Central Texas Public Safety Commission

AUSTIN MAN just had his murder charge dismissed by Travis County prosecutors, three years after he killed a man in a robbery. APD charged Christian Alba, then 17, with capital murder and set bond at $1 million. By October the capital murder was reduced to plain murder and the bond cut to $390,000. While in jail waiting on trial, Alba and four other inmates cornered a 17-year-old in a hallway at the Del Valle jail and held up a blanket to block the guards' view while they beat him. He was charged with assault and unlawful restraint. Both cases are still pending today, almost three years later. He bonded out in February 2024. His murder trial in September 2025 ended in a mistrial. This past May, the court removed his curfew entirely. Then on July 4, 2026, he filled a Nike backpack with 30 boxes of Winchester .300 Blackout ammunition at the Academy Sports on Brodie Lane and walked out. Surveillance caught the ankle monitor on his leg. He was under a court order not to possess firearms, of course. An APD homicide detective recognized him on sight. Arrested July 17, out on bond 2 days later. Yesterday prosecutors cleared the board. Both murder charges dismissed. Aggravated robbery knocked down to robbery, 7 years probation. Unauthorized use of a vehicle, 180 days. A man is dead, and the only jail time anyone will serve for any of it is 180 days for a stolen car.

Crime is so bad in Austin that the feds are stepping in more. Federal prosecutors have charged about 40 people in Austin this year One arrest turned up 11 guns and three kilos of meth. A family violence call turned up 13 guns in a baby's crib, 700 grams of cocaine, and 15,000 rounds. US Attorney says it's getting more involved because "sometimes we do have to step in and put federal charges on folks to make sure they don't get out on a low bond or something like that where they can wreak further havoc on the streets." Comparing 2015 to 2025 in Austin: homicides up 187%, rapes up 65%, aggravated assaults up 38%. Wildly out of line with other major Texas cities.

In January 2021, Austin’s top two prosecutors entered office and decided which laws they would stop enforcing. Here is what they promised.🧵

AUSTIN MAN charged with running a sex trafficking ring and dealing cocaine, meth, MDMA, and Adderall -- caught fleeing police in a car after firing a gun -- just walked out with a 2-year deal and watched more than a dozen felonies vanish in a single afternoon. Kaden Caro has 62 cases in the Travis County courts. In 2024, DPS arrested him after a vehicle chase that ended in a crash and an injured victim. (See video below.) Officers found him with a gun he wasn't allowed to have as a felon, plus cocaine, meth, Adderall, and Xanax he was selling. He was indicted on a stack of charges, including trafficking and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. This April, DA Garza's office let him plead to two counts and dropped almost everything else from that arrest and others: • Sex trafficking - waived in the plea • Dealing cocaine - dismissed • Dealing meth - dismissed • Dealing MDMA - no charges • Dealing Adderall - dismissed • Robbery - dismissed • Gun as a felon, twice - dismissed • Tampering with evidence - dismissed • Unlawful restraint, exposing the victim to serious injury - dismissed • Fleeing police in a vehicle, twice - dismissed • A 2021 home invasion charged as burglary plus two aggravated assaults - dismissed He pleaded to firing a gun and one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Back in 2023, Caro sat on an ankle monitor for an aggravated assault on a mother in a family violence case. A GPS company flagged him twice driving back onto her block, within 200 yards of where she lived, in violation of his protective order. The assault charge was no-billed. The protective order violations were quietly folded into the district court and then dismissed. Across 62 cases and 15 years -- robberies, assaults, guns, drug dealing, a trafficking charge -- Caro has never once faced a jury. Every felony ended in a dismissal, a reduction, or a plea.

10 days ago, DA Garza responded to our coverage of the brutal killing of an Austin homeless woman by giving a perfunctory statement that there was not enough evidence to proceed and that “our hearts continue to break for the Meazell family.” Today he was asked about the case and he told the reporter he’s not familiar with the case.

To recap: 1. A serial violent offender shot a homeless woman in Austin and basically went home and said on his own Nest camera that he just killed and told his woman to clean up the blood. The DA let him go. 2. I posted about it on X, which led CBS News to ask Garza, who was forced to put out a perfunctory statement 10 days ago about hearts being with victims family etc etc. 3. CBS News asked Garza about the victim yesterday and Garza appeared to be focused about what was even being asked. Basically said the case doesn't ring a bell, and went on to say that the real problems of public safety have to do with high gas prices and not enough government social services to help people economically. Her name was Kelly Meazell. She was 35.

Interesting. DA Garza is blaming the judges for the crime wave during his tenure. Garza ran in 2020 on reducing incarceration via diversion programs and ending racial inequities in prison population. He’s said repeatedly that we can’t lock up people to reduce crime. His entire platform was ending what his supporters called "mass incarceration." As he put it, “It is time…to begin to unwind the racial disparities in our criminal justice system.” One of his loudest allies put it more plainly: "I feel very much like we need to do as much as we can to keep people out of jail. Jose Garza is doing that." Garza delivered. There are more criminals on the streets of Austin than ever before. Violations of bond conditions went from 37 in 2020 to 250 in 2025. Assaults on public servants doubled. Criminal trespass up 77%. Homicides doubled. Entire classes of crime are effectively no loner prosecuted. Now Garza says the judges did it. The Democratic primary is in March 2028. Is he feeling the heat?

UPDATE: Why did DA José Garza's office just let Frank Bonner walk on the murder of homeless woman Kelly Meazell? Here's what prosecutors got from police: - Kelly was shot in the neck at close range, with signs of being robbed after. - A nearby security camera caught a man running after Kelly, then jumping into a car and speeding off. - A tipster told police what happened: Bonner killed Kelly because she owed him drug money, then came home that night in bloody clothes, bagged them up, and took off. - Two days later, police got a 911 call from Bonner's apartment because a woman was being held at gunpoint. He ran before officers arrived. - Police searched the apartment and found a Nest camera in his living room recording the night Kelly was killed. Six minutes after the shooting, Bonner walks in, strips off his bloody clothes, and stuffs them into a kitchen trash bag. He tells the woman with him to power off her phone then washes his hands. He tells her to mop the floor, and then says, on his own camera, out loud: "Homicide will be in this hoe, right." Then he tells her to misdirect police about his timing and whereabouts. Garza's office reviewed all of this and rejected the murder charge two weeks ago -- after years of dropping Bonner's prior cases for aggravated robbery, drug felonies, evading arrest, tampering with evidence, contraband in jail, and felon-with-firearm. Bonner's pending aggravated assault case was also dismissed in the meantime. This was a separate shooting where he put three bullets in a man's leg over a crack baggie. The reason given was that the victim wouldn't testify. But prosecutors don't need a cooperative victim to pursue a man who shot someone in broad daylight -- not with shell casings, surveillance, 911 audio, medical records, and a record a mile long. They chose not to fight that one either. So after a trail of victims, including a dead homeless woman, Frank Bonner is back on Austin's streets.

Wild this isn't getting news coverage. A homeless woman in Austin gets shot dead in the neck and robbed. Cops figure out pretty fast it was a repeat violent offender Austin prosecutors had already let walk on aggravated robberies, drug felonies, gun charges, plus a separate shooting where he put three bullets in a someone’s leg over a crack baggie. Cops get the guy on his own home camera, six minutes after the murder, bagging up his bloody clothes, telling a woman to mop the floor and lie to the cops, and literally saying out loud “homicide will be in this hoe.” DA José Garza’s office looked at all of it and dropped the murder charge two weeks ago. The man is back on the street.

AUSTIN MAN points a gun at his girlfriend, slaps her, chases her down the road, hits her in the neck with a chain -- all while prosecutors sit on a gun assault charge. Eric Frausto has been charged 40 times in Austin, including four times since 2023 for attacking the same woman. Nov 2023: Aggravated assault with a firearm, as a felon. Released on $15,000 bond. Dec 2024: Followed her, tried to cut her off on the road, crashed his Tahoe, fled APD. Same day, slapped her four times in the face. • Evading arrest -- dismissed • Family violence assault -- absconded, bond forfeited • Picked up 11 months later. Released again. Nov 2025: Hit her in the neck with his chain outside a downtown bar, shoved her to the ground. She had an active protective order against him. Released on $5000 bond. March 2026: Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Felon in possession of a firearm (again). Continuous family violence. Protective order violation 2+ times in a year. Back in 2012, Frausto did 4 years for arson, robbery, and gun possession and pistol-whipping a man so badly he needed 11 staples to close his head wound.

In Austin you can stalk your ex at work, call her 89 times in one afternoon, force her to drive you around for hours, drag her across a lawn by her hair, beat her up, jump on her windshield until it shatters, and threaten to poison her dog -- all while a doorbell camera records her screaming "no no no" -- and walk out of jail with time served. You can sell dealing-weight meth and lead police on a high-speed chase on the same day and get probation for both. You can abscond from probation, get caught fleeing police a second time, and get more probation You can have a judge deny your first motion to revoke, walk away from court-ordered treatment, and pick up new strangulation charges, while still on probation for the last set of felonies. Miguel Chavez is only 27 but has lived the lifetime of a dozen felonious criminals. Austin prosectors and judges have made it possible for him.

UPDATE: It gets even worse. The man SWAT pulled off the South 1st overpass yesterday after he rained rocks and bricks down on Ben White traffic has been charged more than 30 times across at least three Texas counties over the last 3 decades. Smith County (Tyler): two state jail felony evading arrests, multiple trespasses, drug possession, false ID to police -- twice. Got jail time in 92% of cases. Dallas County: a state jail felony theft, a felony assault pleaded down to a misdemeanor, more trespasses, false ID to police again. Got jail time in 80% of cases. Travis County (Austin): 14 cases. 8 felony arrests. 0 jury trials. Every felony reduced, dismissed, or never filed. Got jail time in just 29% of cases. Travion Washington is from Tyler and apparently moved to Dallas before settling in Austin. A quarter century of fake names, trying to grab weapons from police, and walk-outs by prosecutors. Yesterday, bricks off an overpass at lunchtime.

A violent man Austin prosecutors let walk dozens of times finally murdered a homeless woman last year. Last month, the DA quietly let him walk again. Now that the killer is back on the street, will anyone in the media say the homeless victim's name? Kelly Meazell. Kelly was 35 when she was found in a pool of her own blood in an East Austin parking lot. Two days earlier, she'd told her sister she was packing up. She had finally found somewhere to stay.