How Fulton’s program was supposed to work
The district attorney’s office devised the process Atlanta police have tried to use to get drug properties seized. Here’s how it is supposed to work:
When APD executes three search warrants or makes three drug buys at a location in 12 months, the agency sends a “cease and desist” letter warning the owner that his or her real estate can be seized. Under Georgia law, prosecutors can start forfeiture proceedings if a property is used or intended for use to break drug laws or commit other crimes.
APD has issued more than 300 of these letters since the beginning of 2013, police records show.
If police execute a second search warrant there, or make six buys in 12 months, the agency automatically forwards a request for seizure to the district attorney’s office. They also make the request if the owner of a property is arrested for drug dealing on a warrant.
Howard said his office has received 18 of these requests since 2011, although police say they’ve referred that number since 2013 alone.
Whichever the case, all were rejected.
Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard’s plan to confiscate drug houses was celebrated by experts across the country as a new way for prosecutors to transform blighted communities.
Neighborhood Fresh Start, founded in the early 2000s, was supposed to kick out dealers, fix up the houses and move in police officers who would work the nearby streets as their beats. After a year, the homes would become affordable housing for a low-income family.
But for the past decade, when Atlanta police asked prosecutors to seize the city’s worst drug houses, the requests fell on deaf ears, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found. The district attorney’s office routinely turned them down, saying forfeiture was “unduly cumbersome.”
As a result, the city lost a potentially powerful tool in its fight against blight—a problem that elected officials say has become one of the biggest facing Atlanta. Police have documented hundreds of properties with repeat drug activity that could be eligible for seizure.
Atlanta police declined comment.
But residents of blighted areas said they were frustrated that Howard’s office refused to act after they had spent years giving police lists of drug houses. In English Avenue, where more than one in four residential properties are blighted, a neighborhood association turned to federal prosecutors instead.
“We’ve asked the whole judicial system for help — police, judges, everybody else,” said Yvonne Jones, chairwoman of the neighborhood planning unit for English Avenue and neighboring Vine City. “They’re holding up progress in the community.”
Howard said he wasn’t aware of the police requests and didn’t know what his subordinates were doing until the AJC inquired about his office’s response.
Now, he has written a formal letter of apology to Atlanta Police Chief George Turner, promising to have his staff immediately reexamine all seizure requests since January 2011. If drug problems persist, he said, he will move to quickly take over the properties.
Howard said he understands residents’ frustrations.
“I think someone just made a bad decision,” Howard said. “I hope we can rectify the situation.”
‘One of the greatest achievements’
Neighborhood Fresh Start's early years showed that the mere threat of seizure had the power to stop drug activity, according to a 2004 report by the New York City-based Center for Court Innovation that included a review of Fulton's program. At that time, the report said, Howard's office had started seizure proceedings on only two properties, yet 14 crack houses closed down after warnings from law enforcement.
After the 2002 seizure of a bungalow in southwest Atlanta’s West End neighborhood, nearby residents said that they no longer feared being hit by stray bullets. A consortium of historically black colleges funded repairs on the Atwood Street house, and an Atlanta police officer lived there for two years.
“I have to say, getting a drug house cleared and stopping drug sales I thought was one of the greatest achievements in the history of the DA’s office,” Howard said.
Yet the program soon fell apart. In four years, only three houses were seized, and two became blighted while the DA’s office owned them, city records show. Even the district attorney’s success story shows his office was ill-prepared to enter the real estate business.
When the officer moved out of the Atwood Street house, it became vacant and boarded up as the district attorney’s office searched for a low-income family to purchase it, Howard said. City records show that a squatter moved in, and in 2012, code enforcement found it was unfit for occupancy. It was finally sold in 2013.
Howard said the sale took so long because of the real estate crash, and because only investors seemed interested in buying the home. Neighbors wanted him to sell to a family.
Another house that was seized in 2004 was torn up by drug dealers and too expensive to rehab, Howard said. It sat empty for years until the city demolished it, and records show the lot was in violation of city code in 2011 because it was overgrown. In 2012, the prosecutor’s office deeded the empty lot to Habitat for Humanity.
A third house was sold on the courthouse steps to an investor who left it vacant, Howard said. When he complained, the investor offered to sell it to his office for twice the price. The district attorney declined.
‘No regrets’
Records show drug dealers operated brazenly in properties Howard’s office declined to seize. At two adjacent houses in far northwest Atlanta that were turned down in 2013, police found more than 5 lbs. of marijuana, digital scales and six handguns, according to prosecutor documents. One of the property owners acknowledged that a dealer rented a room there just to store drugs.
A dealer at another site advertised heroin online. A third property was discovered when its occupant was sent ecstasy through UPS.
A lack of manpower and money wasn’t what led the seizure program to fall by the wayside, Howard said. And it wasn’t a change in priorities, either. Howard said shutting down drug houses remains a core mission of his office.
In fact, Howard said he was so surprised that police requests to seize drug properties were denied that he believed APD officers were misleading him.
“I thought police were not being totally truthful because we hadn’t seen any properties,” Howard said.
Now, Howard looks on the bright side. A low-income family moved into the Atwood home, and a Habitat home is on one of the properties that was seized, he said. He hopes to deed more seized properties to the nonprofit in the future.
And while Howard acknowledges his office made missteps as it disposed of the properties, he believes that, overall, he did the right thing.
“I have absolutely no regrets. What I really regret is that we didn’t have a couple million dollars to do more,” Howard said.
Howard has no plans at this time to allocate more funds to re-launch the drug house seizure program, and he says current staffing levels should be adequate to handle the additional work.
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