The death of a 7-year-old girl with gunshots has spawned an alliance between police, politicians and companies that are increasing links to establish a private security force to complement the Atlanta Police Department.
The $ 1.62 million plan will address crime in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood.
City council members Howard Shook, JP Matzigkeit and Matt Westmoreland plan to allocate $ 125,000 of their municipal funds to the Buckhead Security Plan, a proposal for a private police force in the commercial district.
The Atlanta Police Foundation, the Atlanta Police Department and even members of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ administration, along with other community groups, supported the plan.
Kennedie Maxie, 7, was hit by a stray bullet that passed a car in which she was a passenger on December 21, after finishing Christmas shopping with her mother and aunt. Maxie was in critical condition before succumbing to his injuries on Saturday.
Maxie’s death was the 155th homicide this year in the city, compared with 99 in 2019. The homicide occurred after several other recent acts of violence, prompting public protests that city officials are not acting hard enough to contain the crime, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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The new plan provides for a broader network of security cameras and license plate readers in the popular shopping district, along with crackdowns on drag racing and “party houses”. In addition to putting more private officers on the streets, it would review existing policies and procedures for change.
The force would operate as “a coordinated security patrol made up of extra officers from the Atlanta Police Department, the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, the Georgia State Patrol and private security companies in the commercial and residential areas of Buckhead.”
The Buckhead Coalition and the Atlanta Police Foundation are asking for private donations for the measure.
Council members berated the mayor in particular for her way of dealing with the increase in crime.
“It will take a long time to reverse that. But here, in descending order, are the three things we need to start with: 1). Leadership; 2). Some leadership; 3). Any leadership,” Shook said in a statement after his death. Maxie.
“I don’t want to hear the word ‘increase’. Stop minimizing our concerns by saying that ‘crime is on the rise everywhere’, “says Shook’s statement. Bottoms used similar language when discussing crimes at recent press conferences.
“Save us the lie that the steady flow of our officers is not as bad as it is,” continued Shook’s statement. “And, please, not another press conference entirely devoid of action steps to change the game.”
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“We would like to see more focus from the administration, and indeed the mayor, on taking a leadership role,” said Matzigkeit. “She did not focus as much attention on crime as on other issues.”
Amid calls to withdraw police funding over the summer, Bottoms said withdrawing police funding was a matter of “reallocating funds”, which she said her city was “ahead of the curve”.
“The intention of this movement, as far as I can assess, is really about reallocating funds to social services and initiatives to support and improve the community,” said the mayor at the time.
“We are ahead of the curve in Atlanta because we are already relocating our public security (funds), we are already moving around 60 percent of our correction budget to this very specific area. So in some areas, people are calling it a waste. from the police in Atlanta, we’ve been doing this job for the past two years, “she explained.
As fundraising continues, additional police patrols will hit the streets starting in January, according to Jim Durrett, who heads the Buckhead Coalition and the Buckhead Community Improvement District.
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“This was a terrible disruption to everyone’s life,” said Durrett. “It is difficult to deal with other things when you fear for your own safety. It seems that this is the most important thing to pay attention to now.”