DEL.ICIO.USIntown residents fearful of ‘crime wave’
Violent crime has declined in Atlanta, but some people feel more afraid
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saturday, January 10, 2009
John Henderson was cleaning up after a long night waiting tables at Standard Food and Spirits on Memorial Drive. Gene Leath figured his friend had earned a drink, so he bought him a shot of whiskey.
“We were just talking,” Leath recalled. “John was in a good mood.”
John Henderson, 27, was killed during an after-work robbery at The Standard, near Grant Park.
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Henderson was typical of people who lived nearby in the Cabbagetown neighborhood — a 27-year-old who acted 22, Leath said. “He worked in a bar. He enjoyed silly [stuff], like watching Ninja Turtle movies,” Leath said. “He was the guy making the jokes everyone laughed at. He was loud. He was fun as hell.”
About an hour later, Henderson, the popular 27-year-old bar worker, was shot in a back office of Standard as four armed men robbed the restaurant.
Crime is a concern in many parts of the metro area, but in the gentrifying neighborhoods of central Atlanta, Henderson’s death Wednesday seems to have struck an especially raw nerve.
Thursday, more than 200 people showed up at 7 a.m. for a vigil in Henderson’s memory. Friday, police said the reward for information in his death had increased to $10,500 and said they were comparing ballistics evidence to evidence from other recent crimes in the area.
“It’s worse than it’s ever been,” Midtown resident Randall Cobb said. “We’ve had problems before. Now it’s a crime wave.
Cobb and his neighbors recently met with Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington to voice their concerns. Other residents are organizing neighborhood alliances. They’re meeting in coffee houses or on social networking sites online, determined to be heard.
Atlanta resident Kyle Keyser, who was robbed at gunpoint the week before Christmas, has formed Atlantans Together Against Crime and Cutbacks in response to Henderson’s murder.
“This was sort of the impetus to say, look, we need one place to come together,” said Keyser, who attended the vigil Thursday. “Every week, I’m hearing that more friends are being assaulted violently.”
But while the total number of crimes in the city rose by 4 to 5 percent in 2008 from 2007, violent crimes actually declined, according to preliminary figures Atlanta police Assistant Chief Alan Dreher provided Friday. The number of violent crimes dropped about 9 percent from 2007 to 2008, Dreher said. But property crimes were up; in the case of thefts from cars and from homes by double digits, Dreher said.
Statistics aside, Dreher said police realize local residents in some intown communities complain they are feeling more anxious and unsafe. “We’ve heard some of those concerns,” Dreher said, “but we’re working diligently to put resources where they need to be.”
And crime numbers vary by neighborhood, he said. In Grant Park, where the Standard is located, Dreher said, there’s been a decline in almost every crime category except thefts from cars. To the north, in the Virginia-Highland neighborhood, robberies have increased while aggravated assaults are down, he said. Police track crime trends and put additional resources in neighborhoods that need them, Dreher said.
Some patrol officers agree with residents that crime is getting worse.
“It’s just sad,” said Atlanta police Officer Andrew Fincher, who attended the vigil for Henderson Thursday after completing his overnight shift. “We work here. We fight it every night.”
The Atlanta Police Department doesn’t have enough officers to properly patrol the streets, Fincher said. At last count, the department had 1,623 sworn officers — nearly 400 fewer than the target number often cited by police and city officials.
At the same time, criminals seem to be more active, he said. “With the economy getting worse,” he said, “they’re getting more bold.”
Fincher, who patrols the Memorial Drive corridor where Henderson worked, said his precinct needs at least five to seven more officers. But he says more will leave the department for smaller police agencies in metro Atlanta rather than deal with the city’s lack of pay raises and with recent furloughs that amounted to a 10 percent pay cut.
“If the city can’t get it together and keep the officers that it has, this is going to continue,” Fincher said. “It’s going to get worse.”
Intown residents say they accept a certain level of crime, but that the recent spate of burglaries and assaults have made some of them reconsider calling Atlanta home.
“We want the city to know how angry and frustrated we are,” said software developer and East Atlanta resident Rob Downs, one of the vigil organizers. “Not a day goes by where you don’t hear about someone’s house getting broken into or someone getting mugged.”
Atlanta City Councilwoman Mary Norwood attended the vigil Thursday and said residents are right to be angry. “We have to get this city safe,” said Norwood, who blamed recent cutbacks ordered by the mayor for the rising crime. “The idea that we have a city where this kind of violence can happen is completely unacceptable.”
Franklin said she warned the City Council that police cutbacks would be needed if the council didn’t raise property taxes. “They chose to roll back taxes in the face of my advice and recommendation that we would have to cut public safety,” the mayor said.
Community activists have grown weary of the finger pointing.
“We want to know why we can go to New York, to SoHo or Midtown Manhattan, and there’s no problem,” Cobb said. “Why can’t that happen here?”
Cobb said that, in the last year alone, six of his neighbors’ homes on Mentelle Drive in Atlanta’s Midtown have been broken into, two of his neighbors have been carjacked at gunpoint, and two others had their vehicles stolen.
Some intowners are taking dramatic steps to protect themselves. Midtown resident Steve Brodie, a private investor who lost a 2005 bid for an Atlanta City Council seat by five votes, said he has two otherwise “liberal” friends who recently applied for concealed firearm permits. “It’s so out of character and surprising, but they feel like they need to do it,” he said.
Other neighbors have either moved away or are planning to relocate once the real estate market rebounds. “There’s no relaxing in Midtown,” said Brodie, who’s lived in the neighborhood off and on for 35 years. “You don’t see people out walking on the streets much anymore. I get nervous sitting on my front porch.”
Downs said residents of Reynoldstown, Kirkwood and Poncey-Highland have contacted him about unifying neighborhood alliances to mobilize efforts for improved public safety. “The issues are pretty much the same in all these communities, and hopefully we can organize and speak with one voice to get something done,” he said.
John Henderson, say his friends, would’ve been among those rallying for a safer community.
“If this happened to someone else, John would be the guy you’d be talking to right now,” Leath said. “He’d be worried about his friends.”
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