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I do not think you had a case to sue the police in the first incident, which is why the civil rights project and lawyers were not interested. Before you can sue over a civil rights violation, you must be able to show a harm - damaged reputation, financial loss, physical injury, etc. Federal courts do not consider a violation of your civil rights to be an injury in and of itself, a point where I disagree.

In the case where the officer disarmed you, the officer has the legal authority to do so if he determines his safety or yours requires it. I do not agree with his policies, but they are the officer's to set.

As others have posted, I do recommend filing a complaint with the department. In most cases, I would recommend internal affairs, but Austin is a very special case. While you could contact IA, APD is under a consent decree where they must allow a civilian appointed monitor to also investigate and oversee complaints. This is the office Getsome mentioned in his post. This is also the office that caused an uproar during SXSW by publicly asking for complaints on officers. So, in the case of Austin, I strongly recommend that you mail a letter of complaint to both the police monitor and the IA division at the same time.

To be honest, I have strong doubts that anything will happen to the officer involved. There is a possibility, but I don't think anything will happen. But, my hope is that enough people with CHL's will complain and the monitor will see the pattern and may be able to convince the chief and training to get new policies in place before a major incident occurs. I don't truly have much faith in this happening either, but I can hope.