A.M. ATL: Critical assistance

Morning, y’all! 🚨 Huge traffic heads-up 🚨 All lanes of I-285 south of I-20 will be shut down Friday night into Monday morning. I repeat: No I-285 on the south side all weekend. I-285 is canceled. All that traffic will be rerouted through downtown. Details here.

Frankly, I wouldn’t even leave the house if you don’t need to. The noxious vibes of everyone caught in the Most Atlanta Traffic to Ever Atlanta will be palpable for miles.

Let’s get to it.

GROUP SOUNDS ALARM ON FULTON SHERIFF

Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat (Jason Getz/AJC)

Three Fulton County commissioners want an investigation to decide if Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat should be suspended from duties.

As part of his jurisdiction, Labat oversees the deeply troubled Fulton County Jail. This requested reckoning is the result of years of snowballing controversies, deaths and other incidents at the facility.

The last straw:

• Last week, a former inmate revealed he suffered severe neglect in the jail, which led to amputations of his lower legs and fingers.
• Rashaad Muhammad said he begged detention officers, nurses and others at the jail for medically necessary antibiotics while he was in the facility last August. He went into septic shock and eventually a coma.
• He was represented by prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who demanded accountability and an investigation into the jail.
• Commissioner Marvin S. Arrington Jr. also called for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to launch a probe of Muhammad’s treatment.

What could happen next:

• Under Georgia law, Gov. Brian Kemp can decide if a sheriff should be investigated as a result of criminal charges, alleged misconduct in office or alleged incapacity to perform the functions of his office.
• While some leaders from both parties are on board, others raised the question of whether a sheriff can be held accountable for medical incidents in a jail.
• That’s where the snowball comes in: This isn’t an isolated incident for Fulton County Jail, which was condemned by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2023.

🔎 READ MORE: Concerns from both sides of the possible investigation

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AN ATLANTA ER NIGHTMARE

Ambulance-to-ER times are far above where they should be for area hospitals. (Ben Hendren/AJC)

(Sorry to all of those with health anxiety. Today’s edition accidentally has a theme.)

Ambulances with emergency patients sometimes wait hours outside of the busiest hospitals in metro Atlanta, state data shows. It’s an ongoing problem the Georgia Department of Public Health is trying to address.

• The state’s goal is to keep these wait times, known as ambulance patient offload times, to 20 minutes or less in at least 90% of cases.
• That’s not happening. The state goal is met an average of 44% of the time at hospitals in DeKalb, Fulton, Cobb, Clayton and Gwinnett counties.
• Grady Memorial Hospital met the patient offload goal only 23% of the time. Emory Decatur Hospital met it 22% of the time. For Emory Hillandale, it was 19%.
• At each of these hospitals, 10% of reported offload times were more than an hour.

🔎 READ MORE: ‘Dangerously overcrowded’: What public health officials think

GOP BRISTLES AT KEMP’S REDISTRICTING STANCE

A U.S. Supreme Court Decision blew a hole in the Voting Rights Act that could give Georgia Republicans an opportunity to redraw congressional maps in their favor.

• Several state GOP leaders have urged Gov. Kemp to take advantage, but Kemp says the state should wait until after the midterm elections.
• He says it’s too late in the election cycle to redo the maps for this year’s midterm elections, a move that would cause widespread voting confusion and logistical nightmares.
• MAGA loyalists and other Republicans aren’t pleased, especially since Kemp already stepped outside the party line by not illegally overturning Georgia’s 2020 election results at President Donald Trump’s demand.
• It’s also affecting the Republicans hoping to challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s midterm Senate race: Should they speak out for, against, or stay quiet?

🔎 READ MORE: What’s at stake with redistricting

MUST-KNOW POLITICS AND BUSINESS

🗳️ A federal judge denied Fulton County’s request for the return of 2020 ballots seized by the Justice Department earlier this year. The judge called the raid “unprecedented” and “imperfect,” but said the county didn’t prove it was harmful.

⚕️ Three midwives are suing Georgia with the aim of changing the state’s restrictive midwifery laws. Georgia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, and practitioners say their care could be a huge help if they didn’t have so many hurdles.

HE WAS CABLE BEFORE CABLE WAS COOL

Lots of pictures of Ted Turner to choose from, might as well get two Atlanta legends in one frame. (AJC staff)

As a former CNN employee, the small chip they implanted in me started beeping when CNN founder and media pioneer Ted Turner died. (This is a joke. I am joking please do not email me.)

It was a weird day for all of Atlanta media, because we’re such an interconnected group there’s likely no one in the city’s media landscape who wasn’t somehow shaped by Turner’s work.

Some quotes that captured his outlook:

• “You won’t hardly ever find a superachiever anywhere that isn’t … motivated at least partially by a sense of insecurity." (from a 1991 TV interview with David Frost)
• “We won’t be signing off until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world live, and that will be our last event.” (at the premiere of CNN in 1982)
• “No guts, no glory. I have plenty of guts.” (from a 1994 interview with Charlie Rose)
• “Well, if we had more people picking up trash than putting it down, we’d live in a clean world, wouldn’t we?” (to the AJC, about his habit of picking up trash along Atlanta streets)

🔎 READ MORE: Mogul, sailor, rancher, environmentalist, acquired taste: The complex faces of Ted Turner

Another Ted memory: When he owned the Atlanta Braves, Turner once made himself manager of the team for a day in protest of a particularly bad 1977 losing streak. Turner’s ownership helped turn the Braves into “America’s Team.” Read more about his Braves legacy here.

NEWS BITES

Some day, planes and ships could run on kelp

Either the kelp needs to get a lot bigger, or the planes and ships need to get a lot smaller.

Cosmetic procedures are booming, but ethical conversations are lagging

This is why we all need best friends. They can keep it real when you want to make some irreversible cosmetic change.

Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo will not run the Preakness

That’s right, king, take some “you” time.