The Neighborhood Atlanta’s Next Reckoning Black Lives Matter demonstrations continue as city, police promise reform

By Collin Kelley

Organizers and demonstrators in the Black Lives Matter movement have vowed to keep up regular marches and rallies until they see reform in the city’s criminal justice system. As protests move into a second month, the cradle of the civil rights movement and the city once dubbed “too busy to hate” is facing its next reckoning.

What began in late May as a protest against the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, found local energy after Atlanta Police officers were charged with use of excessive force in arresting two college students caught up in the Downtown demonstrations on May 30. Then on June 12, two APD officers were involved in the shooting and killing of Rayshard Brooks outside a Wendy’s fastfood restaurant on University Avenue. Suddenly, the national spotlight on racial injustice was laser-focused on Atlanta.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard has filed charges against eight APD officers in those cases, including felony murder for Garrett Rolfe who shot Brooks twice in the back during a DUI arrest. Those trails are still to come, while Howard has been accused by sundry politicians and the court of social media of rushing charges against the officers as he faces a primary runoff on Aug. 11 to hold his seat.

The ink was barely dry on Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ executive order to form a Use of Force Advisory Council – in response to the violent arrest of students Messiah Young and Taniyah Pilgrim –when Brooks was shot. Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields, who had publicly condemned the murder of George Floyd and terminated officers involved in the students’ arrest, stepped down.

While the advisory council’s recommendations are due this month, Bottoms signed administrative orders calling on interim Police Chief Rodney Bryant to adopt reforms regarding APD’s use of force policies and for comprehensive review of how policing should be handled by the city.

Most notably, the administrative order calls for an officer to intervene if they witness the use of excessive force, reporting the use of deadly force to the Citizens Review Board, and retraining to deescalate volatile arrests before the use of deadly force is needed.

“We are taking a top to bottom review of how we police in Atlanta,” the mayor said in a statement. “These administrative orders will help accelerate our efforts to transform public safety within our city.”

Along with the government scrutiny, APD is under fire from the public for heavy-handed tactics in dispersing protesters. APD and backing law enforcement agencies (National Guard, Georgia State Patrol, Fulton County Sheriff’s Department, Capitol Police, among them) have used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, bean bag rounds, batons and other assorted military gear in often violent clashes.

A microcosm of this manifested in Grant Park, where the neighborhood association has drafted a resolution to the city calling for a ban on the use of militarystyle weaponry in the community. Over the weekend of June 13-14, the neighborhood of Victorian mansions, Craftsman Bungalows, and Zoo Atlanta resembled a war zone as tactical vehicles and riot- gear clad officers protected APD’s small Zone 3 precinct. Residents were outraged that an LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device), a crowd control device that can emit disorienting sounds strong enough to burst human eardrums, was brought to Grant Park and allegedly “pulsed” at lowfrequency as a warning to demonstrators.

The charging of officers and news of reform went over like a lead balloon at APD. On June 18, the same day charges were filed in the officers in the Rayshard Brooks case, officers staged a sickout –or “blue flu” – in protest. Chief Bryant acknowledged there had been a higher than usual callout. He said officers were questioning their training, felt challenged and attacked, and unease about colleagues being criminally charged so quickly. However, he reassured the public and offered a warning to criminals.

“If you call 911, a police officer will respond,” Bryant said. “We haven’t given up on the city that we love and we ask that you not give up on us. But I want it to be clear, we will not tolerate lawlessness and injustice in this city.”

Bryant said he would stand up teams within APD’s office of professional standards to investigate “complex complaints” and begin reviewing its training program to expand sections on de-escalation, implicit bias, and peer intervention.

Mayor Bottoms, who has also been accused by law enforcement supporters of throwing APD under the bus, said she recognized morale was low, but also said it was time to weed out so-called “bad apples” not only at APD but across the country.

“We have a lot of men and women who work for our police department who care about this city and work every day with integrity and with honest interactions with our communities,” Bottoms said. “Those are the people who I expect will show up for work. If we have officers who don’t want bad officers weeded out of the force, then that’s a conversation we need to have.”

Bottoms and the Atlanta City Council faced ire after committing one-third of the city’s 2021 budget to APD – despite loud calls from protesters to “defund the police” and shift tax dollars to social and community service organizations.

As the wheels of justice and bureaucracy grind slowly, there has been a flowering of art across Intown speaking to the Black Lives Matter and racial justice movement (see page 32 for more), while Confederate monuments – long considered symbols of white supremacy – are finally coming down.

On June 18, just before midnight, the Confederate “Lost Cause” obelisk was finally removed from the Decatur Square. The day before, Piedmont Hospital in Buckhead announced that a monument to those who died at the Battle of Peachtree Creek would be removed from its Peachtree Road campus.