Atlanta police officers who stopped the brother of Mayor Kasim Reed twice for traffic violations and saw him go free despite not having a valid drivers license believed their bosses gave him special treatment, according to an investigation by the city’s law department.
Police Chief George Turner was briefed on both stops and personally sent a precinct commander to the scene of one of them, but he will not be disciplined, Mayor Reed announced Tuesday, a day after the three-inch thick report was made public.
Turner told investigators that the mayor’s brother, Tracy F. Reed, called him on Oct. 28 during the second stop, and the chief directed Maj. Rodney Bryant to drive to the scene and find out what was going on.
Turner gave investigators a vague description of his conversations with Tracy Reed and with Bryant, and he said he sent Bryant to the scene because Reed told him he might be arrested and there were some “identity issues.”
“If the chief had asked for the Major to take some action, that could warrant some discipline,” Mayor Reed said Tuesday. But sending an officer to look into a possible case of mistaken identity does not merit discipline, he said.
Bryant has been suspended for 15 days without pay. He also told investigators that Turner never instructed him how to handle the situation.
Instead, Bryant blamed the patrol officer, Michael Herrick, for Tracy Reed’s release, saying the officer said Reed had been checked and could be let go. That contradicts Herrick, who said standard procedure would have been to cite and arrest Reed and impound the vehicle for driving on a suspended and expired license.
Bryant allowed Reed to drive away.
Herrick told investigators that it was the first time in perhaps 75 traffic stops a zone commander had responded to the scene. He found it odd but figured the major was “looking out after his own,” Herrick told investigators.
Joe Stiles, executive director for the Georgia Police Benevolent Association, said Turner undermined the officer’s authority when he sent a major to oversee what was a routine traffic stop except for the fact that it involved the mayor’s brother.
“The more involved the higher ranks are, the more they cause trouble for themselves and the department as a whole,” said Stiles, who retired from the Macon police department. “Often the higher you go up in rank, the major or the chief is making decisions based on politics, especially if their job is at the discretion of the mayor.”
Turner initially agreed to an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday but a police spokesman later said the interview was off.
The city investigation followed news reports about Tracy Reed’s two traffic stops and revelations that he had continued driving both personal and city vehicles without a valid license for years.
Tracy Reed was pulled over Oct. 28 by Herrick while driving his wife’s Lexus 300 with expired tags and without a license. Tracy Reed said he contacted Turner and told him he expected to be arrested and thought that might “damage my brother.”
“I didn’t ask him any favors,” Reed said in the report. “But I definitely made him aware.”
Turner said he spoke to Reed for 10 to 15 minutes, then called Bryant, the Zone 4 precinct commander.
“I just can’t even remember the conversation I had with Rodney, I just can’t,” Turner said in the report. “I got a call back, of course . . . and also Tracy after the stop but I don’t recall a conversation with either person. . . about a license being suspended.”
The Oct. 28 stop was captured on a dashboard camera. Someone called Atlanta’s ethics and compliance hotline for employees on Oct. 31 to complain. The next day, footage aired on local news.
Tracy Reed, 47, resigned from his job with the city on Nov. 4. He had violated city policy by taking a vehicle home overnight and driving without a valid license, according to a separate investigation by the city’s human resources department. It turned out Reed had not had a valid license for years.
Bryant said it was not uncommon for the chief to ask him to respond to an incident within his jurisdiction, although that was the first request for him to go to a traffic stop.
Interviewed by investigators with his lawyer present, Bryant “was adamant that he did not respond to the scene to influence the outcome of the traffic stop,” according to the investigative report. Bryant said he responded to Turner’s request and simply resolved any questions about Reed’s identity or residence.
Bryant also intervened in a traffic stop in May, when another Atlanta officer, Gabriel Garner, handcuffed Tracy Reed for driving without a license. Garner, who joined the force in May 2008, said he planned to take Reed to jail before he was told to take him instead to Bryant’s Zone 4 precinct, where he was given a copy of charges and released.
That was the first time a supervisor had intervened in one of Garner’s traffic stops, he said.
“It doesn’t matter who you are, you don’t get special treatment,” Garner told investigators. “To handle that one case particularly different from everybody else that I’ve sent to jail -- to have that one person called out and have different treatment -- there’s something wrong with that.”
No one interviewed by the investigators said the mayor was involved in either traffic case. The mayor said he learned about the Oct. 28 traffic stop only when it became public Nov. 1.
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