TAG, ACLU, and Community Await City Recommendations on Blood Draws
In October of 2009, Texans for Accountable Government brought a resolution before the City Council which would have put a stop to Austin’s “no-refusal” weekends and prevent Austin police officers from ever being trained as phlebotomists. While we managed to garner the support of the Travis County, Democratic Party, Republican Party, Libertarian Party, Green Party, NAACP, LULAC and many others, we were met with much resistance from the city establishment.
At the 11th hour our community-supported resolution was nixed and instead the council voted on a substitute resolution which merely called on the City Manager to come up with guidelines on how blood collection should occur on no-refusal weekends. The guidelines were supposed to be presented to the Public Safety Commission by the 29th of January however the City Bureaucracy, as usual, is behind schedule. The findings should be presented before the Commission on Monday March 1st at City Hall. We’ll be there!