Blogs

By Charles Edwards (2010-05-13)

ATLANTA, GA (WABE) - The Atlanta City Council Public Safety Committee has a passed an ordinance to strengthen a police oversight group. The proposal comes amid long standing tension between the citizens review board and the Atlanta Police Department.

The ordinance is significant because it gives the Board subpoena power. Right now, if the Board is investigating allegations of police abuse, it has to ask city council to subpoena a police officer. Board executive director Christina Beamud says it takes too long due to struggles in getting officers to comply with investigations and the city council's process for meeting to issue subpoenas.

"That can create like a 6 week delay and I think that it's very important to come up with results that are more prompt," said Beamud.

The ordinance also forces the city's police chief to discipline officers who don't cooperate. Katrina Taylor Parks is with the Mayor's office.

"It's important to know that the administration is in support of this paper in conjunction with other things that will make the CRB's mission more potent and where it needs to be," said Parks.

Parks did not say what those other things are. She pushed the committee to hold off on voting. Parks says Mayor Kasim Reed wants two weeks to iron out issue with the Board. The committee has held on to the ordinance for a few weeks and councilman C.T. Martin said the Mayor's office has had long enough.

"We've debated this up and down," said Martin. "I understand the administration wanted it held but I don't what two more weeks is going to do."

Martin asked the committee to vote saying the Mayor and the Board need to iron out their issues by Monday. That's when committee chair Ivory Young says the full city council will vote on the ordinance.

" and if what they bring is sufficient to justify amending the legislation with their recommendations then we'll do so," said Young. "If not, we'll take action on it and that action may be to vote up or down or whatever the council chooses at that time."

Atlanta revived the Board after the 2006 shooting death of 92-year-old Kathyrn Johnston. The board investigates complaints of alleged police abuse. However, the group accuses officers of routinely hampering investigations by not commenting. However, police officers have consistently argued they have the legal right not to comment. An APD spokesman referred all comments to the Mayor's office. Reed has not commented on the ordinance. A spokesman says the Mayor wants to review the board's funding and overall structure. © Copyright 2010, WABE

BLOCS is proud to announce that we are one step closer to a stronger Atlanta Citizen's Review Board!! We need to keep the pressure on!

Our large presence at today's Public Safety Council meeting made a HUGE impact on the council's decision to move forward on the ordinance proposal to strengthen the CRB!! 

The council voted that:

1) The Board will deliberate in public and take votes in public in all matters instead of waiting 3 days after the notification of the Chief of Police;

2) The Police Chief must discipline officers who refused to give statements;

3) The Board will have direct subpoena power rather than having to go to the Committee on Council

Thank you to everyone who came to show their support for the CRB and BLOCS.  What a great success!!

But our work is not over! The Full Council will vote on the ordinance change MONDAY, May 17 at 1pm, City Hall (Second Floor). BE THERE! And contact your councilmember today!

Click here to find contact information for your councilmember.
Talking Points

• A vote to strengthen the CRB is an opportunity to fix the current barriers to independent police oversight in Atlanta, and address ongoing resistance to best practices by the Atlanta Police Department.
• By approving more transparency, requiring the Police Chief to discipline officers who refuse to testify, and authorizing direct subpoena power, the Public Safety Committee can empower our Citizen Review Board to finally do its job.
• Atlantans deserve a Police Chief that values a positive working relationship with the Citizen Review Board and requires his or her officers to comply with the law. We are deeply concerned that Interim Chief Georgia Turner has not demonstrated any leadership on this issue.

Email atlantablocs(at)gmail.com for more information.
 

The Administration have still not released the final Police Chief candidates' names, and are telling the public that there are five finalists, when in fact only three were recommended by the Search Committee.

The Administration has gone back on their promise to hold a public Townhall meeting to meet the candidates.

Lisa Borders is having her office tell concerned members of the public that she is "no longer involved" in the Search process, even though she is Co-Chair of the Transition Team.

Please call  Mayor Reed at 404-330-6100 to demand that he:

1) Hold a Townhall Meeting like they promised
2) Release the names of the finalists that were recommended by the Search Committee
 
 

Friday, April 23, 2010, 6:13 AM
News, Opinion, Politics
By Stephanie Ramage

 
According to trusted sources, in recent weeks the search committee for Atlanta’s next police chief trimmed a total list of only six candidates for the job to three. They did so by subjecting the six to a grueling round of interviews and resume reviews. They methodically ranked the applicants according to their performance and came up with a list of the top three. My sources have informed me that Acting Police Chief George Turner was not among those three.

The committee members expected to forward those three to Mayor Kasim Reed, but Lisa Borders, who has overseen the search, has informed them that a list of the top five names will be sent to Reed.

Even worse, Borders has told the committee that the transition team she co-chairs—the team in charge of filling all of the high-profile vacancies in the Reed administration--will be giving the mayor an unranked list of the five. Borders verified to The Sunday Paper on Thursday, April 22, that she would indeed by forwarding five of the six to the mayor.

Choosing five out of six isn’t a substantial narrowing and makes a mockery of the service that the search committee members have rendered to the city. They are volunteers with busy lives. The fact that their hard work would be thrown away to satisfy political needs is a travesty.

I believe that asking for a list of five is the only way Turner’s name would have made it into the group being sent to the mayor for consideration. He is not one of the top recommendations of the committee.
 
Turner should not be Atlanta’s next police chief and here’s why: Cowardice is the root of all evil. Everyday, lives, jobs and families are lost because good people fail to find the courage to speak out, and nowhere is that courage more dangerous than in a police department.
Edmond Burke, one of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment said it best: “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.”

You notice he still calls them “good.” Good people are to blame for letting bad things happen. Turner is a good man. I’ve met him. He’s a nice person, and he’s been nicer than ever over the past four months as he’s vied for the chief’s job. However, a good man who does nothing is not who Atlantans need in charge of their police force.

Mayor Reed should ask himself if Turner fulfilled his responsibility to speak out and step in to right the wrongs of APD policy under Chief Richard Pennington. The answer could only be a resounding “No, he did not.”

Turner served under Pennington as a deputy chief. Under Pennington and Turner’s administration, the president of the local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, Sgt. Scott Kreher, spoke out about quotas being forced on officers. Cops had to carry out a certain number of arrests and search warrants each month. Kreher was punished by Pennington for speaking out, slapped back to the police department’s graveyard shift. U.S. District Judge Julie Carnes, in effect, corroborated what Kreher claimed when, in her opinion on the case brought against officers involved in the deadly shooting of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, she said “the pressures brought to bear” by the quotas helped precipitate the officers’ actions. In its investigation of Johnston’s tragic killing, the FBI “found performance quotas of nine arrests and two search warrants a month expected of officers” according to one of the attorneys in the officers’ trials, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
 
Turner was a deputy chief at that time. It would have packed quite a punch if he had publically blown the whistle on the APD’s numbers game, a game that he would have had to have known about. But he said nothing. He did nothing.
 
Instead, in a taped interview with me in February, when asked to evaluate the performance of Pennington, he said “I thought he was a great chief and that he professionalized our police department in that he understood how important it was to grow talent inside the department.”

In his position as deputy chief of support services Turner oversaw the 911 center—the same 911 center that became a citywide laughingstock and a threat to public safety. Citing data from the Atlanta Police Department, WSB reported last November that “some callers have been placed on hold as long as 38 minutes before getting through to an operator in the city's 911 center." According to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Standards set by the National Emergency Number Association say that 90 percent of 911 calls should be answered in 10 seconds or less.”

It was courageous residents and determined reporters who brought the disgraceful performance of the 911 center to the public's attention. But the man who should have been the first person to say “We’ve got a problem,” was Turner. He was in charge. He, more than anyone else, was privy to the failure between the 911 center and police responders.

He said nothing. He did nothing.

Turner should not be Atlanta’s next police chief, and given Border’s blatant manipulation of the police chief search process, Mayor Reed should ask her to resign immediately from the transition team. Reed should consider only the search committee’s top three picks, not the “top five” of six. SP
http://www.sundaypaper.com/Blogs/TheRamageReport/tabid/235/articleType/A...

URGENT ACTION ALERT: Phone calls needed to the Mayor's Office to demand that Mayor Reed keep his promise to hold a TOWN HALL MEETING before selecting a police chief.

On March 30, 2010, Reverend Mitzi Bickers arrived to the BLOCS press conference on behalf of Mayor Kasim Reed and declared that Mayor Reed would commit to holding a town hall meeting before selecting the next APD Chief of Police.  We mailed a letter to the mayor on April 9, 2010 to follow up on his promise and on April 20, 2010, Rev. Bickers called on behalf of the Reed Administration to tell us that THERE WILL BE NO TOWN HALL MEETING!

The mayor wants to hold a forum AFTER picking his chief.  That is not what he promised!

WE CANNOT ALLOW MAYOR REED TO MAKE A HABIT OF PLAYING POLITICS AND BREAKING PROMISES TO THE COMMUNITY THIS EARLY IN HIS TERM!   

Call the Mayor's office today to ask that Mayor Reed demonstrate integrity by giving the community an opportunity to tell him WHAT WE WANT IN A POLICE CHIEF by KEEPING HIS PROMISE AND ORGANIZING A TOWN HALL MEETING  BEFORE SELECTING A NEW POLICE CHIEF!

Please call the Mayor's office at 404-330-6100 to demand more from Mayor Reed!  Spread the word!

If you have other ideas or concerns, please feel free to send them to BLOCS at atlantablocs@gmail.com.

·         Hello, my name is ___________________ and I am calling to demand that Mayor Reed keep the promise made by his administration at the BLOCS press conference to hold a Town Hall Meeting with the top candidates for police chief.

·         BLOCS took Mayor Reed at his word but he has broken yet another promise to the community, without apology.

·         Even if the candidates can’t make it in person to a meeting, Mayor Reed needs to provide an open forum for the community to discuss his pending choice for Chief of Police BEFORE he makes his decision.

·         Mayor Reed has already insulted the search committee by adding two additional names to the three person slate they submitted to him.  The community DEMANDS opportunity to meet or at least discuss the people being considered for the position especially because two of the five candidates do not come recommended by the committee.

·         We need a new kind of police department.   The secrecy of the search process, unadvised addition of names, and sanctioned conduct of George Turner make us believe that Mayor Reed is not on the same page as those of us who put him in office.

·         Will Mayor Reed keep his promise to allow the public to meet and evaluate candidates?