Civil rights leaders met with various police officials Thursday to pledge communication and cooperation to help ensure potential disturbances associated with the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Mo., don’t spill over into metro Atlanta.
DeKalb County Public Safety head Cedric Alexander said that officers were being instructed how to handle peaceful protesters while working with civil-rights leaders to identify agitators to nix potential problems.
“We are going to deal with them professionally but effectively,” Alexander said. “We are not going to overreact.”
Metro area police are trying to avoid the violent protests that occurred in Ferguson after police Officer Darren Wilson killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in a confrontation in August. Missouri police have been blamed for exacerbating the violence because of the confrontational manner they handled protesters.
Civil rights advocate the Rev. Markel Hutchins said police have already been informed that protesters in Atlanta are being told to meet at the federal courthouse in downtown Atlanta when the grand jury announces it has a decision.
He said the goal was a peaceful protest if Wilson wasn’t indicted and to work with police to quell troublemakers “who want to engage in anarchy.”
The leaders came together with police — representing departments from Chamblee and Georgia Perimeter College to Atlanta and DeKalb County —at the DeKalb County Board of Educations, which police chiefs hope could be a template for handing potential crisises.
DeKalb Police Chief James Conroy said there had no indication of planned unrest or violence that had come to his attention. “No specific threats,” he told The Atlanta Journal Constitution. “You have the obscure web page post — ‘Kill police,’ that type of thing - but it is not attributed to anybody.”
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