Instead of dialogue about productive measures to contend with America’s gang crisis besieging Georgia, a recent Marc Hyden Forum oped amounts to a Shakespearean thumb-bite with no actual purpose except to incite political polarization and the underreporting of gang-crime victims.
Significantly, the word “gang” never appears in Hyden’s editorials that:
- Overlook the gang crisis in favor of large scale release of gang members in the name of criminal justice reform.
- Bypass the gang crisis in a push for what could lead to wholesale get out of jail free cards (a/k/a cash free bail) for gang members.
- Forsake the gang crisis when calling for approaches to end the calamities associated with the opioid epidemic.
A closer look at the stage of our discontent shows just how detached from public safety these gang-crime-enabling “reforms” truly are.
Gang Members Victimizing Georgia
In 2018, the Georgia Gang Investigators Association released a study disclosing that over 71,000 gang members were operating in Georgia. The FBI placed the number of gang members in metro Atlanta at 50,000. Is Georgia on the mind of someone who writes measures that would risk releasing even more violent gang members into society in the name of “criminal justice reform?” Such a notion, absent proper anti-gang components, invites a plague, a public hazard of the highest order, on all Georgia houses.
Fulton County Releases Gang Members
The Atlanta police chief and Fulton County district attorney improperly attacked the Fulton Magistrate Court for supposedly releasing gang members on bond in 2019. Then responsible reporting exposed that charges under Georgia’s Street Gang Act (O.C.G.A. § 16-15-4) were basically unused by those same entities, disabling the ability of the Magistrate Court to determine whether a defendant or crime was gang related. Then, Hyden cometh hither with misguided advances to eliminate cash bond without any deliberate protections to prevent en masse gang member release. This suggestion is as ludicrous as it is dangerous.
Gang Distribution of Illegal Narcotics
Federal studies for years have identified gangs and the top distributors of illegal narcotics. As such, suppressing the opioid epidemic without doing the same for gangs is a classic “fool’s errand.” Federal government data also tells us that 80% of all American crime is connected to gangs, so aggressive anti-gang programs may actually protect victims from all kinds of offenses. While noble, Hyden’s call to combat the opioid crisis is devoid of any mention of a commensurate action against gangs.
Bonded Gang Members Murder Officer
After Gwinnett County Georgia Police Officer Antwan Toney was murdered in the line of duty in 2018, investigative reporting brought to light that “at least one of the suspects in the shooting death …was a known gang member.” Even worse, law enforcement stated that the killer was apparently on bond for unpursued gang charges that were never prosecuted. How could anyone with any credibility, compassion— or, for that matter, humanity— actually congratulate an elected official from the same county who, in the wake of this horror, advocated for abolition of Georgia’s death penalty instead of strengthening Georgia’s anti-gang laws? With a degree of temerity only matched by its thoughtlessness, this is exactly what a supposedly conservative Republican did.
Mere weeks since this cop’s slaying, Gwinnett Republican state Rep.Brett Harrell, R-Snellville, introduced anti-death penalty legislation rather than proposing enhancements to stop and dismantle gangs. Instead of scolding Harrell, Hyden practically canonized him– and during the legislative session that immediately followed the Gwinnett officer’s homicide.
Wherefore art thou Hyden?
The fact that Hyden authors commentary at IAG certainly raises the inference that Hyden’s heart is in the right place. Hyden need go no further than his fellow IAG authors to show him how to o’erperch these walls with armor while offering meaningful commentary on actually productive criminal justice reform, including:
- InsiderAdvantage CEO Phil Kent;
- GBI Director and preeminent gang prosecutor Vic Reynolds;
- Georgia Gang Investigators Association President and Police Chief Jimmy Callaway;
- GBI Chief of Staff and top RICO law expert John Melvin;
- InsiderAdvantage reporter Cindy Morley
- GBI Chief Counsel and pioneering anti-gang prosecutor Mike Carlson.
Georgia’s GOP Leaders Lead the Way
Thankfully Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr ran on, and won their elections with, and have since implemented forceful anti-gang initiatives. Hyden would do better to adhere to the agenda Kemp laid out, rather than that of the gang-encouraging crusaders.
While productive suggestions for reform continue to be contemplated and resubmitted, they should never be introduced without considering how they enable or disable gang crime. This means that combatting the Gang Crisis is central to meaningfully productive criminal justice reform.
Bill Black is a Georgia attorney who graduated with honors from Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School where he was Editor-in-Chief of the John Marshall Law Journal. He is concluding his LL.M. degree at Georgetown University Law Center and is an Air Force veteran.
