Sunday, May 24, 2009
News, In this Issue..., Politics, Atlanta

Update on the mayoral race

The field is narrowing. Here’s where the candidates stand on public safety.

  BY PATRICK BRAY

Since we last spoke with them in March, some of the people in Atlanta’s mayoral race have dropped out, a few more have come on board, and some we just can't find. Here are the candidates' thoughts on crime and police.

JESSE SPIKES

    Jesse Spikes’ public safety plan has several components, which include police and fire protection, emergency preparedness, and emergency medical services.

    “As mayor, public safety will be issue No. 1,” says Spikes. “My approach is multi-pronged and designed to address root causes and the negative consequences of crime.”

    Spikes believes that poverty is a major contributor to crime and plans to address that as a major issue as well. He wants to implement programs designed to strengthen families, especially single parent households, encourage economic development and entrepreneurship, and establish a comprehensive mentoring program targeting at-risk black males.

     To fund his public safety plan, he wants a review of current operations of every department and agency, which would include current resources and an evaluation of areas with the highest increase of incidents. Based on the results, he wants to make necessary adjustments to resource allocation, eliminate ineffective or outdated programs, and redirect revenue. 

    “We must spend conservatively while seeking additional revenue outlets,” says Spikes.

    Spikes wants to seek additional funding from the justice department to enhance programs where federal resources are available and also collaborate with neighboring jurisdictions to seek ways to reduce cost where the same or similar services are provided.

    According to research cited by Spikes, an increase in police officers does lead to decreased crime in the following year.
 
    “To determine the number of officers that would best serve Atlanta, my administration will review studies and recommendations from public safety experts,” says Spikes. “While I will not pull a random number that may be unattainable given our current economic plight, I will make sure the citizens of Atlanta are safe.”

 MARY NORWOOD

    Mary Norwood has a 12-point plan that she would initiate if she were elected mayor. The first thing she wants to do is end the furloughs and repair the accounting situation at City Hall, which could then help fund public safety.

    “The situation with City Council is a shell game,” she says.

    Norwood does not believe that City Council should be run the way it is and wants to structure it after the half-dozen organizations she has worked for.

    “In all of those organizations, I have known where every penny was all the time,” says Norwood, and she did not have to look under any shells to find it.

    As a member of the City Council, she claims that while working on the city’s finances, it has been impossible to speculate what is going on within City Hall.

    “The financial situation has done nothing but deteriorate in the seven years I have been here,” she says.

    The financial situation has created funding problems for public safety, but Norwood sees other problems within the APD besides furloughs and the addition of more officers.

    “It’s not just officers,” says Norwood. “There is a litany of issues hampering public safety, but nothing that is that dramatic.”

    Norwood has several plans she would put in place. One of them is a court watch system to see who is serving their time and who is being released early from jail, and who the judges are who allow those early releases. Another one is to make greater use of surveillance cameras, which have been successful in Downtown and the business districts. She proposes trying them out in residential areas.

    “We’re not talking about Big Brother here,” she says, ensuring that no cameras will be pointed at anyone’s house. “We’re talking about working with residents for surveillance in neighborhoods. There is no reason to have citizens in the dark. Get everyone connected. Make use of technology.”

    As for leadership within the APD, Norwood intends to let Chief Pennington go.

     “We need new leadership in the department,” she says.

Lisa Borders

Lisa Borders had been in the race but dropped out when we last spoke with the others. Now she’s back. In a recent interview with radio station V-103, Borders referred to Frank Ski’s co-stars as her “crew” and informed them, “My mama taught me to give it to ’em straight, no chaser.” On her Web site, she lists the basic components of her five-year plan:

• Salaries and benefits that keep pace with similar positions in surrounding jurisdictions
• Purchasing and maintaining high quality equipment, vehicles and uniforms
• Limiting overtime to a reasonable amount so our employees can be rested and have a better quality of life with their families
• Hiring, training and promoting effective and efficient senior managers
• Providing career opportunities that encourage employees to stay in our system
• Establishing employee recruitment plans to keep a steady flow of well-qualified entry-level recruits representing the diversity of the city coming into our departments so we can maintain staffing at budgeted levels

KASIM REED

    State Senator and mayoral candidate Kasim Reed authored legislation earlier this year that would have instituted a 1-millage-point stream of revenue from Atlanta taxpayers earmarked specifically for public safety. It would have raised between $18 million and $20 million to help fund Atlanta’s police officers and firefighters.

    “That money would have been in a lockbox—nobody could touch it except public safety,” he says.
   
The measure would have allowed citizens to vote on its renewal after four years, so if it wasn’t working to their satisfaction, they could jettison it.

    “The whole idea was to provide some transparency and accountability regarding the public safety funding of the City of Atlanta,” Reed told The Sunday Paper’s Stephanie Ramage. “So the city could not shift resources away from public safety.”

    Reed believes Atlanta must continue to increase the size of its police force, and ensure that officers have the best training and equipment available. He intends to add at least 750 sworn officers to the APD, which he claims will cut down on the need for overtime and patrols that are simply stretched too thin. He also plans to work with the Atlanta Police Foundation and the officers themselves to determine how best to recruit and retain officers, and stop attrition.

HENRY RYCKELEY

    Mayoral candidate Henry Ryckeley, sometimes known as “Live Mad Dog,” has been spending his nights with the homeless as an advocate and street minister for years. As a result, he is very familiar with how dangerous Atlanta’s streets can be.

    Besides promoting personal safety, Ryckeley wants to provide pay increases for officers, recognizing that the police force is underpaid and understaffed. To fund it, he wants to cut some of the city’s spending on wasteful projects.

    He claims the city spent $720 million on a project to house the homeless that only provided 336 beds. He estimates that there are nearly 60,000 homeless people in Atlanta.

    “Don’t focus on the homeless, which has been the thing for the Atlanta police for a long time,” he says.

    Ryckeley intends to look for other ways to deal with Atlanta’s homeless problem, and have the police spend more time fighting crime. He claims that the police have spent too many resources going after panhandlers and homeless people in broad daylight.

    Ryckeley has gained popularity through a couple of video interviews posted on the Internet, including one in which he raps about Jesus and encourages people to care more for the homeless.

    “Atlanta used to be the city too busy to hate,” he says. “Now it has become the city too busy to care.”

RUFUS TERRILL

Local bar owner Rufus Terrill would provide more funding for public safety, not by raising taxes, but by cutting wasteful spending. One way he intends to do that is through eliminating the city’s contracts with private towing companies.

“Towing would still be by private companies, but done by an on-call basis,” says Terrill.

He wants towing administered by the APD, which would have possession of the towed vehicles. Towing fines would be paid to the city, and this, according to Terrill, would raise $11 million.

Terrill also wants to increase police officers’ pay and provide incentives to keep officers, which includes changes in the promotion system.

“You can only go as high as lieutenant,” says Terrill. “The next rank is major, but they are appointed.”

Terrill wants to initiate a point  system for promotions.

Another problem Terrill sees is with Atlanta’s revolving-door court system. He wants to initiate a judiciary report card that keeps track of judges and who they let out on parole. He wants to make this report card available to the public so citizens can know about the judges they’re voting for.

Terrill has gained a lot of media attention for building a robot that patrols the area around his bar. His patrons nicknamed it the “Bumbot.” As of press time, the robot had dead batteries and was unavailable for comment.

GLENN THOMAS

    Glenn Thomas, a former budget manager for the APD, believes that every mayor should have a look at the city charter and recognize one specific thing: “Public safety is the first responsibility in the city charter,” he says. “Priority-based budgeting requires funding public safety first.”

    Thomas believes $270 million of a $500 million dollar budget should go to public safety. His big concern is increasing the effectiveness of the spending.

    “Every officer costs $70,000 initially,” he says. “Additional training and resources push that cost upwards of $100,000 or more.”

    Thomas points out that Atlanta loses a lot of the money invested in police officers through attrition and wants to focus on retaining officers in Atlanta.

    Thomas believes that Atlanta is close to the appropriate police-to-population ratio.

    “However, Atlanta has a unique problem,” he explains. Atlanta’s day population is significantly higher than its night population, with an estimated 1.5 million people within the city limits, mostly in Downtown and midtown, during the day. Atlanta’s high-density daytime population is something Thomas believes needs to be considered in every public safety plan.

    Thomas does not want to quote numbers as to how large the police force needs to be.

    “Numbers sound good when addressing public safety,” he says. “But what we have now has served well.”

    Thomas likes to point to crime statistics from 2003 and 2004.

    “We had less officers then and we had less crime,” he says. “The economy was also good then.”

    Instead of quoting numbers, Thomas wants to improve the force that we have through incentives and ending furloughs.

    “We always want to build our force as strong as we can,” he says.

PETER BROWNLOWE

    Peter Brownlowe believes the crime situation in Atlanta is out of control and is only going to get worse unless the city addresses it now. He wants to put enforcing the law back into the hands of law enforcement, and a key part of his plan to do that would include getting rid of Atlanta’s revolving court system.
 
    “The same people I lock up, I see them coming out the next day,” says Brownlowe, who is an Atlanta police officer.

    Brownlowe believes that 2,000 officers is an efficient number for the Atlanta Police Department, but he says the department has not been able to retain enough officers to reach that number.

    “We’ve been trying to reach that number for years,” he says. Currently, the APD has around 1,600 officers. To get 400 more, Brownlowe wants to make the APD a more attractive workplace.

    “First of all, you have to take care of the officers. One way is by bringing back incentives to keep officers,” he says.
   

ROD MACK

    Rod Mack wants to put public trust back into the APD by ensuring that the police department does not violate anyone’s civil liberties while conducting searches and seizures.

    “What happened to the 92-year-old grandmother in southwest Atlanta brought tears to my eyes,” says Mack. “She was grandmother to all of us.”

    Mack plans to establish a citizen’s review board made up of “real citizens.”

    He also plans to implement more public interaction with teenagers in schools and senior citizens with a paid hotline, leading to the arrest of criminals even faster.
   
    Mack believes there are only two ways Atlanta can be financially strong again in order to pay for everything and not over tax its citizens. The first is through city-owned casinos.

    “More than $100 million leaves our city and state every year,” he says.

    Second, he plans to market and liquidate the airport to an investment group at the appraised fair market value. According to Mack, this would bring billions more dollars to Atlanta’s tax coffers.

     He also wants to put 1,000 to 2,000 more officers on the streets to protect businesses and communities.

    “I have talked to so many police officers about furloughs and low morale issues until I just couldn’t figure out why.” he says. “Now I know why. They have lives and families, too, that they rarely see.” SP