Atlanta Forward readers responded to last week’s columns about city crime. Here are some selected comments.
Don't Tread: Police Chief Turner says that, statistically, crime is going down, so they're doing a better job, but that is little comfort to the people who are still victimized. The neighborhood activist says raise taxes and have police officers live and work in the same area to maybe reverse the "stop snitchin'" tide. Neither of these viewpoints offers a real solution to the crime problem. We'll see if the residents can figure it out.
SAWB: While there are a lot of factors that impact the amount of crime in any community, one thing that needs to be addressed is the number of repeat offenders. For instance, a few years ago, a Georgia state trooper was killed by a man who had been arrested 19 times over a seven-year period and had just been released from jail two weeks before the murder. Again, there are a lot of things that can be done that might prevent someone from choosing a life of crime. However, we need to be realistic and realize there are bad people living among us. While everyone deserves a second chance, there has to be a limit on what society will tolerate. We need to assure that criminals are not only arrested but punished for progressively longer periods of time. Also, while I realize prison may not reform, it does remove offenders from society where they cannot prey on others.
Double standard: Residents who are too afraid to report crime need to move. Hard-working people who obey laws do not want to be around people with low morals who thrive in high-crime areas.
Mechanicsville: My brother-in-law was murdered in East Atlanta Village. His family is devastated. Our lives are forever changed. I'm a coward for leaving the city my wife and I loved. I'm the coward who moved to the suburbs to escape crime. I lived in Mechanicsville for four years, home of hookers, dealers, gangs, copper thieves, crooked politicians, pit bulls and garbage-strewn streets. You ever chase down a copper thief in the middle of the night? You ever have to paint over a swastika painted on an adjacent building that said, "Our neighborhood whitey, signed 30 Deep?" You ever have homeless people on your door at 3:30 in the morning? Crackheads fighting? A community meeting where they called you a "gentrifier" or "them?" It took many people before us moving north and south of I-20 to start blurring the line of segregation. Atlanta has a trust problem. Races and classes don't trust each other to change. It takes time, and Atlanta is slowly healing. Get as many cops as you can, but it won't help until you give opportunities to the children my wife mentored in the 'hood and saw on a daily basis. Be safe out there.
Randall: We need more education, better schools and a higher minimum wage.
