Atlantans debate officer's baseball bat remark

That issue started this latest dust-up between Franklin and one of her most vocal critics, Kreher, who last week told the city council: "I want to beat [Franklin] in the head with a baseball bat sometimes when I think about [the delayed workers compensation claims]."

Kreher was placed on paid administrative leave and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation, the results of which have not been made public.

Some think he got off easy.

"If I had said that to a police officer on the street, where do you think I'd be?" said State Sen. Vincent Fort, who believes Kreher should resign or be fired. "I was just looking at a poster the other day that spoke to this. It said thoughts become words, words become actions."

Franklin's critics say she's overreacting in an attempt to deflect attention away from the plight of wounded officers.

"Why is Franklin bending over backward to destroy Kreher? My guess is that she's desperately hoping you won't pay attention to his message," wrote local writer Andisheh Nouraee in a blog on Creative Loafing's website.

"[T]hat's why Kreher's comment was so infuriating," he said. "He handed Franklin a stack of victim cards. Now she's playing them."

Kreher apologized for his comments in a letter written to the mayor, but Franklin has not been in a forgiving mood.

"His threat cannot be tolerated or explained away," she said on the city's official Web site. "I believe his threat to be serious and an attempt to intimidate me and other city officials and my family."

The mayor told WAGA-TV she wanted a local, state and federal investigation into Kreher's comments.

Atlantans Together Against Crime (ATAC) founder Kyle Keyser, who was at last Wednesday's city council meeting, labeled the controversy "ridiculous."

"Now, instead of talking about the merits of Kreher's presentation and argument on why the city needs to step up, we're talking about Mayor Franklin's exaggerated vulnerability in the light of Kreher's off-handed statement," Keyser wrote on ATAC's blog. "Now, instead of productive discussion on how the city can make us safer, we're watching the opportunistic silencing of a man whose biggest 'crime' has really only been being the mayor's harshest critic."

Keyser realizes that some may see Kreher's remark in a racial light; the imagery of a white cop saying he wants to bash an African-American female with a baseball bat has some resonance, he acknowledged.

"I was shocked when I heard it," said Frank Ski, host of the "Frank and Wanda Show" on V-103. He aired Kreher's comments Wednesday morning and expects to hear from listeners about it in the days ahead.

"It's such a harsh thing to say about the mayor," Ski said. "That anyone would say something like that about a public figure in a public forum is incredible to me."

Kreher did not return calls seeking comment, but his support remains strong within the union.

"Everybody has 20 seconds they'd like to take back," said David Holway, president of the National Association of Government Employees, which oversees the International Brotherhood of Police Officers. "This is 20 seconds he'd like to take back."

Holway scoffed at the idea that Franklin, who has often jokingly bragged about her Philadelphia toughness, felt threatened by Kreher's remarks.

"She's tough-skinned," he said. "If there was a tussle between Scott and her, I'd bet on her."

— Staff writer Bill Torpy contributed to this report.