A plan to hire 100 new police officers in Atlanta will get the city closer to its goal of a 2,000-plus member force, while also beefing up manpower at the airport and addressing violence against women and children.
On Wednesday, Atlanta Police Chief George Turner made his case before the city’s finance committee to increase his budget for the 2012 fiscal year to $203 million, up from $192 million this year. The departments of corrections and fire also presented their budgets, as part of the city's proposed $545 million spending plan. The city must approve a budget by July 1.
For the APD, a bulk of their increase would go toward hiring new officers and, if approved by the council, would put Turner in charge of the largest municipal police force in the state's history with 1,959 sworn officers.
“My perception is that we are getting there,” Turner said. “Our goal is 2,300 and the mayor is absolutely committed to that.”
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, who ran on a public safety platform, has hired more than 250 police officers, since he came into office. There are currently 1,859 sworn officers in the department.
The new officers, which would be funded in the 2012 budget, would be broken into two pools. Turner said 44 of the officers will go to the airport to support the opening of the new terminal.
“The airport piece is a no-brainer,” he said.
There are currently 133 officers at the airport, which at one time was considered a dumping ground for bad officers. But Turner said that perception has changed, as evident by the low crime rate. This year, there have been only 90 crimes reported at the airport, with 66 of those being shoplifting.
“The airport is a controlled environment and veteran officers enjoy that environment,” Turner said.
The other 56 will remain within the city to create two new units and beef up others. In one, six detectives will investigate computer and Internet crimes against children who are being sold and traded into prostitution.
The other new unit will be staffed by eight investigators and one sergeant to address domestic violence.
“We want to move out of a reactive mode and into being more proactive in how we protect women and children,” Turner said about the two new units.
Both the DeKalb County Police Department and the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office have domestic violence units.
Ayonna Johnson, director of legal services for the Women’s Resources Center to End Domestic Violence, said having a unit dedicated to domestic violence gives officers and victims a different perspective of the crime.
“When you have a domestic assault the dynamics are different than if it was a typical battery or assault case,” Johnson said. “It perplexes an officer about why a victim would not want her partner apprehended. What it really does is cut down on some of the victim blaming by having a specially-trained unit that understands the dynamics of abuse, understands the cycle of violence and understands the different elements of fear.”
Turner will also add five officers to the homicide unit, 10 to the motor unit, and five to the DUI unit. He is also increasing the staffing of the former Red Dog Unit, which was disbanded after years of bad press and botched operations.
Atlanta Proactive Enforcement & Interdiction (APEX), the newly constituted unit, will get eight new officers and four investigators.
For Sidney Hand, news of the potential hires is welcomed, but it comes a little late.
In July 2009, three armed men attempted to carjack Hand outside of his Atlanta home off of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard. His 6-year-old son was asleep in the backseat of the car. The men fled when the boy woke up and started screaming.
“There was so much crime, and carjackings at gunpoint going on,” said Hand, who sold his home and moved to the suburbs. “So getting more officers on the streets should help. But we will see.”
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