Republican
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Tuesday that last week's seemingly random knife attacks by a homeless man at an Austin shopping plaza magnified a “sense of lawlessness" in the liberal state capital city, whose mayor has accused the governor of demonizing people living on the streets.
Since the attacks Friday, which included the fatal stabbing of a restaurant kitchen manager, Abbott has sought to draw a link to relaxed camping ordinances that have made homelessness more visible in one of the nation's fastest-growing cities.
"What Austin has done over the past half year is to perpetuate a sense of lawlessness in this city about the homeless," Abbott told reporters in the Texas Capitol.