Connell and Ken Ervin specifically cites the ongoing grand jury investigation involving Austin Police Department Officer Alejandro Gaitan.”
Another travesty in Travis County? I suppose we’ll see but with Garza, how can people trust a system so stacked against officers?
Gaitan’s attorneys asserted Garza showed “evidence” to the grand jury only after “carefully selecting what evidence to show to grand juries, and more importantly what evidence to withhold.”
I also wrote, “[the officers’ lawyers] said the court order’s intent is to ‘prevent Mr. Garza from abusing our grand jury system to indict police officers.’”
I was recently reminded of another of those officers in an email from former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. It was a fund-raising letter calling attention to the false prosecution of Austin PD Sgt. Josh Blake. His charges stem from trying to protect his community during the 2020 nationwide BLM/Antifa riots.
Sgt. Blake showed up for duty on May 30th, 2020, as he’d sworn an oath to do. He took the “rocks, frozen water bottles, fireworks, and other dangerous objects the rioters were throwing,’” for his community. DA Garza rewarded him by indicting him for doing his job.
The militants had blocked the freeway that ran “directly in front of the [APD] headquarters,” allowing no one to pass, including police- or medical-related traffic. Sheriff Clarke wrote, “For the radical District Attorney José Garza, the riot was not the crime—but the police trying to stop the riot!”
Officers were issued various riot gear, including less-than-lethal munitions such as beanbags. Nearly two years later, Garza indicted Sgt. Blake who was one of the officers who reportedly deployed non-lethal munitions. The berserker DA has indicted “josh and other officers for multiple first-degree felonies…,” for doing their duty.
Sheriff Clarke says Sgt. Blake “now faces 99 years on prison” for “two counts of aggravated assault….” Blake faces imprisonment for using crowd control tools the city provided him for precisely what he and the other officers had deployed them: crowd (riot) control.
There’s a special place in Hell for anti-police DAs like Garza who put good cops like Sgt. Blake and his fellow officers through hell.