Fresh Loaf

Michael Gidewon

“Midtown’s future hangs in the balance.”

So claims a letter by the Midtown Ponce Security Alliance that urges Mayor Shirley Franklin and the city’s License Review Board to deny a liquor license application by nightclub impressario Michael Gidewon.

As you’ll recall from our Sept. 7 cover story and other news coverage, the Gidewon family is seeking to open a pair of 10,000-square-foot clubs on Peachtree Street in the shadow of the Loews luxury hotel now under construction and catty-corner from the 1010 Midtown condo tower.

Joined by older brother Alex and three siblings, Gidewon has been the force behind the mega-clubs Vision, Compound and the Velvet Room.Many surrounding neighbors and business owners have loudly denounced the new clubs for weeks now, persuading the Midtown Neighbors’ Association and NPU-E to officially oppose them. The final showdown comes Tuesday, Oct. 6, before the License Review Board. If the LRB recommends denial and Franklin confirms that stance, then the Gidewon’s only recourse would be a lawsuit — which, I believe would be very difficult to win.

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Have you been wondering which city candidates were most likely to be anointed by powerful northside CEOs? Well, wonder no more, because the Buckhead Coalition has spoken — by putting a not-inconsiderable sum of money where its mouth is.

Like the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the Coalition doesn’t do direct endorsements. Unlike the Chamber’s questionnaire process, the Coalition makes its picks known with sizable campaign contributions through a PAC.

So here’s who got the cash:

• In Council races where an incumbent faces opposition, the Coalition gave the incumbent the $2,400 maximum contribution.
• In contested races without an incumbent, the $2,400 max went to Yolanda Adrean for District 8, Michael Bond for at-large Post 1 and Ceasar Mitchell for President. For reasons not made clear, the Coalition made no contributions in the races for District 6, District 11 and at-large Post 2.
• The Coalition split its donations in the mayor’s race, giving Mary Norwood $1,344 (56%), Kasim Reed $528 (22%), and Lisa Borders $528 (22%).

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With Mayor Shirley Franklin closing in on her final three months in office, community tributes celebrating her tenure have begun. The first is an event tonight launching the “Shirley Franklin Legacy Fund,” which boasts high-powered co-chairs in ex-Mayor Andy Young and Falcons owner Arthur Blank.

The minimum donation to attend tonight’s event is $100, with the money going to “support efforts to address homelessness” and to advance quality education, according to the invitation. The fund is being administered by the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta.

The invitation, which came from the “Friends of Shirley Franklin,” is extended to those who wish to “thank her for 8 years of making us proud,” which, you may recall, was Franklin’s campaign promise.

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Well, now we know that simply getting tax allocation district funding doesn’t guarantee a project’s success.

Renaissance Walk, a 161-unit condo complex located smack-dab in the Auburn Avenue historic district, went belly up last week after lenders rejected a restructuring plan.

The 27,000-square-foot development was one of seven projects in the Eastside TAD that was approved in 2005. The product of a partnership between the Integral Group and Big Bethel AME Church, Renaissance Walk cost $48.5 million to build and received $4 million in TAD funding.

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As the AJC reported this morning, city prosecutors and lawyers for the Atlanta Eagle were in Atlanta Municipal Court bright and early this morning to face off over a set of misdemeanor charges against eight of the gay bar’s employees and dancers stemming from a now-notorious Sept. 10 police raid.

Not much happened. A January trial date was set, but that’s unlikely to happen. Chances are, the case will be resolved before the Nov. 3 arraignment, when the city is scheduled to file formal charges.

There had been rumors that the city would simply dismiss all charges as a way to avoid prolonging the public-relations headache caused by the heavy-handed, commando-style raid. The fact that this didn’t happen suggests that police don’t want the added embarrassment of going away empty-handed, but instead are holding out for a plea bargain.

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It shouldn’t be shocking news to anybody, including her opponents, that Council President Lisa Borders has received the highest candidate evaluation score from the Committee for a Better Atlanta.

As a protege of uber-developer Tom Cousins, Borders is certainly the favorite of Atlanta business community. But the Metro Atlanta Chamber decided a while back to keep its favoritism at arm’s length by creating the CBA to rate candidates by how they score on a questionnaire and in a face-to-face interview.

Today those scores were released (PDF) and, no surprise, Borders came out on top, with a 95 percent. Frankly, the only real surprise was that state Sen. Kasim Reed scored so closely behind her, with a 93.

For the Council president’s race, Council members Ceasar Mitchell and Clair Muller tied with 92.

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Danielle Barbee, legal heroine

Yes, you read that right. The state Supreme Court today announced a unanimous verdict in favor of five Cheetah dancers who had challenged an Atlanta city ordinance that would’ve cost them their jobs because they were not yet 21.

Here’s the backstory: In late 2007, the city adopted a broadly worded ordinance that would’ve made bars, nightclubs and strip clubs off-limits to anyone under the age of 21. You may have assumed that was already the rule, but state law allows youngsters from 18-21 to work as exotic dancers, club DJs and even bartenders — they just can’t drink.

The city planned to deny an adult-entertainment license to anyone 21, a group that included 19-year-old Cheetah dancer Danielle Barbee and several of her co-workers, who were already dancing legally at the club. Their attorney, Alan Begner, was able to get a Fulton Superior Court judge to issue an injunction allowing the girls to keep dancing under the ordinances they’d already been issued, but the judge ruled against the young strippers.

In overturning the Fulton decision today, the Supremes ruled that the city cannot impose a minimum age for dancers that contravenes existing state law, Begner explains. Therefore, because Georgia allows 18-year-old strippers, Atlanta must follow suit.

I think that’s logic we can all agree with.

But there’s a twist! Begner says his initial reading of the Court’s ruling suggests that, not only can teens work in bars and nightclubs, but they can also patronize these establishments — although, of course, they can’t be served alcohol.

If this is so, it would re-open the door for 18-and-over nightclubs, a type of business outlawed by the city back in 2001.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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This is a case of some folks being too literal-minded.

Speaking at a Gwinnett Rotary Club meeting yesterday, former Gov. Roy Barnes, who’s running again for his old job, expressed exasperation with the sad state of our two-party political system, as quoted by the Gwinnett Daily Post:

“I’m fed up with both the Democrats and the Republicans,” he said. “I’d be a Bull Moose or a Whig if they still had a party.”

Now, anyone familiar with old Roy know that he’s at most a few shades away from being a Yellow Dog Democrat. So why would he say such a thing?

Because he’s a canny politician who knows that being a true-blue Democrat doesn’t help his chances of winning elections in red zones like Gwinnett, where he garnered barely one-third of the county’s votes in 2002 against the then-little-known Sonny Perdue. Distancing himself from his party, however subtly, is likely a smart move in many parts of Georgia and allows Barnes to tap into widespread frustration with partisan politics.

Well, apparently David Poythress doesn’t see it that way. Here’s what the former labor commissioner and Democratic gubernatorial candidate says in a press release with the heading “Barnes Says He Would Quit the Democratic Party If He Could“:

In a shocking statement reported in today’s Gwinnett Daily Post, Barnes declares that he would gladly quit our Party.…

Remember what the Whig Party stood for in the 1800’s?  They were against southern President Andrew Jackson and thought that Congress should have more power than the Presidency.  When the Whigs lost their national presence in the late 1800’s, their members switched to the Republican Party.

So in addition to Roy Barnes dissing the Democratic Party, he says he wishes he could be a member of the political party whose members flocked into the Republican Party.

Yes, now that you put it that way, I’m sure what Barnes meant to say is that he doesn’t support Andrew Jackson. What a hater!

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Protesters braved the rain last weekend to show City Hall their anger

Garrett McLendon’s dad was a cop, but the Cobb County man admits he’s looking at police in a little different light these days. Being force to lie facedown amid broken glass on a barroom floor for an hour while being taunted, insulted and threatened tends to have that effect on a guy.

McLendon was among the 62 patrons at Midtown’s Atlanta Eagle gay bar on Sept. 10, the night of a now-notorious commando-style raid by a dozen members of the police department’s Red Dog squad — which usually combats gang activity — and nine undercover members of the APD’s intelligence and organized crime unit.

“Nothing was ever explained to us by the officers,” McLendon recalls. “When I asked if I could move away from the broken glass, I was told, ‘Shut the fuck up or you’ll be handcuffed.’ The police were laughing and joking while we were lying there and at different times, I heard them say, ‘You people make me sick’ and ‘I hate fags.’ One of them said, ‘This is fun; we should do this every week.’”

In the days since then, McLendon has closely followed news coverage of the raid, read the police reports and listened to last week’s police news conference in which embattled Chief Richard Pennington seemed to half-defend, half-apologize for the incident. But like many metro Atlanta residents, he’s left with a number of nagging questions: Why did police feel they needed to take down the club with the kind of force usually reserved for busting meth labs? Why did officers seem to act so unprofessionally toward the Eagle’s customers, none of whom was arrested? And, was the whole thing really just about sex?

Continue reading “APD reels from harassment complaints following Eagle raid”

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Concerned about Atlanta’s precarious financial situation? Of course you are. But these days, concerned parties seem to fall into two camps: those who are worried about whether the city will have enough money to provide basic services and adequate public safety; and those who believe the city budget is managed by sleight-of-hand artists, knuckleheads and crooks.

Recently, the second camp has been getting all the press, thanks to Councilwoman Mary Norwood’s now-notorious reference to “Enron-type accounting” during a televised mayoral forum. As previously reported, both Mayor Franklin and Jim Glass, the city’s chief financial officer, offered public rebuttals to her comments.

But the still-indignant Glass felt it necessary to write a four-page letter to Council members explaining how the city’s formerly screwed-up accounting practices had been reformed since he came on board. If you have any curiousity about the state of the city’s financial controls, you’ll want to read the letter (PDF). I’m not guaranteering you’ll be convinced, but Glass describes the budget improvements in exhaustive detail.

However, the part of the letter that proves of greatest interest is the last bit, in which Glass asserts: “The city will not be able to expand spending in the next few years.” He seems to be speaking directly to Norwood and the other mayoral candidates when he writes:

… absent any new sources of revenue in the future, a proposal to increase any public-safety related spending (whether for more officers or higher pay) can only be accomplished through significant cuts in other areas of the City’s operation. As I stated repeatedly in budget presentations those areas have already been reduced by 30 percent over the last two years, and I just don’t see our ability to further reduce those operations.

In other words, the next time you hear candidates promise to hire more cops, ramp up code enforcement or re-open rec centers, ask them where the money will come from.

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This morning, state Sen. Kasim Reed launched a 30-second TV ad on local cable and network stations, a few days after Council President Lisa Borders began running her own ad.

Thus begins what political pundits typically describe as the real race — the moment when candidates introduce themselves to home-bound voters through the magic of television.

The Reed ad, titled “Making Atlanta Safe,” focuses on — what else? — public safety, claiming he “has a plan to hire more police officers”:

If I had a criticism, it might be that, throughout the spot, Kasim’s voice doesn’t come across as very energized (in contrast to the hyper Mary Norwood). But I’ve known the guy for a while and that’s just how he speaks.

Borders’ ad also deals with public safety, claiming that “no one is more committed to protecting our families from crime” and touting her endorsement by the police union:

If I had to take issue with the Borders ad, it would be the claim that “She made the tough choices.” As we all know, council presidents don’t vote, so I’m not entirely sure what that statement means.

Both Borders and Reed have a number of other videos, including supporter testimonials, on their YouTube pages. Borders’ is here and Reed’s is here.

Norwood, on the other hand, has only a few videos on her YouTube page and, so far, no TV ad.

UPDATED: Thanks to an observant reader for alerting us to the Jesse Spikes ad. If you turn the sound off, you can almost hear him saying, “Have you been injured on the job? Did your child choke on a small toy? Someone sell you some bad acid? I’m here to help!”

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Last night in north Atlanta, during what must now be the 83rd mayoral forum held so far, Council President Lisa Borders said a rather interesting thing: “Yes.”

This single-word statement came in response to a question of whether, as mayor, she’d roll back the 3-mill tax increase adopted by the city only a couple of months back. To those who’ve repeatedly heard Borders take credit for coordinating the passage of the tax hike by the City Council, it sounded like a remarkable — and unexplained — about-face.

Well, it’s unexplained no longer. Liz Flowers, Borders’ campaign spokeswoman, told me this morning that the candidate thought she was being asked if she’d favor a rollback after the city’s public-safety needs had been adequately funded.

“We’re not backing away from her original position” supporting the tax increase, Flowers said. “She misunderstood the way the question was framed.”

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You wouldn’t expect someone so pretty to be capable of such scurrilous behavior.

At this point, the former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential candidate is a footnote, an also-ran, but I can’t help reading these train-wreck stories about the fallout of his covered-up affair with a bat-shit-crazy New Age videographer.

On Saturday, the NYT ran an article that describes, in excruciating detail, Edwards’ continuing free-fall from grace:

A federal grand jury in nearby Raleigh is investigating whether any crimes were committed in connection with campaign laws in an effort to conceal his extramarital affair with a woman named Rielle Hunter.

At the same time, Mr. Edwards is moving toward an abrupt reversal in his public posture; associates said in interviews that he is considering declaring that he is the father of Ms. Hunter’s 19-month-old daughter, something that he once flatly asserted in a television interview was not possible.

Ouch. Other tidbits alleged in the article:

• Edwards talked a married campaign aide into claiming (unconvincingly, I might add) that he had fathered Hunter’s kid
• Edwards promised to marry Hunter in a rooftop ceremony — with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band — once his wife, Elizabeth, had died of cancer
• Edwards asked a wealthy donor if he could find a doctor who would falsify a DNA report

OK, I’m gonna need a shower if I continue. Read the rest yourself if you can stomach it.

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Over the years, local politicians have gotten their hands slapped or at least suffered embarrassment over seeking certain freebies.

You may recall mini-scandals over Emma Darnell and her fellow Fulton commissioners using county police cruisers as their personal car service; or Atlanta officials who have been known to use their clout to treat themselves to pricey sports tickets — sometimes re-selling the seats and pocketing the cash.

Well, this time the freebie being sought is parking and the freebie-seeker is longtime Councilman CT Martin. He’s proposed an ordinance to give Council members access cards allowing them to park for free at “city-owned or city-affiliated parking facilities.”

His reasoning is that “from time to time, members of the city Council are called upon to attend meetings and events at facilities which are owned or leased by the city or by an entity affiliated with the city.”

Now, if a Council member goes somewhere on official city business or simply representing his or her district — say, to a Buckhead Business Association breakfast or even a neighborhood fundraising event — I would expect his Council expense account to cover parking, admission fees and reasonably priced meals.

So why would Martin also need an all-access pass to “city-affiliated parking facilities?” That’s pretty broad language. For starters, it would include Turner Field, Philips Arena and the Civic Center. But what about the parking deck at Emory Crawford Long Hospital, where the city recently opened a police mini-precinct — does that count as “city-affiliated?”

OK, parking isn’t typically as valuable a commodity as a World Series tickets, but if I were a city Council member, I’d think twice about voting to give myself anything that even resembles a new perk so close to elections.

For the record, Martin has no opponent.

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Norwood: Mum's the word

With about six weeks to go in the mayor’s race, City Council President Lisa Borders has announced that her campaign has opened two satellite offices: one in the Studioplex loft complex in the Old Fourth Ward, the other on MLK Drive across the street from the Atlanta University Center.

The signal from the choice of both locations is that she’s focused on central Atlanta, but the second site, in particular, is clearly intended to indicate Borders’ concern for public safety on the AUC campus, which had been questioned recently.

But — and here’s the real point behind my posting — the Borders e-mail got me to thinking: Scarcely a day goes by when I don’t get some kind of press release, however trivial, from the Borders or Kasim Reed campaign. Yesterday, the Reed folks sent out an invitation to a fundraising luncheon next week.

By contrast, I rarely ever hear a peep out of Mary Norwood’s campaign. I just did an e-mail search and came up with four messages over the past five weeks. And I’m not the only one; an AJC reporter who covers intown politics tells me he can’t remember the last e-mail he’s gotten from Norwood’s folks.

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Shoppers, there's a blue light special on Buckhead…

Over its  20-year history, the Buckhead Coalition has advocated for earlier bar closings, weighed in on road projects and published a coffee-table book touting its namesake neighborhood.

But tomorrow, the Coalition will do something seemingly out of character for an organization of its rarefied influence and prestige. Typically, the group is content to promote Buckhead as a luxury brand, but on Saturday, a full-page ad will run in the Wall Street Journal offering a piece of Buckhead at bargain-basement prices.

Sam Massell, the Coalition’s president and a former Atlanta mayor, says the move was deemed necessary because Buckhead — which is on the tail end of a building boom — will soon have more than 2 million square feet of vacant office space, 1,000 unoccupied condos and 600,000 square feet of retail space to fill. Prices are now at an historic low.

“Even though we’re a luxury market, we’ve been affected by the economy,” he explains. “The ad will let folks know we’ve got a surplus of inventory, so make us an offer, don’t be shy.”

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This is not a major news flash, but in the interest of fairness, it seems that if we’re going to report on the city’s mistakes, we should be willing to do a followup when the city corrects a mistake — or in this case, apparently proves it hadn’t made a mistake after all.

Last month, Jim Glass, Atlanta’s chief financial officer, acknowledged to reporters that the city had been forced to pay a $81,000 penalty because it had missed a payment deadline to a vendor. Glass called the slip-up a “miscommunication” on the part of a city employee, who, he said, had been appropriately reprimanded, but not fired.

Within minutes, Councilwoman Mary Norwood had piled on with her own press release:

“$80,000 isn’t a ‘miscommunication.’ It’s a new Police Officer on the beat protecting your family and a raise for experienced officers so they stay in Atlanta instead of going out to the suburbs.”

Norwood finished by asserting she would bring “better management and accountability” after she’s elected mayor.

Well, yesterday Glass had some good news for Mayor Franklin and the Council. Apparently, he’d been able to produce enough documentation to convince the vendor that the error really was the result of miscommunication and not completely the city’s fault. The $81,000 has been refunded.

What do you suppose Norwood will say about this? So far, not a peep and I’m guessing it’ll remain that way. Her campaign platform seems to be, “Elect me because the city’s Finance Department sucks.” Why change that now?

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In a move that represents an astounding gift to Lisa Borders’ mayoral opponents, a group calling itself the Coalition of Concerned Clark Atlanta University Students has petitioned for the Council president’s removal from the school’s board of trustees.

The open letter, which was e-mailed to press this morning, effectively blames her for not doing enough to protect students there in the wake of the Sept. 3 shooting death of Spelman student Jasmine Lynn, 19, who was hit in the chest by a stray bullet while walking across campus.

Why didn’t I post something about the letter this morning? Because I didn’t know who’d sent it or if the “coalition” represented a legitimate student interest group. I sent an e-mail asking for contact information, but received no reply.

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Do you have plenty of time on your hands and no life to speak of? Then you’ll want to turn out for a special night of “Mayoral Video and Popcorn,” where you can watch four hours(!) of candidate forums while you drink yourself into a stupor.

You may recall that the enterprising folks with the Campaign for Atlanta, an ad hoc activist group dedicated to helping voters make an informed choice for mayor, shot hours worth of forum footage featuring the four leading candidates over two weekends in July and August. Well, they edited the video down and posted it to their website, but now it seems they’ve decided they could reach more people if they held screenings in neighborhood venues across town.

The first such event is tonight at the Vino Libro wine bar in the Glenwood Park subdivision of Grant Park off I-20. The show runs from 6-10 p.m. — that’s four hours, people! Gone With the Wind wasn’t that long and you got to see the burning of Atlanta.

While the Campaign’s ambitious spirit of community service must be applauded, I question whether many people have either the interest or the gluteal fortitude to make it though four solid hours of watching candidate interviews — unless, that is, they are well lubricated with another kind of spirit.

I guess that’s why they picked a wine bar. Drive safely, folks.

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Mary Norwood

What took her so long?

Since January, Councilwoman Mary Norwood has campaigned for mayor in large part by dissing Shirley. Not directly, mind you. I have yet to hear her attack Franklin by name or enumerate her failings. But Norwood has pursued a passive-aggressive smear against City Hall and, by implication, the mayor. Shirley has mostly sat by silently, but this week she snapped.

It began the morning after the murder of Standard bartender John Henderson, when Norwood appeared at the photo-op vigil to lay the blame for the robbery/shooting at the mayor’s feet for having furloughed police officers.

“What we have seen is cuts [in police hours] made without consultation and collaboration,” she declared. But that wasn’t exactly true; Franklin had previously argued that the city didn’t have enough money to keep all employees at full force without a tax increase. Norwood opposed the increase, but never suggested an alternative.

Throughout the mayor’s race, Norwood has criticized the city’s bookkeeping. Fair enough; city finances famously ran aground in early ‘08 because of lousy accounting practices that had persisted for decades. But, again, Norwood hasn’t proposed any solutions; instead, she simply dismisses the city’s budget as impenetrable, inscrutable, unknowable. As I’ve said before, boasting that you can’t make heads or tails of the city’s finances wouldn’t seem to be the smartest campaign strategy.

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Last night was the couch-sitting public’s first window onto the Atlanta mayor’s race, courtesy of a semi-televised forum by WSB-TV. I say “semi-” because the station inexplicably showed only the first half-hour of a 90-minute event. Apparently, it was deemed more important that viewers be able to see “America’s Funniest Home Videos” than their next mayor.

Anyway, even those who didn’t bother to switch over to radio or the Interwebs to catch the final hour didn’t miss a great deal. No clear winners or losers emerged, but the candidates’ relative strengths and weaknesses do tend to become more visible the longer you see them in action.

Fortunately, last night’s forum was sponsored by the Atlanta Police Foundation, a law-and-order support organization, so the candidates didn’t waste time pandering to special-interest groups, as has been the custom at several previous forums. Instead, they got right down to the first order of business: bashing Chief Richard Pennington.

It usually goes without saying that every new mayor brings in his or her hand-picked police chief, but it didn’t go unsaid last night. Everybody, most conspicuously Council President Lisa Borders, was sticking the boot in Pennington’s ribs, claiming how they would hire a top cop who’s responsive, visible, accountable and doesn’t fancy himself too good to mingle with common beat cops — unlike you-know-who.

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Number of new coal-fired power plants proposed nationally since 2000: 200

Number of proposed coal-fired power plants canceled or postponed from 2007 to 2008: 83

Years since a new coal-fired power plant was built in Georgia: 20

Rank of Georgia Power’s Plant Scherer among nation’s dirtiest coal-fired plants: 1

Estimated number of new Georgia jobs to be created by 2020 thanks to a federal clean-energy bill: 13,300

Estimated annual savings for the average Georgia family under the clean-energy bill, in dollars: 340

Estimated annual CO2 reduction in Georgia under the clean-energy bill by 2020, in tons: 12 million

Percentage of nation’s total energy consumed by Southern states: 44

Percentage of total national population represented by Southern states: 37

Sources: American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, Earth Policy Institute, Georgia Tech, Environmental Integrity Project

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Newt's fave

OK, this item from our sister rag, the Washington City Paper, involving Georgia’s own Newt Gingrich is the weirdest thing I’ve seen all day.

Seems that Newt’s catchily named PAC, American Solutions for Winning the Future (better known to millions as ASWF), named as its “Entrepreneur of the Year” a California-based gonzo pornographer whose video titles include Anal Devastation, Interracial Booty Patrol, Double Penetration Tryouts and Monster Cock Junkies, Vol. 5.

Allison Vivas, who heads up Pink Visual, received a letter this week congratulating her on behalf of “Newt’s Business Defense and Advisory Council,” which had selected her for the honor in “recognition of the risks you take to create jobs and stimulate the economy.”

Included was a personal invitation:

“Newt would like to arrange a private dinner with you at the historic Capitol Hill Club on the evening of October 7, 2009 in Washington. You’ll dine privately with Newt at this exclusive venue and he’ll take the occasion to present you with your well deserved award and have your photo taken together.”

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Hambrick

Atlanta police have charged 18-year-old Terrance Donell Hambrick with last month’s robbery and shooting of Kenneth Hagen in Kirkwood.

Hagen, 55, was mowing his yard on Ridgedale Road when he allegedly was approached by the teen suspect, who asked for money and then shot Hagen three times in the torso. Hagan was taken to Grady Hospital, where he remained in critical condition for several days.

The crime was so random and pointless that community activists quickly organized an anti-crime rally in a nearby park, for which hundreds of people showed up to voice their outrage.

According to police, Hambrick was arrested last week for probation violation and has been in the DeKalb County jail since then. In the meantime, someone phoned in a tip to the Crime Stoppers tip line, leading the APD yesterday to charge Hambrick with aggravated battery, aggravated assault, criminal attempt to commit armed robbery, and theft by receiving a stolen car.

Suffice it to say, the kid’s in a shitload of trouble.

Here’s the final word from our friends at the APD:

The APD is appreciative of all the community support throughout this investigation. Although this case is not yet closed we are happy that we have been able to offer the family and the Kirkwood Community some closure in this case.

(Photo courtesy DeKalb Sheriff)

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Don’t read this expecting an answer because I don’t know. Obviously, websites and social networking have assumed a prominent position in politics since Howard Dean first used the Internets to build a coalition of Deaniacs and Daily Kos became a must-read blog for millions.

Speaking as a reporter, I find myself questioning a candidate’s commitment if he can’t be bothered to put up a website. But does Web savvy portend a winning campaign?

Take a look at the three leading candidates for Atlanta mayor. Recent polls say Mary Norwood is leading the pack, followed fairly closely by Lisa Borders, with Kasim Reed trailing. But when it comes to attracting supporters on Facebook, Reed is far and away the front-runner. He’s got 4,502 Facebook supporters, compared with 2,886 for Borders and a mere 881 for Norwood.

According to Emory University associate professor Michael Leo Owens, as quoted in the AJC, “This will be the Facebook election.” Does that mean Borders and Norwood should pack it in?

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