“I can’t believe we’re continuing to allow these anti-police protestors to block major thoroughfares for hours,” an Atlanta Police Department source tells this writer. “These lawbreakers are becoming emboldened and future demonstrations and lie-ins could really get out of hand.”
He is referring to last Saturday afternoon’s militant anti-police protest which featured a street “lie-in” in the Buckhead section of Atlanta between the busy shopping centers of Phipps Plaza and Lenox Square. TV footage showed approximately 70 protestors lying in the street and hurling ugly epithets at police, irritated Christmas shoppers and motorists. Some even chained themselves together to make it harder for them to be removed. (Firefighters had to be called in with tools to break the locks.)
As this is written, 12 arrests were reported—a surprisingly low number according to onlookers.
It was just Nov. 25 when demonstrators, led by the same few black and white radicals (some of whom police say are leaders in the left-wing “Occupy” movement), smashed windows on Peachtree Street as well as damaged a police vehicles and other property before police moved in. Furthermore, that night, a mob was allowed by the Atlanta Police Department and the Georgia State Patrol to block the Interstate downtown connector and stop traffic. That was the second time such a blockage occurred (by the exit to Grady hospital) with no immediate police crackdown. Mayor Kasim Reed, at a Nov. 26 news conference, said police displayed “a firm but soft hand.” The “firm hand” has become “a limp wrist” according to my police source.
Lou Arcangeli, a retired deputy Atlanta police chief, says that the city can crack down harder “when there is political will to solve it.” In the future he hopes “the police will have clarity” from the mayor and police chief so they can react more quickly and decisively to protests. So far, Reed and Chief George Turner continue to be too permissive.
