The Austin Police Department had its share of ups and downs during Chief Stan Knee's tenure. But he had his fair share of accomplishments, too.

On Tuesday, after almost nine years in office, Knee announced he was resigning to take a job training police in Afghanistan.

In 1998, Knee reviewed the department's methods for use of force reporting and made data collection more thorough. Some would say it came back to haunt him several years later in three officer-related shootings. That year, he decentralized the department so each area command would have a better understanding of the specific needs of the community. There are now four substations.

In 2000, APD received national accreditation, becoming the first police department in Texas to reach that level.

Knee also created the police monitor's office.

In March 2004, officers arrested members of the band Ozomatli when they took their traditional end-of-show conga line outside of nightclub during a South by Southwest showcase. The charges for breaking the city's noise ordinance were later dropped. But the incident left a small stain on the Live Music Capital of the World.

In February 2005, the Midtown Club, in Northeast Austin, caught fire. Officers were caught sending messages like "Burn baby burn" back and forth. Other messages seemed to celebrate the club's demise. The messages angered Austin's black community already enraged by the shootings of Sophia King and Jesse Lee Owens by police.

But there were even more tough times: four officers died on Knee's watch. Officer Clinton Warren Hunter, Sgt. Earl Hall and Officer Amy Donovan were killed in the line of duty. Cmdr. Shauna Jacobson was killed in an off-duty motorcycle accident, with an alcohol content of .33. The legal limit is .08. Her husband, Kurt Jacobson, a former APD detective, who was driving the bike, had a blood alcohol content of .24.

And then there were the officers who killed while on duty.

Three cases that created the most controversy were the June 2002 incident when Officer John Coffey shot and killed Sophia King outside her East Austin apartment. The mentally disabled woman was threatening to kill her apartment manager with a knife. The shooting was deemed justifible.

In June 2003, Jesse Lee Owens was shot and killed in East Austin by Officer Scott Glasgow during a traffic stop. Glasgow was indicted but later a judge threw it out. On the other hand, the grand jury issued a public report citing Austin's "problem with race."

In 2004, Officer Julie Schroeder shot and killed Daniel Rocha during a struggle. She was fired from the department but is going to court next week to try and get her job back.

In an attempt to mend fences following these shootings, Knee gave himself one year to improve the relationship between the police and the city's minority communities or he would resign.

In June 2005, Knee and other leaders held a community forum in East Austin to talk about the police shooting deaths and to improve race relations. Those troubled race relations may have played a part in Chief Knee's decision to step down -- if not in any other way than he got tired in the job.

Despite all the turmoil, Austin was named in April the third-safest city in the country because of a drop in violent crime.