Fresh Loaf

The FBI’s annual compendium of national crime stats shows a decrease in every major category of crime nationwide.

Atlanta, on the other hand, registered an overall increase in crime of 11 percent, driven by double-digit increases in the number of robberies, burglaries, auto thefts and murders.

Neither the mayor’s office nor Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington’s office were willing to comment, but APD Sgt. Scott Kreher, president of Atlanta’s police union, blames part of the increase on sagging morale among the rank-and-file. It’s the result, Kreher says, of the city’s failure to adequately fund the department as well as what he describes as Pennington’s absentee leadership. Kreher says he hopes the mayor will replace Pennington with someone else from within the department.

City Council President Lisa Borders — who is also a candidate for mayor — calls the increase in crime “unacceptable” and says it must be addressed by city leaders immediately. “At this pace, increased crime threatens to reverse many, if not all of the gains the city has made over the past decade,” she says.

(Chart by Erin Washburn)

(NOTE: The print edition of Creative Loafing includes a mislabeled version of the chart shown above. I apologize for the error.)

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Good news for burglar alarm and pepper spray salesmen. Bad news for the rest of us.

Crime was up 11% city wide in 2007, according to statistics recently posted on the Atlanta Police Department web site.

Last year there were 129 homicides in Atlanta, up from 110 in 2006 and just 89 in 2005. The biggest increases were in robberies, up 21%, and burglaries, up 20%.

Each of the city’s six police zones experienced overall crime increases with Zone 1 (west Atlanta), Zone 4 (southwest Atlanta) and Zone 6 (east Atlanta), experiencing the highest increases.

At-large council member Ceasar Mitchell says, outside of worries about the economy, increased crime is the issue he hears about most often from constituents.

Both Mitchell and at-large council member Mary Norwood blame police recruitment and retention problems for part of the increase, as well as the de-activation of the city’s narcotics squad for much of 2007 – a move that followed the killing of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston during a botched November 2006 drug raid. However, both stop short of criticizing Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington or his leadership.

District 12 Council Member Joyce Sheperd, who represents several Southwest Atlanta neighborhoods in the Zone 4 police district, is more direct.

“He’s not a community-oriented police chief. He’s more of a stats man,” Sheperd says.

“Even though we may not be happy with him, trying to look at someone else at this point is not practical,” she says, blaming the city’s budget crisis and what she calls the city’s “strong-mayor/weak-council” structure, which means that any replacement might not survive in the post past the end of Mayor Franklin’s term in January 2010.

“Who could we get to come to Atlanta at this point?” Sheperd asks.

Charles Pippin, a resident of Southwest Atlanta’s Capitol View neighborhood (in Sheperd’s district), complains the city’s failure to increase the force size has left his neighborhood under-patrolled. Pippin and a group of neighbors formed a group called Capitol View Security Alliance last year. With membership dues, the group pays off-duty Atlanta police officers to patrol the neighborhood’s streets.

“Why can’t the city hire more officers?” Pippin says. “They’ll say it’s money, but if you get people feeling secure about these neighborhoods, more people will move in and your tax base will increase.”

Neither the mayor’s office nor the police department were available for comment.

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If you’re wondering why Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington wasn’t standing next to Mayor Shirley Franklin and Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran at Saturday’s post-tornado city news conference, it’s because he’s on vacation.

According to APD’s public affairs office, Pennington is out of the country and will not be cutting his vacation short to lead the department’s post-tornado operations.

You may recall, Pennington was also out of town when Atlanta Police shot, killed, and attempted to cover-up the killing of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston during a botched 2006 drug raid.

At the time, Pennington said he was unable to book a flight back to Atlanta on any of the at least 58 non-stop daily flights from New York.

Question: If it’s not actually necessary to have a police chief on-duty during times of crisis, why does the city pay him?

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From Sunday’s AJC:

Police target drug-infested areas in crime sweep

Don’t they do that every day? I was under the impression it was their job.

I don’t know. Maybe they don’t do it every day. Maybe focused efforts on crime-ridden areas are so infrequent that they’re newsworthy.

If that’s the case, shouldn’t the infrequency be the news?

A story like, “Police rarely concentrate on crime-infested areas” or “Police leave drug-infested areas alone, except during PR campaigns.”

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MAYOR FRANKLIN AND CHIEF PENNINGTON AT PUBLIC SAFETY MEETING SATURDAY: “Omigod, ‘Reno 911!’ last night was a trip!”

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

It was supposed to be Mayor Shirley Franklin’s launch of a high-spirited public relations campaign on behalf of her under-fire police chief, Richard Pennington. But Saturday’s community forum at the Georgia Power HQ auditorium was decidedly ho-hum.

Citizens wanted to know why some police districts were huge and under-staffed; others wanted to know why cops from their district were temporarily assigned to the overly large districts. The mayor and chief offered no insights as to why a crime wave is sweeping the city, and Pennington shouldered no responsibility for the department’s management and morale problems.

Franklin said it was hard to recruit officers, and touted four years of raises she’s given to cops. Police union leader Scott Kreher said after the meeting that until this year those were only cost of living increases, and that officers’ “step increases” – the way police financially advance during their careers — have been frozen. However, the city in June did give the cops a 3.5 percent increase plus a 2 percent cost of living raise. Even Kreher in a note to his officers conceded this was one of the biggest increases in recent history.

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I closed out a June 27 cover story on the problems facing Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington by predicting (based on City Hall sources) that Mayor Shirley Franklin would ramp up a public relations campaign in August for the top cop. The mayor’s spokesman refused to say “yes” or “no” to my questions about the campaign. I turned out to be on target. Franklin and Pennington are kicking off an image-polishing campaign with a town hall meeting Aug. 11 at 8:30 a.m. at the Georgia Power corporate HQ auditorium, 241 Ralph McGill Boulevard.

The mayor has steadfastly defended Pennington amid disclosures of sinking morale among the police, charges of cronyism and favoritism — and, following the Nov. 21 killing of a 92-year-old woman by detectives, allegations by the U.S. attorney’s office that a “culture of misconduct” exists in the APD. Franklin has based her support of Pennington on crime statistics that trended downward during the first years of her tenure. Now, however, the number of crimes are heading up, and many citizens feel we’re in the midst of a crime wave.

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According to the FBI, murder was up 22 percent in Atlanta last year.

So, um, Mayor Franklin, can you explain to us again why it’s a good idea to keep Chief Pennington around?

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Two months ago, Atlanta City Council repealed a broad disorderly conduct charge that ignited controversy because it appeared to allow police to arrest a person simply for hanging out. All a person had to do was be in what an officer designated as a “known drug area.” The offense, known as “DC-6,” was last charged on April 2, according to police records.

Before it was repealed, DC-6 was the most frequent charge cited by Atlanta police. As of Dec. 18, 7,551 arrests – about 22 a day – had been made in 2006, outpacing both criminal trespass and drinking in public.

CL checked back to see how things have changed since the law was taken off the books. According to preliminary arrest records from April 3 to May 14, first-offender possession has taken the place of DC-6, totaling 423 arrests – about 10 a day. That’s followed by criminal trespass at 408 and possession at 365.

When DC-6 was repealed, Sgt. Scott Kreher, head of the local International Brotherhood of Police Officers, told CL: “As far as affecting arrest numbers, [the repeal of DC-6] would be huge.”

He’s absolutely right. The preliminary numbers show that police are making about half as many arrests since DC-6 was repealed.

That might not bode well for rank-and-file officers who say police Chief Richard Pennington has put a quota system in place to help drive arrest statistics.

This might be the beginning of a change in Pennington’s numbers game.

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Among the personnel changes announced May 22 by Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington was a very curious assignment. While the media focused on the wholesale restaffing of the narcotics squad, the officer appointed by Pennington to oversee what’s commonly called “internal affairs” isn’t winning the hearts and minds of many rank-and-file cops.

And it’s not because they fear Maj. C.J. Davis will become a bulldog at enforcing ethics, conduct codes and the like as the new head of the Office of Professional Standards. Rather, cops see Davis as a prime example of the cronyism in the police department — cronyism that deters integrity.

Davis, for example, was the major whose previous Special Enforcement Section portfolio included the narcotics unit. She was up the food chain from the on-the-street narcs, but if the buck stops somewhere, her desk is a prime candidate. However, Pennington’s style is to protect his inner circle and blame cops on the street.

Pennington didn’t mention Davis’ role in overseeing that badly corrupted narcotics unit — perhaps because it would have been one helluva reason NOT to make Davis the head of internal affairs.

(more…)

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Late Tuesday, Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington announced that the entire narcotics unit will be replaced with new officers. In addition, Pennington said about 140 personnel changes will go into effect May 29.

The changes come after months of department scrutiny, which began after the shooting death of an elderly woman in November.

Initially, 14 new investigators will make up the narcotics unit. They will train for two weeks on how to obtain warrants, gather information from informants and conduct drug searches before hitting the streets. “These officers were handpicked and they’re of the highest integrity,” Pennington said.

Lt. William Trivelpiece will become the new narcotics unit head and the unit will increase to 30 officers by the year’s end.

In addition to narcotics unit changes, Maj. Welcome Harris has been moved from heading up the Office of Professional Standards, which reviews citizen complaints of, among other things, excessive force and maltreatment. CL reported last week that the office has one of the lowest rates in the nation when it comes to sustaining citizen complaints.

When asked about the changes, Pennington said he’s moving many of the commanders around so they can learn more about law enforcement. “It has to do with career development,” Pennington said. “It has to do with making sure that our leaders get experience in other areas of law enforcement.”

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