East Point’s rough and tumble politics got physical during a city council meeting this week when giggling from the gallery offended a presiding council member.
The subsequent ruckus while two spectators were escorted to jail left a hole in the chamber wall and the south Fulton County city’s image further bruised.
“This is ridiculous,” said Brian Frey, president of the East Point Main Street Association, a non-profit dedicated to revitalizing the downtown district. “It’s got to stop. It is pathetic. It is just pathetic”
Dustin Drabot contends he was a virtual political prisoner until he was bonded out of jail Monday night, saying he was targeted during the altercation because of his stances against Mayor Earnestine Pittman and her allies on the council.
Mayor Pro-tem Marcel Reed, an ally of Pittman, said it was simply bad manners that got the two men carted off by police.
“We have to keep decorum. We were discussing a pressing issue,” Reed said. “Those guys kept heckling, talking and making noise. I told them three times they need to keep it down.”
Councilwoman Jacqueline Slaughter-Gibbons, often a Pittman opponent, saw it as overkill.
“That was horrible last night. I couldn’t even believe it was happening,” she said. “I think the mayor and the mayor pro tem just got frustrated because they were getting criticized.”
Reed said Drabot, 35, and his partner, 36-year-old Matt Sweitzer, were heckling council members who were debating proposed changes in the alcohol ordinance for earlier closing hours and higher licensing fees.
Drabot, who last year was ejected from a public meeting when he argued with a Pittman supporter, said he may have giggled after Reed demanded quiet but that he was not disruptive. He contends Sweitzer was only guilty of associating with him.
After Reed called for their removal, both men refused to leave when encircled by officers, who then lifted them and carried them outside to be handcuffed. Drabot said the hole in the wall was caused by an officer who fell against it. Drabot also complained that they were body-slammed on the floor outside the meeting, leaving both men banged up. Friends and neighbors were alerted to bail them out via social media.
East Point has had its share of bad publicity for some years, most recently when an audit criticized its poor documentation of $200 million in spending over 13 years
Residents complain that the city government, which is largely divided between pro- and anti-Pittman camps, is barely functional. It ousted a recently hired city manager, who was seen as an ally of the mayor, after having interim managers filling in for more than a year. The previous city manager quit after Pittman gained a council majority in the 2011 election, a majority which has since eroded.
Pittman, who is up for election this year along with several at-large council members including Reed and Slaughter-Gibbons, was out of the room when Drabot and Sweitzer were arrested. She blamed the controversy on council members stirring up opposition to the proposed alcohol ordinance changes for their own purposes. Those proposed changes have not yet passed.
Frey just believes that East Point needs a change in leadership so the city can conduct business.
“The things that happen in East Point don’t happen at normal council,” he said. “We have to get someone who will get this council behaving like a council.”
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