https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/17/travis-county-district-attorney-austin-police/
These are separate quotes from the article. There is other info in the article where people may see some of Garza's activities as positive, but i am just pulling ones regarding activities creating distrust with police and why police may no longer be aggressively working low level crimes.
The tension and distrust between Garza and Austin police has damaged their working relationship, according to interviews and documents.
Within Garza’s office, which includes 100 attorneys, his approach has triggered strife about whether he is going too far, too fast. Nineteen prosecutors have resigned, documents show, in many cases disagreeing openly with the level and pace of change.
The son of a civil rights lawyer, Garza was 39 when he launched his campaign. He was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and had never been a prosecutor or sought any other public office. He had worked as a public defender on the Texas-Mexico border, and, most recently, he led an advocacy group for migrant construction workers.
“The public just voted to put in someone to the district attorney’s office that ran on prosecuting police and not prosecuting drug crimes, or hardly any other crimes,” Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday told the local Fox News affiliate at the time. “They don’t want an active police department. ... What I’m telling my guys is, ‘Answer your calls and that is it.’”
Liberal activists also praised Garza for sending more defendants to pretrial diversion programs than ever before and for ensuring that more people were getting out of jail without having to post bond.
"Meanwhile, Garza and Travis County Attorney Delia Garza (the two are not related) imposed new scrutiny of arrests.
For decades, police in the county had been able to arrest people, jail them and secure criminal charges and an initial cash bail from judges. A person might remain in jail for days before a prosecutor reviewed the case and decided whether to dismiss the charges.
Under the new process, police still could arrest someone, but prosecutors would review the paperwork before it reached a judge. If they rejected the charges, the person would be freed within hours.
José Garza planned to decline most felony drug possession charges if the amount of drugs was less than a gram. He also said prosecutors would decline other charges if police had not provided enough probable cause. Delia Garza’s office, meanwhile, began rejecting misdemeanor charges, including criminal trespassing and evading arrest."
But police were frustrated. Amid the explosion of Austin’s homeless population, they were constantly getting calls about trespassing and vandalism. Now, many of the people arrested as a result of those calls would be back out on the street the same day.
“Many times, having people in jail, at least for a day or two, can help defuse [an unsafe] situation,” Joseph Chacon, who replaced Brian Manley as chief of police in March, said in an interview. Now, in many cases, “we don’t have that any longer.”