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Austin residents should not call 911 and should instead call a non-emergency phone line if they become the victim of a robbery, according to the Austin Police Department.

The police department issued a statement last week directing citizens to instead call 311 - a number usually reserved for non-emergency situations such as questions about citywide services.

Robbery is considered a violent crime under Texas law.

“Did you get robbed on your way back from a bank or ATM?’ an infographic released from the department said. “'Call 3-1-1 or make an online report,” the graphic said.

The new protocol comes as Austin is facing a 77 percent increase in car thefts, an 18 percent increase in aggravated assaults, and a 30 percent increase in murders.

“We’re a growing city, a city that should be up around 2,000 officers and growing right now,” Austin Police Association President Thomas Villarreal told “Fox & Friends” in August. “I’ve got about 1,475 officers in our police department and, you know, we’re moving in the wrong direction. There’s less and less and less resources to go out and do the job.”

This comes after the summer riots of 2020 where 20 officers were indicted for “doing their jobs” during the chaos. The City Council also cut one-third of the city’s police department budget that year, a number totaling $150 million.

Basically, the City defunds its police department and now law-abiding residents are forced to face the consequences.

Austin residents are sick of these progressive policies.

The mother of a 25-year-old man murdered in a 2021 mass shooting in Texas wrote a letter to Austin City Council for defunding police, which she said led directly to her son’s death.

“It was you, the city council and others who defunded the police and welcomed these evil people with no regard for life to run and ruin your city,” wrote Julia Kantor, according to documents obtained by Fox News.

Nearly half of all criminals released to prison within their first year return to prison. Progressive prosecutors facilitate lawlessness by not prosecuting criminals and watering down felonies. This ensures that offenders won’t be detained for long, allowing them to commit their next offense in no time.

A recent study attributes an extra 74 homicides per year to the de-prosecution policy in Philadelphia. The same methodology estimated an additional 70 homicides per year in Baltimore and 169 more homicides per year in Chicago, two other cities with de-prosecuting prosecutors.

“During 2010–2014, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office maintained a consistent and robust number of prosecutions and sentencings. During 2015–2019, the office engaged in a systematic policy of de-prosecution for both felony and misdemeanor cases. The city recorded the fewest number of criminal prosecutions in modern history, with a 70% reduction in the number of criminal sentencings. Philadelphia experienced a concurrent and historically large increase in homicides.”

When bad behavior is rewarded, it will continue. This used to be common sense but consequences are no longer considered in hopes of criminal justice reform.