Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, in their rush to judgment and in an attempt to appease the mob and a political/social movement, made irresponsible and unacceptable choices with enormous long-term consequences.
Bottoms is seeking the Democratic Party vice presidential consideration and Howard is trying to bolster a losing August 11 re-election runoff campaign. Both are self-serving, both have acted recklessly, both have abused their powers and betrayed the citizens they swore to protect. Both have failed.
Choices: Both chose to advance their political careers over the well-being of Atlanta. Both ignored due process by either unjustly firing, or by charging eight Atlanta Police officers with multiple felonies before investigations were completed. These arbitrary, emotional and seemingly vengeful political acts have had disastrous consequences on the morale and effectiveness of Atlanta’s police officers and on the safety of our citizens.
Consequences: In Atlanta people are being shot almost every night. Consider just these few crime examples:
· With the murder of 8-year-old Secoriea Turner, the enormity of the failures of Bottoms and Howard are just beginning to bear tragic fruit.
· A boy selling water who was shot and killed on Peachtree Street,
· An 80-year-old grandfather killed in his home,
· Three people have been murdered on Edgewood and Auburn avenues.
· Multiple people have been shot and three killed on University Avenue. Violent criminals there have been barricading city streets and attacking motorists,
Other crimes include:
· There was an arson attack on the Georgia State Patrol headquarters. Vandals dressed in black also broke windows, defaced and painted slogans on the building and damaged government vehicles.
· Atlanta Police Department precincts have been under siege by protesters turned rioters who are aiming lasers at the officers’ eyes and shooting flaming fireworks directly at officers.
· There is gunfire every night.
· Motorcycles and ATV’s are racing every night. Crowds are taking over state highways and city streets nightly with parties, drag races and burning rubber.
Crime and disorder are so bad that during City Council’s Public Safety Committee on June 24 meeting Councilwoman Joyce Shepard reported that the people in her district were asking: “My God, what is happening?” She said that people in the Pittsburgh and Peoplestown neighborhoods are telling her that “Our communities have been taken over.” Later in the same meeting Councilman Antonio Brown reported a homicide in which a young man had been shot and that the police had not yet responded to the scene. Brown said that “neighbors have covered the body with a sheet” and asked acting Chief Rodney Bryant to “send a unit.”
A convicted felon who violently resisted arrest and committed multiple felonies while attacking two peace officers has been glorified as a model citizen, as a hero. Criminals have been emboldened, and Atlanta’s peace officers fear for their jobs and even their freedom if they engage a criminal who resists arrest. The way that APD Officer Garrett Rolfe and other officers were fired without due process was wrong. The fact that Rolfe was then charged with murder and multiple felonies, jailed and held without a bond is disgusting. Every peace officer working in Fulton County has asked themselves: “Is that going to happen to me? Am I next?”
On June 15 in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution I was quoted as saying: “Mayor Bottoms now owns any problems that arise. If the crime rate goes up, that’s going to be on the mayor.” That was in response to the firing of two APD officers without due process. The district attorney has made that even worse. Howard shares responsibility for this rising wave of crime and homicides in Atlanta.
Bottoms and Howard have broken the Atlanta Police Department.
Through the mayor’s inaction, her failure to enforce the law– as well as by encouraging protests, demonstrations and subsequent violence– Bottoms has unleashed a series of events that are now far beyond her control.
Please ask yourself, and your city and county elected officials, when will Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp intercede? When will he declare martial law and protect Atlanta from failed elected officials and a culture of violence, lawlessness and destruction?
Lou Arcangeli is a retired deputy Atlanta Police Department chief.
