Listen
Austin’s SAFE Alliance will no longer provide exams for sexual assault survivors because of a funding shortfall. Other programs could also be on the chopping block. We’ll talk about how others are planning to assist.
A swift local police response to the March shooting at Buford’s on Sixth Street was commended in the days after the tragedy. But overall, reaction times from Austin Police are trending upward — even though fewer calls are coming in.
Ruben Ramos, better known to his fans as El Gato Negro, has a new album coming out this week. The project is produced by Carrie Rodriguez and revisits music from the early years of Ramos’ career.
Austin Signal is made possible by listeners like you. You can support our work by making a donation at supportthispodcast.org
The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:08] Austin’s SAFE Alliance will no longer provide exams for sexual assault survivors because of a funding shortfall. Other programs could also be on the chopping block, we’ll talk about how others are planning to assist. And a swift local police response to the March shooting at a 6th Street bar was commended in the days after the tragedy, but on the whole, reaction times from Austin police are trending upward even though fewer calls are coming in. We’re going to talk more about that data, that’s coming up on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:35] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Kehanel.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:40] And Ruben Ramos, better known to his fans as El Gato Negro, has a new CD coming out this week. The project is produced by Cary Rodriguez and revisits music from the early years of Ramos’ career. We’re gonna talk with him about the project that is coming up next. It’s right here on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, you are tuned in to Austin Signal. This is community powered public radio, KUT News, and I’m your host, Jerry Quijano. Thank you for making us part of your Wednesday. For years in Austin, the Safe Alliance Eloise House program would meet survivors of sexual assault at one of the worst moments of their lives, providing support, crisis intervention, and forensic exams. Through a series of budget cuts, the SAFE Alliance will no longer be providing forensic exams for sexual assault survivors after June 8th. Area hospitals will be stepping in to provide the evidence-collecting exams. There are also other programs at risk due to these cuts. For more, we are talking with Luz Moreno Lozano. She is KUT’s City Hall reporter. Luz, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Jerry. So can you remind us first about these budget cuts that were announced recently?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:01:58] Yeah, so back in April, we heard from the SAFE Alliance that they were facing a $4 million budget shortfall. And that would mean it would have to close four of its programs. And one of those was the Eloise House program. And this is the program that provides forensic exams for sexual assault survivors. So after they’ve been through an incident like this, the program provides them with place to go and kind of collect this evidence. And then police and district attorneys use that for like sexual violence crimes and solving that part of the process.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:34] The mayor made this announcement this week on social media, how has he and the Safe Alliance been working together in this project?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:02:41] Yeah, so when the Safe Alliance announced this budget shortfall, they went to the city for help. The city provides the Safe alliance, I think it’s close to $4 million a year, and it pays for all kinds of programs across the spectrum, including the Eloise House. There’s a domestic violence shelter downtown that they help, different programs. And so for weeks, they have been going back and forth with the mayor and with local hospitals to to try to find a solution to this. Now, when the mayor announced this yesterday, it did seem like the city and the hospitals had come to an agreement. And so I think SAFE was part of those conversations, but it did feel like they were kind of last to know about this development.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:28] Yeah, you’ve touched on the Eloise House program a little bit. Can you tell us a little more about it and how will this look for sexual assault survivors in the future now that this program is set to close?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:03:38] I do think that the hope is that with this transition, it won’t look any different for sexual assault survivors. I think that’s the goal now. Of course, that is all being worked out, and so we’ll see how that plays out. But the LOE’s house has provided, I think it’s something like 600 exams annually. And they also provide you with an advocate. So this is a person who kind of goes in and explains to you how the exams work, and they follow you through your whole recovery process too. So not only through exam, but. Mental health services, any kind of follow-up medical care that will come after that. And so this program has for years provided this service to people who are in need of it, and they’re not the only program in Austin that provides us, but it is a large portion of the exams that are performed here in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:25] You have covered extensively in your previous reporting other programs that could be closing because of these budget cuts. What do we know about the future of those other programs?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:04:34] Yeah, that’s still to be determined. It seems like the Safe Alliance is still in discussions with the city, the county, hospitals and other donors and organizations across the city to try to find that that money to fill that gap. You know, one of those is the domestic violence shelter that I mentioned earlier. That is a huge program and a really important program for women and children and really men, too, who are victims of sexual assault. And need to find a way out. And so the city probably won’t make a decision on that until October after they’ve, you know, refinalized their budget. Same with this like Safe Futures and Safe Planet, like those are all programs that the city helps fund. And with all of the budget cuts that the City is facing, the Safe Alliance is gonna have to rely on other sources to kind of help for that. But I think we’ll see that in the coming months, hopefully I think by, at least by the end of the summer.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:27] Okay, that is Luz Moreno Lozano, she is KUT City Hall reporter, we’ll have a link to her reporting in today’s show notes. Luz, thanks for talking with us on Austin Signal.
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:05:36] Thank you, Jerry.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:46] In the wake of March’s deadly mass shooting at Buford’s, Austin police were lauded for their response to the incident, taking down the gunman just minutes after calls came in. But despite that swift action, analysis by the Austin American Statesman found that APD’s response times overall are trending upward even as call volumes are falling. Joining me now to dig into that data is Austin Sanders. He is the public safety reporter for the Austin America Statesman. Austin, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me again, Jerry. So first of all, what prompted you to Do-
Austin Sanders [00:06:15] look into police response times? Well, actually, it kind of proceeded. The Buford shooting, really what prompted it, the Office of Police Oversight is the city’s civilian police oversight agency. They track complaints against the police officers, police department, and for the past three years, the most common complaint has been what they call no assistance from APD. And this covers a range of issues, slow response times, not showing up at all, not following up on cases. And so that really wanted us to look into the response time piece of it specifically, given the department has been battling this staffing shortage, this officer staffing shortage for so long. So we really wanted to dig in and look at what the data said.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:01] Yeah, so when you started digging in, what jumped out at you?
Austin Sanders [00:07:03] Well, it’s kind of like you said in the intro, that was kind of the key finding is that over the past nine years, the total volume of 911 calls officers have are responding to decline significantly. Meanwhile, response times have increased. And I think what kind of stuck out to us was that the both of those trends was most significant with these lower priority calls. And these are the things that people were most commonly complaining about. You know, maybe like a vehicle accident with injuries that was taking a long time to reply, break-ins where there wasn’t like an active threat, but you know, someone’s storage unit was broken into and they wanted officers to come and you know. Yeah, maybe so.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:49] Yeah maybe so like an active scene right for for investigative purposes
Austin Sanders [00:07:52] Right, exactly, exactly. But no threat of violence or harm, anything like that. But these were the most common complaints, and sure enough, the data bore out that the department had really slowed their response to those kinds of calls.
Jerry Quijano [00:08:08] Your article raises the question about Austin police, quote, quiet quitting, referring to doing the bare minimum required for any specific job. What are some of the complaints that you’ve seen or heard from the public about police response times?
Austin Sanders [00:08:19] Right. Well, you know, some of it comes from the complaints that people file with the Oversight Agency. Those are public. And the Oversite Agency reviews all of them. Some of them refer to internal affairs at the police department for investigation. But yeah, you see things like I think I was in a car crash with a suspected drunk driver and officers took hours to respond. There was instances where someone believed an ex-boyfriend was harassing them and threatening violence outside of their apartment, and officers took hours to respond. So it’s usually that kind of issue. I will note Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis, when we presented these findings, did an interview with her, she noted that the really high priority calls, shooting, stabbings, You know, other violent incidents. Officers are responding a lot faster. It’s really these kind of like lower priority calls from the department’s perspective that are seeing the longer response times.
Jerry Quijano [00:09:24] You mentioned that response from Chief Davis. What else have you heard from other public safety experts about these response times? Are there any explanations as to what might account for them?
Austin Sanders [00:09:33] Yeah, you know, Chief Davis offered a range of explanations. You know, one, the geographic size of Austin, its square mileage, you know, it’s larger than some cities of similar populations. That means it just takes longer for officers to drive from one part of town to another traffic. A bunch of construction in Austin over the past 10 years. But really, what she pointed to as the most significant factor is the staffing. And the lack of officers, you know, the APD is short, roughly 300, 350 officers at the moment. That’s compared to what they’re allowed to hire. They have the money to hire, they’re just short that many officers. And the national experts that we talked to, people who study policing and how to address issues like this, they agreed. Staffing really is… Probably the most important factor, some of these experts said, when it comes to addressing response times.
Jerry Quijano [00:10:32] All right, that is Austin Sanders. He is the public safety reporter for the Austin American Statesman. We’re going to have a link to his reporting in today’s show notes. Austin, thanks for speaking with us. Sure, thanks again. And amid a projected $181 million budget deficit, Austin ISD officials have identified tens of millions of dollars in potential cuts. That’s according to a preliminary proposed budget shared this week by Superintendent Matias Segura. $73 million comes from reducing central and department budgets. Almost 34 million from reducing campus budgets. Some of the cuts include changing student to teacher ratios at elementary schools, creating a new tiered system for special education and bilinguals teachers stipend and reducing the number of technology devices per school. AISD trustees will learn more about the budget at tomorrow’s board meeting. Principals and department heads will meet with potentially impacted staff next week. We’ll be back after a break. This is Austin Signal. Welcome back, this is Austin Signal. Chicano music legend Ruben Ramos has a new CD out on Friday, Los Dias de Calor. The album is co-produced by Cary Rodriguez. He’s going to be performing some of the tracks from the new project tomorrow out at Waterloo Records. And ahead of that performance, he is joining us now to talk about it. We are speaking with El Mero Mero, El Gato Negro, Mr. Ruben ramos. Welcome to Austin Signal. Thank you Jerry.
Jerry Quijano [00:12:01] Tell us a little bit about why you wanted to do this most recent album. Well, it was not an accident.
Ruben Ramos [00:12:07] It was just, I’m very fond of Carrie. I’ve seen Carrie perform, she’s a perfectionist.
Jerry Quijano [00:12:16] Rodriguez
Ruben Ramos [00:12:16] Carol Rodriguez, and I really got attracted to her performances, and so she’s awesome. And what caught my attention also, that she plays the fiddle. My father and my mother were musicians out in the cotton fields in Sugarland, so my daddy would just play the fidle. And I went to several concerts, and after a while, she said, you want to come and sing a song? Or after a little while, she would build me with her, and I would sing canoero and whatever with her and da-da-da. And sooner or later, I was doing a show with her. It’s a state theater and so forth, so forth.
Jerry Quijano [00:13:10] Yeah, it’s part of her laboratorio series, right? Laboratorio, yeah.
Ruben Ramos [00:13:14] So all that led up to this CD.
Ruben Ramos [00:13:20] Now they say that absence makes the heart go ponder And the tears are all the rain to make love grow Well, my love for you could never go no longer If I live to be a hundred years old Well, it’s crying time again You’re gonna
Ruben Ramos [00:14:00] This CD, I like it, because it’s different. It’s more calm-out, more subtle. Yeah, a little more reserved. More reserved, whatever. And that’s the way the CD is, you know. And at first I thought, I don’t know, because it different. But then when I heard the results, you know, OK, it’s not too bad, you Yo no olvido el año viejo porque me deja cosa muy buena or in other words, if you’ve not recorded a song, I recorded a just song before this CD, but in a higher octave over here, because I was younger then.
Jerry Quijano [00:14:48] I’m not gonna get those nodes, you know, are some of the song some of
Jerry Quijano [00:14:51] songs featured on this album or songs that you’ve played before and have been featured on other albums that you have done, do you do that often, revisit some of your old work And what was that like going through it with a new band?
Ruben Ramos [00:15:02] Well, the thing is that I really liked it, you know, and maybe I recorded this song in 1975, and I didn’t have this, what we have now. So I recorded again, maybe a little different, but with all these additives, you now, say like a cumbia with just straight horns and nothing. And now you can put the we do come and put the cover or come and put the congas, you know, as a little different taste to all of it’s absolutely more textures. Yeah. So this was some of the songs I do and bring them back and, and, you know, add, add whatever I think I need to add.
Ruben Ramos [00:15:50] Es el tiempo de llorar, vas a alejarme Estoy viendo en tu mirar, lejos estás de vas y yo me quedo See you in the…
Ruben Ramos [00:16:16] El tiempo de llorar That it won’t be long before this quiet time
Ruben Ramos [00:16:30] Siempre siento que es el tiempo
Jerry Quijano [00:16:37] Well, I wanna take it back a little bit. You mentioned that your parents would play in the cotton fields in Sugarland. How did your family end up here in the Austin area?
Ruben Ramos [00:16:46] Okay, we’re migrants, okay? We’re picking cotton, we literally lived out in the cotton fields, nothing but cotton fields all around our little…
Jerry Quijano [00:16:54] Like a little Pueblito.
Ruben Ramos [00:16:55] No, no, no Pueblito. There’s no Puelitos. Sugarland is 10 miles this way. Richmond, Texas is 11 miles this. So every month they will get, my parents will get somebody’s house, your house, take out all the chairs and sofas out of the living room and put three chairs in the corner and my mama, my dad, Elvira, Afonso. And Basilio was a accordion player. That was the band. The people dancing around in the living room, the cellar. All in a circle. And I would ask, how come everybody’s sitting in a circular, you know? Everybody going this way. Cause if everybody would bump into each other, we would start going this away, you now? So the cosecha, the crop of cosecha starts in the East first. Like late June or middle of June, July. Pick cotton over there in Sugarland, beginning of August, whatever, here, around here, Maynard, Flukeville, Elgin, the last of the crop will be in Amarillo, and Plainview, Laback. We do that thing every year, you know, because my mama’s from Austin. My father was from San Luis Potosi. Finally, my mama said we don’t want to do this anymore, man. So I told my dad to get a job here in Austin. So at that time, it was like 1949, so we moved from Sugar Land to Austin. My dad got a job, and. He built, him and brother built his own house, their own house and that’s how we came to Austin. And I’m glad, you know. Porque en el rancho no había nada, there was nothing out there, you now. There was nothing.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:00] Well, let me ask you, you mentioned working a little bit with Cary and having getting to do that more on this album. You know, I think a lot of people always have questions about the future of Tejano music or music at Tejanas in a wider aspect. When you work with somebody like Cary, who is carrying forward that tradition, how does that make you feel about the future of the Tejana music?
Ruben Ramos [00:19:23] The future of Tejano music is, I can only explain it in one way, where music is a circle, you know? This was a big band and whatever was meant, driving the 20s, the 30s, the 40s up to the middle of the 50s, you now? And then it started.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:50] Evolving to something else.
Ruben Ramos [00:19:50] And to me, it’s not going to disappear, it is going to come back, but I’ll be gone by then, but music is a circle, man. This type of music or the genre of music has its time. Something else comes up, you know. Tejano, like the Tejanao Chicano. I am Chicano. The Tejano label is not my favorite label.
Jerry Quijano [00:20:30] Can you speak a little bit about why that is the case?
Ruben Ramos [00:20:32] Only because Tehano is people that do Tehado, all you will tell us. Chicano, no. Chicano is all over, you know. Chicano to me is like Los Lobos. They’re Chicano. They played English, played English. They played la chingo, the English, and some Spanish, whatever. But that to me, Chicano… Chicano’s is, to me as a musician, that delves into, like, I do country. I do boogie shoes. I do, you now, rancheras. I do boleros, I do polkas, I do wapangos. So that’s Chicano to me, in my opinion.
Ruben Ramos [00:21:24] Cuando salí de mi pueblo, mi cuerpo estaba temblando Porque a la orilla del río, te vi que estabas…
Jerry Quijano [00:21:46] You are releasing this album. You just turned 86 this year. How much more music would you like to create continue to create? You’ve talked about how vital it is to you Would you like see continue making new music or kind of continuing to work with old artists? How do you see your your musical career continue to play out in the future?
Ruben Ramos [00:22:06] I wrote about 15 songs, and this album’s got three or four of my songs that I wrote. And I intend to get back into writing some music, and of course, delving into the songs from Beto Villa from Isidro Lopez way back then, you know, I was listening to a song that I can play, fix it or play it like. Not that it needs fixing, but it arranged it to my way. And there’s a lot of countless possibilities for me to keep going. But the main possibility is to thank Jesus for me being able to do it right now, but the desire to still want to do, you know. People say, well, don’t you get tired of traveling? Yeah, I guess at three or four o’clock in the morning coming back or whatever, you now. But every job has its drawbacks or whatever you call it, you known. And that’s one of them. Getting on stage is icing on the cake. For musicians, I think, getting on finding, you know, traveling, like, in September I got to play in Houston Friday, I got to play Sacramento, California, Thursday, Sunday, and we’re driving.
Jerry Quijano [00:23:35] You’re dry. Oh my gosh.
Ruben Ramos [00:23:36] And we’re driving all the way.
Jerry Quijano [00:23:39] And it’ll be tough in between, but you’re saying when you hit the stage, it’s all worth it.
Ruben Ramos [00:23:43] That to get into Sacramento, you know, that’s, that. When I was young, I was in the third grade, people said, people say, because we live, we used to live by the highway. People say, okay, I want your children to ride. What do you want to be when you grow up? And I don’t know whatever, but I wrote, I wanna be a truck driver. Because I see a lot of trucks coming by, you. So. I basically kind of got what my wish because I drive a bus, you know, drive a van or whatever. I love the road, I still love it, and that’s why I’m still in it. You’re gonna be
Jerry Quijano [00:24:50] El Gato Negro, Mr. Ruben Ramos, his new album, Los Dias de Calor, is co-produced by Kerry Rodriguez and it’s out Friday. He’s gonna be performing in store at Waterloo Records tomorrow at five. That’s it for today’s show. We’ll have links to today’s stories in the podcast show notes and at kut.org. Austin Signal’s team is Rayna Sevilla, Alexandra Hart, and Kristen Cabrera. I’m your host, Jerry Quijano. Talk to you tomorrow.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
