Sheriff's hopeful Donegan sees victims, not new jail, as priority

Liz Donegan has dedicated much of her life to the investigation of sexual assault crimes, which is why it's a major part of her platform in her bid to unseat Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez in the Democratic primary.

She was a corrections officer at the Travis County Correctional Complex for two years in the early 1990s before joining the Austin Police Department, where she worked for 26 years and retired as a senior sergeant.

Donegan spent a large portion of her career with the Austin police Sexual Assault Unit, investigating sexual assaults and supervising those investigations. She now works as a private consultant, instructing law enforcement agencies and other organizations on best practices for those types of cases.

She also serves on the executive board of the Austin/Travis County Sexual Assault Response and Resource Team, a coalition of law enforcement, victim services advocates and other groups that seek to improve sexual assault investigations and prosecutions in Travis County.

"I see the void, and I'm not satisfied with the status quo," Donegan said. "I look to see what we can do differently. What can we do better to make this community safer and healthier?"

She said her solutions would include innovative ideas, foresight and collaboration with the community.

"I have built decades of collaboration with community members who have done the work. I have maintained those relationships during times that are good, bad and ugly," Donegan said. "But the responsibility of a leader of an organization is to stand to do what is right at all times and to stand when it is most difficult."

The Democratic and Republican primary elections are March 3, and early voting begins Feb. 18. Hernandez will face Donegan and candidate John Loughran in the Democratic primary. Candidate Raul Vargas is running unopposed in the Republican primary. Jason Ryan Salazar is running as an independent and will join the party nominees on the November ballot.

If elected, Donegan said she would expand the Victims Services department, improve training and mental health programs for employees, work with the Travis County District Attorney's office to move more defendants through jail diversion programs, and restore the Travis County sheriff's office's role in SARRT.

Several leaders in the county's criminal justice system, including Hernandez and District Attorney Margaret Moore, left SARRT and joined a newly formed group early last year. Hernandez's decision to leave, which Donegan called "unfortunate," was one of the reasons Donegan decided to run.

"You cannot surround yourself with people who are just going to 'yes' you to death and tell you you're doing a great job," Donegan said. "That's why SARRT is so strong and has such a significant presence in this community."

In Hernandez's resignation letter, she said that "conflicts within SARRT have halted productivity and crippled our ability to effectively communicate. More time is spent in contentious conversation than in purposeful assistance."

Hernandez pointed out that the sheriff's office still works with the SAFE Alliance on a regular basis to come up with ways to more effectively investigate cases.

"The fact that we're not part of SARRT doesn't affect our direct relationships with survivor advocacy groups at all," Hernandez said.

Hernandez also pointed out that she created a sexual assault unit for the sheriff's office in 2017 and said she is proud of how well her office investigates those types of cases.

Another major facet of Donegan's platform is her opposition to building a new women's jail. She, along with Loughran and many criminal justice advocates, have urged the county to spend that money elsewhere.

"I do not believe we can call ourselves progressives and the answer is to build a new structure to house women," Donegan said. "Women's incarceration begins with trauma for the vast majority of women -- women who have been victims of child abuse, sexual assault, domestic violence. Those require specific programs to address the root issue."

Travis County should renovate its jail and continue investing in its diversion programs, she said.

Donegan had worked in Austin police's Sex Crimes Unit since 2002, though she was transferred to a different unit before she left the department in 2017.

After she retired, Donegan said she was pressured by two lieutenants under one commander to reclassify sexual assault cases to boost clearance rates, though she never made the changes as requested.

The investigative news site ProPublica found that the number of rapes cleared by exceptional means jumped more than 50% in the year after she was transferred. A Texas Department of Public Safety audit, sparked by the ProPublica report, confirmed that Austin police had misclassified many sexual assault cases.

However, an internal review of Donegan in 2011 found that her unit lacked basic leadership and supervision and that her "decision making comes from the perspective of a victim's advocate and not an impartial law enforcement officer," Lt. Michael Eveleth wrote.

"Sgt. Donegan asserts that the APD's Sex Crimes unit is known for best practices, yet there is no written training or protocol for new detectives in the unit to follow, and she has shown no interest in training our own first responders," Eveleth wrote.

Donegan, who was transferred out in 2011, said the memo may have been written in retaliation for her refusal to boost clearance rates.

"Being victim-centered is a best practice. ... If I had a unit that was not victim-centered, that was padding the numbers, maybe then I should have been investigated for my lack of leadership," she told the American-Statesman. "But I wasn't. I was doing the right thing."

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