The forum came together as a result of a collaboration between openly gay mayoral candidate Kyle Keyser and LGBT community liaison Officer Dani Lee Harris, with help from Atlanta City Council Post 1 at-large candidate Adam Brackman. The forum, which is free and open to the public, starts at at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 5, at Virginia-Highland Church. It’s co-sponsored by grassroots group Atlantans Together Against Crime, of which Keyser is a founder.
3. Perception of Crime watch (According to the mayor and police chief, Atlanta isn’t experiencing a crime wave — it’s experiencing a perception of crime wave. Have you been a victim of a perception of crime? If so, please fill out this form.)
Before he made his unfortunate outburst last week at City Hall, Sgt. Scott Kreher was prepared to deliver the Atlanta Police Union’s budget suggestions. His talking points, which bulletpoint the various problems wrong with the Atlanta Police Department’s management, can be viewed here. They’re also pasted after the jump.
Also, a group of residents have started a petition to reinstate Kreher. After he apologized for his comments, the APD placed the 17-year veteran on paid leave pending a psychological evaluation.
From the petition’s intro:
The undersigned citizens of Atlanta want Sgt. Scott Kreher back on the job, with his pay and benefits fully restored and no adverse impact to his status and standing in the Atlanta Police Department. These citizens want Mayor Franklin to accept Sgt. Kreher’s apology and to meet with the above-described injured officers, or to make sure their medical costs are covered in a timely and efficient fashion as described by the city’s workers compensation policy.
As of this posting, the petition had received more than 65 signatures.
AJC Political Insider Jim Galloway posted a video this morning I suspect Mayor Shirley Franklin doesn’t want you to watch.
The video shows five men and women severely wounded while on duty as Atlanta police officers. Each claims the city is denying them medical benefits they need, and to which they are entitled.
Why do I assume Mayor Franklin doesn’t want you to watch it?
Simple.
Because she’s spent the last week dodging questions about the video’s subject matter.
During the same week, however, Franklin has somehow found the time to launch an administrative, legal and public relations assault against APD union leader Sgt. Scott Kreher, the man who presented the video the city council.
Admittedly, Kreher made himself an easy target.
While speaking to city council last week about Atlanta’s alleged poor treatment of police officers severely wounded while on duty, Kreher said he’s so frustrated with Mayor Franklin’s intransigence that he feels like hitting her on the head with a baseball bat.
It was an ugly figure of speech for which Kreher apologized. But Franklin won’t move on.
She has evidently decided to use Kreher’s slip-up to once-and-for-all silence Kreher; one of her most persistent and (until last week) effective critics.
First, Franklin told Fox 5 she interprets Kreher’s statement as a literal physical threat meant to intimidate her and her family, even though it clearly an ugly metaphor for extreme frustration. Franklin says she wants a local, state and, FEDERAL investigation into Kreher’s comment.
Strange. When Atlanta residents express their fear of actual crimes, the mayor mocks them with cherry-picked stats. Hurt Franklin’s feelings, however, and she’ll summon federal help.
But wait. There’s more.
On Saturday, Franklin’s APD toady Chief Richard Pennington suspended Kreher from active-duty pending a psychological examination. Using a mental health bureaucracy and the stigma of mental illness to destroy a political opponent is a time-honored political tactic — in Russia.
Why is Franklin bending over backward to destroy Kreher? My guess is that she’s desperately hoping you won’t pay attention to his message.
So watch the video.
And if you still feel like blaming someone for drawing attention away from the important issue of benefits for wounded cops, go ahead and blame Kreher or Franklin if you’d like.
But remember, Kreher distracted us by accident. Franklin is doing it on purpose.
You can spend all day wagging your finger at Atlanta Police Union chief Sgt. Scott Kreher for his inappropriate comment last week. You know, the one he said at City Hall about wanting to hit Mayor Shirley Franklin in the head with a baseball bat?
You can debate whether Kreher’s frustration over delayed compensation claims to five injured Atlanta police officers forgives such an outburst by a 17-year veteran of the force.
But to do all that does nothing to address the problem that Kreher says has festered in City Hall, one that’s reportedly led to back-and-forth legal challenges and injured officers allegedly being stonewalled for medical treatment.
What this issue needs is a little bit of sunlight. Let’s take a quick look at the contracts the city’s signed — and re-signed — with NovaPro Risk Solutions, the San Diego-based company that’s handled employees’ compensation claims since 2004, back when it was known as Ward North America Inc.
Just so, you know, we’re up to speed when this issue comes back up for discussion.
Sgt. Scott Kreher, one of Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin’s most persistent and effective critics, stepped in a big pile of poop this week when he told the city council he’s so frustrated with Franklin’s unresponsiveness that he’d like to hit her in the head with the baseball bat.
Given the context of the original statement and the wording of Kreher’s quick apology, it was clearly an ugly metaphor. It stretches credulity to say Kreher’s comment was a threat.
“I think it’s intended to intimidate me, my family and city officials. I think it’s very dangerous language and when someone says they want to take a bat and hit you in the head, from my experience, they want to kill you,” said Mayor Franklin.
The mayor apparently had nothing to say about the source of Kreher’s frustration, her administration’s poor treatment of wounded police officers.
And that’s why Kreher’s comment was so infuriating. He handed Franklin a stack of victim cards. Now she’s playing them.
A couple weeks ago, I said Mayor Shirley Franklin owes an apology to Atlanta Police Department Sergeant and union chief Scott Kreher for some nasty and factually incorrect comments she made about him.
Well, yesterday Kreher told the city council he gets so frustrated with Franklin sometimes he wants to beat her head with a baseball bat.
Grayson Daughters spoke with Atlanta Police Union President Scott Kreher at the most recent Atlantans Together Against Crime rally in Midtown. Topics included how the organization will endorse a candidate in the Atlanta mayor’s race, what role the community plays in fighting crime, and what’s needed to end police furloughs.
In March, the Atlanta City Council unanimously passed a resolution urging Mayor Shirley Franklin to introduce a budget that ended police and firefighter furloughs. Last week, the mayor granted its request. Council is expected to vote on the budget in June.
MAYOR SHIRLEY FRANKLIN OWES APD SGT. AND POLICE UNION LEADER SCOTT KREHER AN APOLOGY: He's waiting. (Photo by Joeff Davis)
Shirley Franklin owes Atlanta police union head Sgt. Scott Kreher a public apology.
Speaking at the Atlanta Press Club in January, Mayor Franklin announced her intention to grow the Atlanta Police Department from 1,633 officers to 2,000 officers by the end of 2009.
In October 2007, the city claimed to have 1,833 police officers. By January, the force was down to just 1,633 officers. And the city’s police union says the police force’s attrition rate is accelerating.
If Mayor Franklin couldn’t grow the force to 2,000 officers during her first seven years in office, it was implausible and laughable of her to suggest she might pull it off in her final year.
The Mayor’s suggestion was so laughably implausible, in fact, Atlanta police union chief Sgt. Scott Kreher laughed and called it implausible when the AJC asked him what he thought.
Kreher’s laughter so irritated the notoriously thin-skinned Mayor, she published a bizarre open letter calling his comments “divisive.” Furthermore, she suggested his criticism could undermine efforts to rally the city residents behind growing the police force — a slimy, roundabout way of insinuating Kreher’s attitude is a threat to public safety.
RATTLED: Little Five Points resident Kyle Keyser says his Dec. 17 mugging reflects how brazen Atlanta crime has become.
On Dec. 17, local video producer and blogger Kyle Keyser stopped at the Pizza Hut on North Avenue to pick up a late dinner for his roommate’s boss. Five men stood outside the pizza joint. One asked Keyser if he’d buy him some food. Keyser, sympathetic to the man’s hunger, said sure.
But the restaurant was closed, and as Keyser returned to his car, the five men surrounded him and pushed him against a nearby vehicle. One shoved a gun to his neck. They demanded money. Keyser said he didn’t have any but handed over his ATM card.
The men took Keyser’s cell phone and wallet and ordered him to lie on the ground. One suspect, pistol in hand, took aim.
“I’m gonna shoot him,” Keyser recalls the suspect saying. “I’m gonna shoot this motherfucker.”
“Don’t shoot him,” pleaded the guy who Keyser had offered to buy food.
“Naw,” the gunman said, “I’m gonna shoot him in the leg.”
Keyser, face down on the pavement, braced himself for a bullet. Instead, he saw five pairs of sneakers walk off. He sensed he had an exit, jumped in his car, and sped toward Midtown to call the police. He says bank receipts show the suspects purchased food with his card at a gas station a block away.
“OK, people get mugged and asked for money,” says Keyser, whose house has been broken into twice. “There’s a certain amount of crime that you associate with living in the city. It’s not forgivable, but it’s understood. You know it’s going to happen. What concerns me now is the spike in violent crime.”
