For the second time in three months, the Atlanta Citizen Review Board has chosen an executive director to run the police watchdog agency.
On Thursday, the Atlanta Citizen Review Board voted 5-4 to hire Samuel Reid of Minneapolis to serve as executive director of the embattled police oversight agency created after the fatal shooting of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston. The agency has been short-staffed since November, when Cristina Beamud resigned from the $100,000-a-year position in frustration with her board, her staff, the Atlanta Police Department and the mayor's office.
"It's been too long that we've been without an executive director, and we're looking forward to this," board Chairman Paul Bartels said after a brief private discussion and then the vote.
A job offer will be formally extended to Reid, now assistant director of the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights and Civilian Police Review Authority, after he is vetted with a criminal background check.
Reid could not be reached for comment Thursday night.
"My hope is he will come in with a full understanding of who brought him here: Kathryn Johnston," said the Rev. Anthony Motley of Lindsay Street Baptist, which is just a short distance from the home where the the elderly woman was shot to death in her living room in 2006. "Her death gave him a job."
The difficult road to choosing another executive director was indicative of the agency's struggles since it was born out of outrage over a botched raid built on lies from informants followed by cover-ups by cops who killed a frightened, innocent 92-year-old woman in her home — and then planted drugs in the house.
The board was given investigators, subpoena power and a mandate to provide a credible, independent and "safe and welcoming place" to bring complaints and accusations of misconduct and abuse by public safety officials.
Yet almost from the start, the ACRB met resistance — and in some cases, resentment — from officers, the police union, the APD and the mayor's office. Officers initially ignored subpoenas to answer questions from the board's investigators. Most of the time, the chief has accepted the board's recommendations concerning complaints from citizens only if they favored the officers.
At the same time, the board was divided and somewhat dysfunctional. Members seldom were in agreement, and sometimes their meetings would disintegrate into nasty debate.
Five months after Beamud left the position, the board voted to hire a former federal prosecutor and onetime deputy police monitor in New Orleans to replace her. A week later, they decided to reopen the hiring process because some board members were upset with how the city's human resources department had taken the 164 applications.
The second time, 247 applied, and out of those, five finalists were chosen. But three of them withdrew from consideration, one just hours before Thursday's vote. The woman chosen the first time, Holly Wiseman, was among the finalists in the second round as well, but she withdrew.
Motley suspects the three had second thoughts because of the hiring process and "what they hear about the culture of the city. If not the opposition of the mayor and the chief of police, the lack of cooperation" may have given them pause.
Motley said there is "no question" Reid is walking into a difficult position.
"It's vital for him to understand the culture of the city," Motley said.
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