Women who were attacked helped by Downtown Austin Alliance Safety team

AUSTIN, Texas - Two women jogging earlier this month were attacked by a woman with a knife. They sought help from a Downtown Austin Alliance Safety member. This is a new program in Austin and advocates said it’s needed.

Just four months up and running, the Downtown Austin Alliance Safety team is credited for helping two women who were being attacked.

On August 3rd at around 7:30 a.m., two women said they were running in Downtown Austin, stopped on Congress for water, and a woman with a knife came out of nowhere, towards them, and said things they couldn’t understand.

Court documents said the woman was making aggressive stabbing motions in the direction of the joggers and came within feet of hurting them.

The women said they hopped over a short fence, yelled in fear for their lives, ran to the other side of the street, and went to a Downtown Austin Alliance Safety Team member for help.

"You'll certainly see more of our ambassadors in the downtown core where the need is greater," Downtown Austin Alliance Public Space Executive Director Brandon Fahy said.

The safety team of 11 patrols the entire downtown public improvement district. Most of their work does not involve violence.

"We work on building strong relationships with people down here and asking for voluntary compliance," Fahy said.

Fahy said out of the 608 reported interactions in June, safety team members have had 89% compliance with their requests. Most of their interactions are with the homeless community enforcing the sit, lie, or camp ordinance.

"We do not take a hard stance or a hard approach on people, it's really about making people aware, educating, and asking for compliance," Fahy said.

Fahy said this unarmed team is different from the Austin Police Department, but with about 500 vacancies at APD, the service is needed.

"The class C misdemeanors were not a priority for APD, and understandably so, there are bigger crimes for APD to focus on, so we decided to explore and implement this safety program in an effort to allow APD to focus on higher level crimes and allow our safety team to focus on crimes that are within their ability to educate and help keep and inform people on," Fahy said.

If someone does not comply with the safety team members' requests, they’ll ask for help from the over time patrol with the Austin Police Department.

In the case of the joggers getting attacked, the women waited for APD to arrive.

49-year-old Michelle Stern was arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. She’s being held in the Travis County Jail on $30,000 bond and mental health supervision.

Fahy said the Downtown Austin Alliance Safety Team is set to expand to 23 employees in October.

"Seeing the positive interactions with our safety team, the reduced negative interactions on the street can help people's perceptions of safety," Fahy said.

Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock said a statement, "More organized presence with groups with DAA can have a positive impact, but having uniformed officers that handle enforcement is going to be the most effective."