East Point seeks outside firm to examine crime data

By April Hunt

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Police and city officials in East Point say crime is dropping in the south Fulton County city. Some residents argue it’s going up.

So to figure out which view of emergency services is accurate, the city is seeking bids from an outside firm to examine the data and police and fire department procedures and structures.

The goal is not only to know for certain how operations are going, but also how to improve them.

“I do think that too many questions are being asked about it,” Councilwoman Patricia Langford said about the uncertainty over the crime rate. “We need to have the information before us.”

Chatter in the community of 42,000 focuses on talk of an apparent uptick in crimes, even as police records show overall crime is down 3 percent from last year.

The buzz became loud enough that council members Clyde Mitchell and Lance Rhodes held a town hall meeting in June to discuss the situation. But the session appeared to make the situation less clear when residents countered official reports with stories of muggings and break-ins in their neighborhoods.

“We hear about areas where people have had their doors kicked in and areas where there are no problems,” Mitchell said. “Our citizens are in a quandary, if we are safe or not.”

An outside audit would do more than find an answer to that question. The bid also calls for analysis of response times for both police and fire, a central component for emergency services that hasn’t been done since the city closed two of its five fire stations last year.

Even before the closure, East Point routinely failed to meet national standards for timely responses to fire and medical emergency calls.

“I would think we need to know if saving money from closing the fire stations is affecting our response rate,” said Joan Macaluso, a realtor who has lived in the Conley Hills neighborhood for a decade. “I don’t feel like crime has increased, but there are other questions that need [to be] answered.”

The city expects to spend $48,000 on the study. The International City Managers Association’s Consulting Association has already submitted a report, saying it could do the work for that price. However, the city must still decide which consultant it will hire, based on bids.

Work on a study is expected to begin by year’s end.