Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed was part of a panel on NBC's "Meet The Press" this morning that discussed the grand jury decisions in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police.
Reed was asked how Atlanta police stack up – and in the process said the city's police force would be moving quickly to put cameras on all officers. From the transcript:
"If you look at the movement toward cameras and videos – we were already discussing that before before the Ferguson judgment. And I think because of the history of the city of Atlanta, candidly, we work harder at issues of race than other communities do. It's part of the DNA of our city being the home of Dr. Martin Luther King.
"But what I made clear is that Ferguson can happen anywhere. Because it's about the judgment of an individual officer. What we have to do is…to make sure that we don't take a broad brush and paint police officers as bad people, because they do a tough job. But when we see wrong, we need to act decisively.
"And in order to make there be real value from the losses we've seen, we have to move forward on training, caring about equity in terms of racial composition of the police force. And the conversation about video cameras is over. We're going to move there."
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