Two murders by police in one week. That is the devastating reality we are living in here in central Texas.
Anthoneil Williams II, a 17-year-old in Austin, and an unidentified 69-year-old elder in San Antonio were both murdered by police in the last seven days. Anthoneil was approached by three officers, the elder by five, and both of these people lost their lives in a barrage of bullets.
Let us make one thing absolutely clear: central Texas deserves true public safety built on care, not guns.
When the police are treating our neighbors like targets, that’s not public safety. When the police are unable to identify whether a teenager has a gun or a water bottle in his waistband, that’s not public safety. When five officers combined cannot de-escalate a situation where an elderly man in distress brandishes a gun, in a state where carrying a gun is not a crime, that’s not public safety. It’s the same excessive use of force we have seen again and again, and the same broken system we have gotten far too familiar with.
These killings were not only tragic, they were fully avoidable. But a system designed to harm can never reform itself from the inside. That kind of change requires community engagement, voices, and oversight.
ACT 4 SA stands unrelentingly for that kind of accountability, and we will keep speaking out, showing up, and doing the hard work until officers are held responsible for their actions, and our community can know what it means to have true public safety.
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