Council issues subpoenas in Kathryn Johnston, Pierre George shootings
June 15, 2009 at 2:28 pm by Thomas Wheatley in NewsThe Atlanta City Council has decided that Police Chief Richard Pennington must comply with an oversight committee’s request to release documents related to the police shootings of Kathryn Johnston and Pierre George.
According to an Atlanta City Council spokesman, the Committee on Council:
Issued a subpoena at the request of the Citizen Review Board to compel Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington to produce requested documents as well as the criminal investigation file regarding the police shooting of Kathryn Johnston.
Issued a subpoena at the request of the Citizen Review Board to compel Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington to produce requested documents as well as the criminal investigation file regarding the police shooting of Pierre George.
UPDATED: Cristina Beamud, executive director of the Atlanta Citizen Review Board, tells CL:
“On behalf of the board, we’re very pleased. And we thank the Committee on Council and, most importantly, Chair Felicia Moore for her support on this issue. The public still has a lot of questions about what went wrong, and what we can do to make sure [what happened], or something similar, doesn’t happen again. And we don’t think there have been enough answers if people are still asking those questions…It’s very difficult to give constructive criticism unless you know what caused it and how it can be prevented.”
June 15th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
This is a BIG item that has be sitting on the table for a while. We spent 250K setting up the CRB and it needs to be given the ability to operate.
Hopefully the Citizens and the Police can come together to come up with recommendations that will ease tensions on both sides.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Finally, the Citizen Review Board is allowed to look into these cases and do its job. Unless Franklin fights the subpoenas in her usual in-denial, info-controlling way. Not out of the woods yet, but at least Council found some courage at last.
Felicia to the rescue.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Can the Mayor block a subpoena from the Council? Wouldn’t that have to be an appeal to the Courts?
Not that I am basing that on anything it just seems the CRB makes a recommendation for the Council to execute a power it already has.
Meaning, doesn’t the Council have access to all of the Governments information?