Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | Opinion
PETITION TO REINSTATE ATLANTA POLICE SGT. SCOTT KREHER
Remember the old maxim, “Never judge politicians by what they say, judge them by what they do”? How strange it is that we apply exactly the opposite standard to a police sergeant.
Remember the old maxim, “Never judge politicians by what they say, judge them by what they do”?
How strange it is that we apply exactly the opposite standard to a police sergeant.
Police Sgt. Scott Kreher has served the citizens of Atlanta with honor for 17 years. Yet, when frustration over Mayor Shirley Franklin’s treatment of officers catastrophically injured in the line of duty got the better of Kreher at a City Council meeting on May 20 and he said the matter made him want to beat the mayor in the head with a baseball bat, he was judged solely on what he said in that few seconds, rather than on the basis of nearly two decades of devotion to the city. Mayor Franklin said she would file charges against him and she had him suspended from duty.
Franklin’s double standard is apparent when one looks at her behavior at the closing of Fire Station No. 7 on Whitehall Road last summer. The struggling area of refurbished neighborhoods and desperate pockets of poverty fought to hold onto fire protection after Mayor Franklin decided to terminate its only fire station. The residents turned out in force at the station’s closing ceremony on July 14, after fruitlessly voicing their unhappiness with Franklin’s decision. Fed up with her lack of responsiveness, some of them resorted to shouting at the apparently selectively deaf mayor. Franklin retorted in an angry and threatening manor: “Now you know what’s going to happen, these ladies and gentlemen have never seen the Philadelphia side of me; I’m going to come over there and have the conversation.”
No one said boo about the inappropriateness of this remark in the face of frightened residents worried over the safety of their homes and children. The wall of silence by the media—and I include myself in this indictment—was more of the same free pass the press has given Mayor Franklin for the past five years. She can apparently say anything without fear of retribution.
Worse yet, she can apparently do anything without fear of retribution. When her daughter Kai pled guilty to laundering money for one of the most violent drug kingpins in the history of Atlanta—Kai’s then-husband Tremayne Graham—and it came to light that such a dangerous thug had been hanging out socially with the mayor and spending time in her home, the response of the city’s press and citizens was, once again, that Mayor Franklin wasn’t so bad.
Similarly, when Franklin’s obsession with landing a federal post distracted her from the very serious business of running a major metropolitan city and the city slammed into huge deficits, no one said much.
When crime rose to levels of brazenness heretofore unseen in Atlanta and Franklin decided to cut the police force’s hours to balance the budget she had unbalanced with poor planning and wasteful programs, however, people started waking up. That was last December, and since then the citizens and the police have reached out to each other. There’s plenty of communication going on between the cops and the residents, so much so, in fact, that Mayor Franklin can no longer hide the things she has done to the police department.
Like the way that her administration has failed to pay the workers compensation it owes police officers who are paralyzed and brain-damaged as a result of injuries they sustained in the line of duty (their story was told in the Sunday Paper on May 17, in “Badges, Bullets and Broken Promises”). Last week, Franklin told Fox 5 that she couldn’t talk about the officers’ situation because she hadn’t been briefed on it.
I’m perplexed as to why the mayor wouldn’t be familiar with the officers’ situation when they have been writing to her about their problems getting the city to pay for their medication and wheelchair repair for the past two years. Even if someone else were answering her mail for her, why did the mayor still not know about the officers’ plight five days after SP ran the story and two days after Kreher said that thinking about how she’s treated the officers made him so mad he wanted to beat the mayor in the head? If someone said that about me, I believe I’d familiarize myself with the source of the frustration. Yet, Mayor Franklin hadn’t.
The City Council isn’t much better. Kyle Keyser, founder of Atlantans Together Against Crime, lugged a crate of petitions signed by 7,000 citizens demanding an end to police furloughs http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ATAC-Feb2009/index.html
to the same meeting where Sgt. Kreher made his now-infamous remark. What the news hasn’t told anyone is that it was Kreher who asked the council to please break with their format to allow Keyser to share with them what 7,000 citizens had to say. In most cities, such a huge number of signatures would generate some interest in elected officials. And it should generate that kind of interest in Atlanta, where the number represents about 10 percent of those who turned out to vote in 2005. But it didn’t.
Councilman Howard Shook informed Keyser that the meeting’s format didn’t allow for public comments and though a couple of members of council said they’d like to see the petitions, they said it kind of like sated people admiring a passing dessert tray.
Kreher himself is more responsive than any politician in the city. He’s attended citizen rallies against crime, invited the media, the council, and citizens on ride-alongs with the PD, and has always been available to answer questions. Atlanta desperately needs this man back on the job, and we need more cops like him.
TO ADD YOUR NAME TO THE PETITION TO REINSTATE SGT. SCOTT KREHER, PLEASE VISIT
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/reinstatekreher/index.html