The Atlanta mayoral race is seriously underway now. Current Atlanta City Council President Felicia Moore is campaigning and beginning to raise questions about the current leadership – and specifically pointing to the city’s surging violent crime rate.
Moore is making the media rounds, appearing on Atlanta R&B station KISS 104 and the Frank Ski Show to talk about the race and her challenge of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
She made waves during the Kasim Reed administration as an advocate for transparency and good government but is now focusing increasingly on what is the biggest issue in Atlanta, public safety.
Said Moore, “As a public servant for more than two decades, when I read this recent headline in the newspaper, ‘14 shootings, 2 dead over All-Star weekend,’ I was appalled. Everything we’ve been working for in the City of Atlanta is being derailed.”
Crime is up significantly over the past year, likely influenced by the bizarreness of the COVID lockdowns but also by a host of other factors such as the response to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota and some chaos within the Atlanta police – and anger in the city – after the death of Rayshard Brooks here in Atlanta. Former Atlanta Chief of Police Erika Shields resigned in the wake of the death of Brooks and former Assistant Police Chief Rodney Bryant has been serving as interim chief for nearly a year now.
Moore has called for three measures to be taken, and she is reiterating her call for action. Today, she is calling again for three concrete changes she believes would immediately improve the situation:
- Launch a search for a permanent chief of police.
- Hire more police officers to fill the empty openings on the police force.
- Address disciplinary issues in the force, keeping oversight and accountability top of mind, because good officers need to be rewarded and bad officers need to be removed.
“Our officers are on the streets protecting us. They are our frontline and must be supported. So we need to fill the empty positions as fast as we can,” Moore said. “After all, we expect them to be accountable in the measures they use to protect us, so we should have some accountability to them.”
Moore contends that she – in her role as Council President – and the City Council have frequently raised these issues but that the Executive Branch is charged with day-to-day operations and must implement changes.
“We have the power to set policy, but not to execute it. So I intend to keep raising these until we see something being done,” Moore said. “As mayor, I also would work with the court system to slam the revolving door of our jails shut so that we make sure violent offenders aren’t released early. We need to have a region-wide and system-wide collaborative approach to stopping this crime wave.”
For her part, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms will soon be hosting a fundraiser from President Joe Biden himself, a returning of the favor from her campaigning for him. There will surely be full campaign coffers but it is still early and Moore may receive plenty of support from those skeptical of Bottoms’ tenure.
