Fort Worth lawyer who walked to Austin to talk police reform with Abbott headed home
After a grueling 200-mile, eight-day trek to Austin to meet with Gov. Greg Abbott on police reform issues and 35 days of waiting for a meeting that never happened, attorney Leon Reed said he was heading home to Fort Worth on Tuesday.
The day after Reed arrived in Austin on Aug. 17 and walked from his hotel to the Texas Capitol, Reed was informed Abbott was visiting Fort Worth.
“He could’ve given me a ride home, and we could’ve talked,” Reed told supporters who had driven to Austin to meet him.
Attorneys and activists who came out to the Bob Bolen Public Safety Complex where an Abbott press conference was held Aug. 18, said that instead of being able to connect with the governor’s office, they were told to leave the property, which they did.
But Reed’s supporters did not seem happy about being asked to leave.
“It’s not that it did anything to me,” Sara Vargas, a Fort Worth attorney, said at the time. “It’s that you’re disrespecting this entire community that’s trying to voice to you their concerns. You’re disrespecting this man’s journey and sacrifice.”
Reed said he waited at the southern entrance of the Capitol grounds every weekday from 9 a.m. until 11 a.m. near the corner of Congress Avenue and 11th Street, within jogging distance from the Governor’s Mansion, hoping for a meeting with Abbott that never occurred.
Reed did meet with a few members of the governor’s staff, but the purpose of Reed’s walk was to meet with Abbott himself, Reed said in a news release.
Reed is thankful to his supporters, and those who have donated time, money, and hotel rewards which allowed him to wait 35 days, but Reed stated “35 nights of hotel hopping is enough.”
Reed said the 35 days he waited represents Interstate 35, the interstate Reed traveled that runs from Fort Worth to Austin.
Walk For Reform is a movement that will not stop upon Reed’s return, according to the release.
“The main goal is, and always has been, to better police and community relations through reform,” Reed said. “That is what we are committed to doing. By gaining an audience with the governor we were attempting a ‘top-down’ approach. Now we’ll just go ‘bottom-up’ and do it grassroots.”
There has been support for this movement from across the country including many in law enforcement, Reed said.
“We have been contacted by people who are willing to walk 160 miles from Houston, 80 miles from San Antonio, and the 200 miles from DFW,” Reed said. “We’ll be discussing that in greater detail in the near future.”
Walk For Reform still plans to provide data to each Texas state representative and state senator, including reports from experts, racial-profiling reports, use-of-force reports, and a recent report about the Fort Worth Police Department written by Police Reform Experts, an outside agency hired by the City of Fort Worth, that Reed says underscores the need for reform.
Reed documented his journey on the Facebook page, “Walk for Reform,” and shared his location via Google Maps so people could meet him along the way. He would get up in the early morning hours, sometimes as early as 3 a.m., to get enough miles in before the August heat became too much.
This story includes information from Star-Telegram archives.
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 2:54 PM.
