Emails, Justin Newsom, lieutenant, Homicide Division, Austin Police Department, Oct. 9 and 13, 2015
11:24 a.m.
The attached graphic is a good visual that shows a consistent murder rate over multiple years. The unscientific numbers that I talked about just based on “real murders” that we worked are:
2012 - 33 murders;
2013 - 25 murders;
2014 - 31 murders;
I was wrong when I told you 17 last night, we are actually at 18this year but still just two unsolved. Your understanding of the caveats below are correct and so is my name and title.
I double checked the fatal officer involved shootings with our Special Investigations Unit (SIU): 2015 there has been 6 fatal and 1 non. 2014 there were 2 fatal and 2 non.
…
Justin
From: Jankowski, Philip (CMG-Austin)
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2015 4:30 PM
To: Newsom, Justin
Subject: Politifact check on murders
... We’re working on making our count of homicides from January through August 2014 match with the APD count from the chief’s monthly report from August 2014.
Chief report shows 12 murders through the end of August. We count 19 homicides in our database. We’re trying to figure out which of those 7 were not counted and why. Here’s our list of victims:
2. Michael Chavez.
8. Edgar Macedo.
9. Steven Craenmehr.
10. Jamie West.
11. Sandy Le.
12. DeAndre Tatum.
13. Bart A. Hollis.
14. Shirley Felter.
15. Justice Rain Presto.
16. Colton Brandt Turner.
17. Maeghan Bernier.
18. Jonathan Cook.
19. Patricia Bossick.
These we counted as “homicides,” which we realize are different than “murders.” But we are unsure exactly which were not counted in the monthly chief’s report. I assume the four SXSW crash victims (nos 9-12 calculated as traffic deaths?), Colton Brandt Turner (negligence?) and Remedios G. De Machibya (self-defense?), and I haven’t been able to puzzle out the 7th victim not counted. Can you confirm that those first 6 were not included in the count and provide the seventh and provide an explanation as to why they weren’t included?
Sorry to be so specific, but we don’t want to assume anything in this. Feel free to share this email with anyone you think would help us reconcile the difference in our totals.
Thanks,
Phil
Philip Jankowski
Staff writer / Austin American-Statesman
(Newsom)
1:57 p.m.
Oct. 13, 2015
our analyst did some research and answered your questions so hopefully this is what you were looking for:
1. Michael Charles Norwood. – occurred on 12/31/13 at 23:49
2. Michael Chavez. - 1
3. Felix Quintanilla. - 2
4. Robert Morales Jr. - 3
5. Remedios G. De Machibya. – unfounded, self-defense
6. Charles Robert Sanders. - 4
7. Xiaojia “Grace” Chen. - 5
8. Edgar Macedo. - 6
9. Steven Craenmehr. – SXSW - counted as traffic fatality, not murder
10. Jamie West. – SXSW - counted as traffic fatality, not murder
11. Sandy Le. – SXSW - counted as traffic fatality, not murder
12. DeAndre Tatum. – SXSW - counted as traffic fatality, not murder
13. Bart A. Hollis. - 7
14. Shirley Felter. - 8
15. Justice Rain Presto. - 9
16. Colton Brandt Turner. – occurred on 9/12/14
17. Maeghan Bernier. - 10
18. Jonathan Cook. - 11
19. Patricia Bossick. - 12