A look at some of the incidents that have residents in East Atlanta and surrounding communities concerned. Police are investigating possible links in the crimes listed below:
May 17: Saman Balkhanian shot in the head in Grant Park while walking home from a Braves game.
May 19: Man robbed at gunpoint just after midnight while walking along Stokeswood Avenue in East Atlanta. Later that night, another armed robbery, of a couple walking on Hamilton Street in Glenwood Park.
May 25: Two armed robberies, within 15 minutes, on Kirkwood Avenue in Reynoldstown. About 30 minutes later, Patrick Cotrona shot in the abdomen and killed while walking on May Avenue near Flat Shoals Avenue. A friend accompanying Cotrona shot in the leg.
Atlanta’s investment in public safety is at its highest ever. The police force has never been larger. Crime has dropped 18 percent over the past four years and murders — 83 in 2012 — are down from a high of 263 in the early 1970s.
But it takes just one incident, like the fatal shooting of 33-year-old video game engineer Patrick Cotrona over the Memorial Day weekend, to rattle public confidence in the city’s battle against crime.
That leaves officials — notably Mayor Kasim Reed and Police Chief George Turner — navigating the tricky terrain of comforting a shaken public while carefully touting progress under their watch.
“When people are victims of crimes, numbers do not matter to folks,” said Turner, explaining that empathy — not statistics — is what matters.
Atlanta’s crime statistics tell a story common in America: big city crime is down across nearly all categories, as the numbers of murders, rapes and robberies have been trending down for nearly two decades. Still, random shootings and violent robberies across the city can put the public on edge.
Residents rallied in November after three southwest Atlanta children were shot, one fatally, in two unrelated incidents where gunmen fired into their homes. Social media was ablaze last month after Jerrick Jackson, the younger brother of Bishop Wiley Jackson, was fatally shot during a robbery of his northwest Atlanta home.
Now there’s Cotrona’s killing in East Atlanta, which came days after 22-year old Saman Balkhanian was shot in the head while walking home from a Braves game. No arrests have been made in either incident. They are the latest in a series of crimes in East Atlanta and surrounding neighborhoods that has mobilized the community in ways not seen since the 2009 murder of bartender John Henderson in Grant Park.
Even Henderson’s father noticed the parallels.
“It has happened again,” Don Henderson, who lives in the Baltimore area, wrote in an email to friends after Cotrona’s death.
Four years ago, after a string of murders including Henderson’s death and the shooting of world champion boxer Vernon Forrest during an armed robbery in Southwest Atlanta, former Police Chief Richard Pennington and Mayor Shirley Franklin found themselves in hot water for their response to the public’s concerns. Specifically, critics seized upon Pennington’s comment that a “perception of crime” was driving fears more than the actual crimes.
Turner and Reed have been careful to try to avoid their predecessors’ mistakes.
“When (these) crimes occur, you have to be able to get out in the community, let the community know that you understand and that you are doing everything you can to prevent them, as well as to solve them,” said Turner, who met with East Atlanta residents after Cotrona’s death.
Reed, for his part, has pointed to stats that show a decrease in crime, but has been careful not to minimize the concerns of intown residents. He also spoke of increasing reward money in hopes of encouraging more people to share information with police.
“The most important thing you can do for a family who has been victimized is to find the people who did it,” he said. “I take all violent crime very personally, which is why I’ve made the decisions that I’ve made as a leader of this city.”
The mayor has also leveled his criticism at what he sees as his Achilles heel of policing: the Fulton County justice system. In a series of interviews with media outlets in recent weeks, Reed criticized Fulton County for what he called weak sentencing, saying it has a “turnstile jail.”
“I do feel a great deal of frustration because I think that if we had a functioning partner in the form of Fulton County, then maybe we would have one of the safest major cities in America,” Reed told the AJC, adding that violent criminals arrested by the APD and processed in Fulton County have a 5 percent chance of going to jail. “That ought to shake all of us, it ought to shake us to our core.”
In response, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Cynthia Wright issued a statement saying probation revocation problems are being addressed. Fulton Commission Chairman John Eaves also said the county has solved the crowded jail issue.
While Reed said that he’s put hundreds more police officers on the street during his tenure, many residents have questioned their dispersal.
“Cops are not walking the streets in Peoplestown,” said Rick McDevitt, president of the Georgia Alliance for Children.
“I think cops have a hard job, but they’re not proactive; they’re reactive,” McDevitt said. “You don’t get much of a feel for a community’s rhythms when you’re driving through it in a patrol car.”
After Cotrona’s death, many East Atlanta residents shared similar complaints about a lack of police presence in their community.
“To many of us, it feels like the mayor and chief of police put much more focus on more affluent neighborhoods like Virginia-Highland,” Kevin Spigener, head of the East Atlanta Community Association, said in the aftermath of Cotrona’s shooting. “We’re tired of the city shutting its eyes to our side of town.”
To those concerns, Turner noted the APD realigned its geographic beats in late 2011 to more evenly distribute workloads. And when a community experiences a major crime, the APD dispatches officers from its mobile team of 50 roving officers — those who do not have assigned beats — to monitor the area and make recommendations for safety improvements, he said.
“I say to those individuals who would say we’re treating one area differently than the other — it’s not true,” Turner said. “Clearly the majority of murders are not happening in Buckhead or East Atlanta. They’re happening in southwest or northeast Atlanta.”
Spigener, once a critic, came away impressed after meeting with Turner last week along with other East Atlanta community leaders.
“All of us felt like the chief heard us loud and clear,” he said. “And he was receptive to our concerns. We came away from that meeting with a plan for now and a plan for tomorrow.”
Spigener said he’s already noticed an increase in officers patrolling the neighborhood, on foot, horseback or bicycle.
But not everyone is convinced that the overtures translate into safety.
“APD can post whatever crime rates they want,” said East Atlanta resident Sam Luedke via email. “But until the actual crimes are not being reported, because they aren’t actually happening, everyone in the area will be uncomfortable.”
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