Austin police Chief Art Acevedo is being named as Houston’s police chief at a press conference today, ending a 9 ½-year tenure that has made him one of Austin’s most visible figures while presiding in a time that ushered both progress and setbacks in relations between law enforcement and the community.

The appointment by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner ends weeks of speculation and rumors that Acevedo was a finalist for the job, where he will lead the nation’s fifth-largest police department with a force of more than 5,000 officers.

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It is not immediately clear who will replace Acevedo, but the city is likely to engage in a hiring process that could take up to 12 months.

Austin’s Interim City Manager Elaine Hart told the American-Statesman late Wednesday that she expects the city to conduct a national search for Acevedo’s replacement and that she would appoint an interim chief in the meantime.

During his tenure in Austin, Acevedo has flirted with several other major Texas cities, including Fort Worth, Dallas and San Antonio. Thirteen months ago, he withdrew from San Antonio’s hiring process and received a 5 percent pay raise and a new separation agreement should he be fired in Austin.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler released the following statement about Acevedo: "Houston is getting a world-class police chief. Chief Acevedo has made our community safer and closer and he is trusted and much loved by so many. Austin is losing a moral and joyous leader and I’m losing a friend.

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"Losing Art Acevedo is a huge deal and replacing him will be a daunting task, in part because he gave so much of himself to his job and his community. But Austin is a safe city with a strong police force and we’ll have talented applicants to take his place. We’ll shortly have a new city manager and a new police chief, and this gives Austin a unique opportunity to enter a new era in our history."

Adler’s predecessor, former Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell, who was on the Austin City Council when Acevedo was hired in 2007 and was mayor for much of Acevedo’s tenure, said "I was 100 percent behind him then and 100 percent behind him now."

"I think his legacy has been … he has established better relations with all parts of our community, parts that didn’t have good a relationship with (police) in the past. We have a real low homicide rate, a real low rate of confrontations with police and I think people in all like and trust him," Leffingwell said.

American-Statesman reporter Philip Jankowski contributed to this article.