‘Mis­car­riage of jus­tice’: Soros DA ripped by police for ‘war’ on cops after offi­cer sen­tenced to prison

FIRST ON FOX: Austin, Texas, police offi­cers past and present are speak­ing out against the county’s pro­gres­sive dis­trict attor­ney after a fel­low offi­cer was sen­tenced to two years in prison on Tues­day for what they say was a case of him per­form­ing his job the right way. 

Austin police offi­cer Christo­pher Tay­lor was sen­tenced to two years in prison after being con­vict­ed of dead­ly con­duct, after orig­i­nal­ly being charged with mur­der in the shoot­ing death of 46-year-old Mau­ris DeSil­va in 2019. 

DeSil­va was in the midst of a men­tal health episode, walk­ing around an apart­ment com­plex, threat­en­ing to harm him­self and hold­ing a knife to his throat, when he failed to drop the knife after being instruct­ed by offi­cers to do so.

Fox News Dig­i­tal spoke to sev­er­al mem­bers of the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty in Austin who say that Taylor’s pros­e­cu­tion rep­re­sents a mali­cious tar­get­ing of police offi­cers on the part of the county’s pro­gres­sive Dis­trict Attor­ney Jose Garza. 

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“The weaponiza­tion of our Jus­tice Sys­tem by Travis Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney Jose Garza has tak­en away the life of Offi­cer Chris Tay­lor today,” Austin Police Offi­cer Justin Berry told Fox News Dig­i­tal in a state­ment. 

“Chris knew that by wear­ing the badge of a police offi­cer he may be called to make the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice in the ser­vice and pro­tec­tion of anoth­er offi­cer or his com­mu­ni­ty. I do not believe he, nor his fam­i­ly, ever thought his life would be tak­en by a mali­cious Dis­trict Attor­ney with a spite­ful agen­da against a police offi­cer try­ing to pro­tect him­self and oth­ers. I have spo­ken with Law Enforce­ment lead­ers from around Texas and we all stand behind Offi­cer Chris Tay­lor and the oth­er mali­cious­ly per­se­cut­ed offi­cers against the ongo­ing weaponiza­tion of the jus­tice sys­tem for rogue Dis­trict Attor­neys to abuse with impuni­ty.”

Garza has long faced crit­i­cism from law enforce­ment in Austin for an alleged “war on cops” after the Soros-backed dis­trict attor­ney cam­paigned on indict­ing police offi­cers and “reimag­in­ing” polic­ing in Austin. Soros con­tributed $652,000 to the Texas Jus­tice & Pub­lic Safe­ty PAC in the months lead­ing up to the 2020 Travis Coun­ty DA elec­tion, accord­ing to cam­paign finance records. That same PAC spent almost $1 mil­lion on dig­i­tal and mail adver­tise­ments to help Garza’s cam­paign.

Berry, who was one of over a dozen police offi­cers indict­ed by Garza for their role in quelling Black Lives Mat­ter riots in 2020, told Fox News Dig­i­tal that Taylor’s sit­u­a­tion “high­lights the his­toric abuse of office by Travis Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney Jose Garza to fur­ther his per­son­al war against the men and women of the Austin Police Depart­ment.”

“Today Garza sent a clear mes­sage that police offi­cers in Travis Coun­ty, Texas are pro­hib­it­ed from defend­ing them­selves and oth­ers (to include mem­bers of this very com­mu­ni­ty),” Berry told Fox News Dig­i­tal. “When an armed sub­ject charges at an offi­cer to harm or kill that offi­cer, every police offi­cer has always been trained and taught they are legal­ly jus­ti­fied in defend­ing them­selves or oth­ers from seri­ous bod­i­ly injury or death. Today that is no longer the case in Austin, Texas. Jose Garza has set the pol­i­cy that no police offi­cer should respond to ANY call involv­ing any­one in a men­tal health cri­sis, espe­cial­ly if they are armed with a weapon.”

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A sec­ond Austin police offi­cer, who was grant­ed anonymi­ty in order to speak freely, called Tues­day a “sad” and “dark day” for Austin, Texas.

“No one wants to go to these men­tal health calls any­more and, if we do go, there will be some hes­i­ta­tion,” the offi­cer said. “This con­vic­tion will cause peo­ple to get hurt when they oth­er­wise wouldn’t have.”

“We’re all heart bro­ken for Chris and his fam­i­ly. Chris showed up, answered the call, uti­lized sound tac­tics and deci­sion mak­ing, and is now look­ing at a two-year prison sen­tence. We haven’t got­ten any mean­ing­ful guid­ance because – what do you change when Chris did it the right way?”

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The offi­cers who spoke with Fox News Dig­i­tal main­tain that Tay­lor fol­lowed his train­ing, which was backed up by tes­ti­mo­ny in Taylor’s defense from for­mer Austin police chief Bri­an Man­ley and for­mer Austin assis­tant city man­ag­er Bruce Mills. Addi­tion­al­ly, an inter­nal police depart­ment review of the inci­dent con­clud­ed Tay­lor fol­lowed pro­to­col, and he was allowed to return to work.

The pros­e­cu­tion argued that Tay­lor, believed to be the first police offi­cer in Travis Coun­ty to be con­vict­ed for use of force, could have dif­fused the sit­u­a­tion with­out dead­ly force and that DeSil­va was not a threat at the time dead­ly force was used. 

“We lost him because of your igno­rance,” DeSilva’s father said in court. “You were reck­less. You know very well that he was not a dan­ger to you, Mr. Tay­lor, or any­one else. I have no idea why you decid­ed to shoot him.”

Den­nis Far­ris, pres­i­dent of Austin Police Retired Offi­cers Asso­ci­a­tion, point­ed Fox News Dig­i­tal to evi­dence in the tri­al that DeSil­va had meth in his sys­tem, a blood alco­hol lev­el of over .20 and tes­ti­mo­ny that DeSil­va was mov­ing toward the offi­cers armed with a knife from a short dis­tance away. 

“We as a soci­ety can­not expect police offi­cers to go out every day and pro­tect us while they wor­ry if they will be indict­ed by some elect­ed DA who decides what they did was crim­i­nal,” Far­ris told Fox News Dig­i­tal. “Chris Tay­lor fol­lowed the law and his train­ing in deal­ing with this sit­u­a­tion and some­how the pros­e­cu­tors con­vinced a jury that it was unlaw­ful.”

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“This ver­dict and sen­tence are absolute­ly a mis­car­riage of jus­tice by a DA who is tar­get­ing police offi­cers for doing their job and let­ting real crim­i­nals off with lit­tle or no pun­ish­ment.”

In a state­ment to Fox News Dig­i­tal, the Com­bined Law Enforce­ment Asso­ci­a­tion of Texas (CLEAT) said Garza has “set out on a mis­sion and has engaged in the polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion of near­ly 30 brave law enforce­ment offi­cers across this coun­ty.”

“Offi­cer Tay­lor fol­lowed his train­ing and writ­ten pro­ce­dures and act­ed exact­ly as any rea­son­able offi­cer would have,” the state­ment from CLEAT said. “That was made clear by sev­er­al wit­ness­es to include the for­mer Chief of Police of the Austin Police Depart­ment. Count­less experts in use of force and police pro­ce­dures tes­ti­fied that his actions were jus­ti­fied and well with­in nation­al­ly rec­og­nized train­ing stan­dards and pro­to­cols. On behalf of our orga­ni­za­tion and its 28,000 mem­bers, we stand by Offi­cer Tay­lor, his fam­i­ly, and the mem­bers of the Austin Police Depart­ment.”

When con­tact­ed by Fox News Dig­i­tal regard­ing the con­cerns from law enforce­ment, Garza’s office respond­ed with a state­ment say­ing, “In this case, Mr. Tay­lor was con­vict­ed by a Travis Coun­ty jury and sen­tenced by a Travis Coun­ty Judge.”

“We are grate­ful for our devot­ed team who worked dili­gent­ly to ensure account­abil­i­ty for the defen­dant and to seek jus­tice for the vic­tim and their fam­i­ly,” Garza’s office said in a state­ment Tues­day night, KVUE-TV report­ed. “We tru­ly hope this out­come brings com­fort and sup­port to the DeSil­va fam­i­ly as they con­tin­ue their heal­ing jour­ney.”

Garza­’s office had pre­vi­ous­ly charged Tay­lor with mur­der in an unre­lat­ed case short­ly after tak­ing office in 2020. That case end­ed in a mis­tri­al in Novem­ber of last year and his office has said that case will not be brought again.

Rough­ly half a dozen police offi­cers are cur­rent­ly fac­ing charges in Travis Coun­ty and Berry told Fox News Dig­i­tal that the fam­i­lies of those offi­cers are in dire need of sup­port. 

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“Chris is not the only offi­cer under Garza’s hit list, there are many oth­er Austin Police Offi­cers await­ing their sham tri­als in this polit­i­cal mis­car­riage of jus­tice,” Berry said. “These offi­cers and their fam­i­lies have had their entire lives ripped from them and are left wait­ing for their tri­al date to have Jose Garza take his shot at end­ing their lives too. Enough is enough with this abuse of pow­er and mis­car­riage of jus­tice. These offi­cers and their fam­i­lies also need our sup­port in what seems like a hope­less time for them.”

Austin Police Asso­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Michael Bul­lock, in a state­ment post­ed on X, wrote that he believes Garza is play­ing “polit­i­cal games.”

“Through­out this tri­al they have ignored and tried to dis­cred­it their own experts, claimed to be tac­ti­cal experts, gone after oth­er offi­cers who were called in to tes­ti­fy, and made every attempt to vil­i­fy the Austin Police Depart­ment,” Bul­lock wrote. “Tonight, Dex­ter Gil­ford from the DA’s office went as far as say­ing the DA’s office knows more about tac­tics than the offi­cers who actu­al­ly face these real­i­ties every day.”

“This Dis­trict Attor­ney has giv­en sweet­heart plea deals to rapists and vio­lent crim­i­nals; while ignor­ing vic­tims, he has spent untold amounts of tax­pay­er mon­ey to repeat­ed­ly go after Detec­tive Tay­lor who was put in an impos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion and forced to defend him­self and oth­ers against some­one high on meth and armed with a knife. No mat­ter how much Garza will try to con­vince peo­ple oth­er­wise, he is active­ly mak­ing our city more dan­ger­ous by free­ing crim­i­nals and tar­get­ing cops.”