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Buckhead is already turning into a slum. It gets worse by the day. Crime aside, I just drove about a mile and a half down Peachtree and saw a dozen or so homeless people; trash everywhere; fresh graffiti; tire tracks from the nightly street racing and hit-and-runs; damaged sidewalks, planters, and lamp posts; derelict buildings.
It almost feels like intentional neglect at this point.
Yep.
Atlanta with its public safety issues right now is like having our own little piece (or depending on one’s viewpoint, our own big piece) of L.A. right here in Georgia.
Though, this unfortunately is not the first time that Buckhead has experienced public safety issues.
The famous uptown district very notably experienced a series of violent incidents (including numerous shootings and multiple homicides) in and around the erstwhile nightclub scene centered around the Buckhead Village area back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s before Buckhead neighborhood leaders successfully pressured City of Atlanta leaders to rollback bar and nightclub closing hours in 2003.
Particularly with the manpower and morale issues affecting the Atlanta Police Department right now, the City of Atlanta honestly could use some help from the state to fight crime, including in Buckhead along main routes like Peachtree Road, Piedmont Road and Roswell Road where most criminal activity seems to occur.
It’s just a question of whether the state is actually willing to pay what it costs to give that help.
I still have no idea what anyone can do that is politically tenable. Ok, so you, what? Significantly increase police presence? Give police a more active role in managing safety?
Well, guess what, when you increase the number of police officers and increase their activity, you get more police-citizen/criminal interactions that go wrong. And once there's another incident, you're right back to square 1. Seriously, crime would have to get a lot worse before the public would be willing to stomach a bad police incident.
I still have no idea what anyone can do that is politically tenable. Ok, so you, what? Significantly increase police presence? Give police a more active role in managing safety?
Well, guess what, when you increase the number of police officers and increase their activity, you get more police-citizen/criminal interactions that go wrong. And once there's another incident, you're right back to square 1. Seriously, crime would have to get a lot worse before the public would be willing to stomach a bad police incident.
That is a really good point that no one really wants to see a bad police incidents happen because of increased interactions between police and the public.
Though, what most of the stakeholders involved really seem to desire is to attempt to lower incidents of crime by attempting to deter many likely crime incidents from happening with an increased police presence in parts of the city where crime may be most likely to occur.
And with a very high-profile mayoral election happening this year in the City of Atlanta (in which high-profile Biden Administration supporter and incumbent Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is running for re-election), and with what likely could be an epic statewide election happening next year (including some exceedingly hotly-contested gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, congressional and state legislative races), the rising level of crime in the City of Atlanta is going to be a dominant issue during a pair of election cycles that will have national political implications.
Crime is up in all major US cities. Kemp really is the blame for opening up Atlanta and the tourist bringing the crime with them on last year
The surge in violent crime is not related to the pandemic. During the first two months of the pandemic, crime was down or flat. It skyrocketed immediately after the George Floyd incident.
And it's equally dishonest to exonerate Keisha by saying the crime surge is happening in all cities. All cities are run by Democrats. They're all part of the same cultural movement. All of them are demonizing police when a person resists arrest (a horrible crime).
The surge in violent crime is not related to the pandemic. During the first two months of the pandemic, crime was down or flat. It skyrocketed immediately after the George Floyd incident.
And it's equally dishonest to exonerate Keisha by saying the crime surge is happening in all cities. All cities are run by Democrats. They're all part of the same cultural movement. All of them are demonizing police when a person resists arrest (a horrible crime).
Do you live in a city? Because this feels like you're just repeating a bunch of right-wing talking points without contributing any first hand experience. Why would people in the city vote for people who believe that mass shootings and the pandemic aren't real, that everyone should have an AR-15, and Jews are firing space lasers to start forest fires?
I am a little socially conservative myself... but right now the Republicans have zero real solutions to any of the problems this country has. And Democrats are basically status-quo at this point. If you want things to change, figure out how to fix things in urban areas without basically implying everyone who lives in those areas that they ought to be killed off. We know things are not working out right now... but we are not stoked about jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
That is a really good point that no one really wants to see a bad police incidents happen because of increased interactions between police and the public.
Though, what most of the stakeholders involved really seem to desire is to attempt to lower incidents of crime by attempting to deter many likely crime incidents from happening with an increased police presence in parts of the city where crime may be most likely to occur.
And with a very high-profile mayoral election happening this year in the City of Atlanta (in which high-profile Biden Administration supporter and incumbent Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is running for re-election), and with what likely could be an epic statewide election happening next year (including some exceedingly hotly-contested gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, congressional and state legislative races), the rising level of crime in the City of Atlanta is going to be a dominant issue during a pair of election cycles that will have national political implications.
I think the take away from avoiding bad police incidents is to not resist arrest. In a lot of cases that is the precursor to a bad incident happening. I am not saying police are incapable of making mistakes they can and often do. Also, when police do not follow protocol I am all for them being punished and held accountable just like I am for criminals being held accountable. The answer isn't to make it harder on police to do their job. Felicia Moore has said she backs Fani Willis and the APD. We know Kasim Reed backs the police and he is considering running and will have a decision by May 1st. I don't think people on here realize how concerned the actual city of Atlanta residents are about what has been going on the last year. It's easy to sit in Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Roswell, Woodstock, or Canton and sit back and play Monday morning QB when none of this impacts you. The KLB sycophants are not living in reality either.
The famous uptown district very notably experienced a series of violent incidents (including numerous shootings and multiple homicides) in and around the erstwhile nightclub scene centered around the Buckhead Village area back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s before Buckhead neighborhood leaders successfully pressured City of Atlanta leaders to rollback bar and nightclub closing hours in 2003.
The issues in that area didn't get better until it was torn down (which happened because of personal pressure - I forget who it is/was, but the property owner at the time at least was a neighborhood resident, who was pressured directly by his friends/neighbors/peers/congregants at church to do something).
I'm all onboard with the argument that Atlanta is run by incompetents, but shifting closing hours doesn't really do anything except shift the timing of peak misbehavior.
And doing so can actually make things worse, in that a mandated closing hour ensures EVERYONE is on the sidewalks and streets at the same time (I don't think I've ever been in a worse traffic jam than the handful of times in my younger years that I stayed out in the old Buckhead Village until closing time).
If you eliminated the closing time, you'd never really have a circumstance where huge crowds were on the street at the same time.
Do you live in a city? Because this feels like you're just repeating a bunch of right-wing talking points without contributing any first hand experience.
Is there really a set of right of center talking points (from any point on the right of center spectrum) that argues that the spike in violence in Atlanta is a result of something other than incompetence?
FBI statistics showed major jumps in crime in rural areas along with towns as well as in the major cities.
This is just political posturing with no real desire to understand the an issue that plagued the nation in the midst of a major pandemic. Instead of studying the issues for solutions and historical context, some will simply use it to demonize political opposition or 'others'.
This is why I don't participate in conversations about crime. You can post the research and stats all day about what causes it and what can be done but most Americans lack the ability to critically think about social issues and think everything is just "bad individuals doing bad things", an elementary school assessment of what's actually happening (crime goes up every time we face a major economic collapse and increased unemployment with little to no social safety nets). We also foster much of this crime through Atlanta's ridiculously bad school clusters on the southside where poverty just leads to more poverty down the line instead of finding solutions to adequately educate children who directly deal with the violence many higher-income Atlantans whine about on the daily but don't actually come into contact with other than petty theft.
This is why I don't participate in conversations about crime. You can post the research and stats all day about what causes it and what can be done but most Americans lack the ability to critically think about social issues and think everything is just "bad individuals doing bad things", an elementary school assessment of what's actually happening (crime goes up every time we face a major economic collapse and increased unemployment with little to no social safety nets). We also foster much of this crime through Atlanta's ridiculously bad school clusters on the southside where poverty just leads to more poverty down the line instead of finding solutions to adequately educate children who directly deal with the violence many higher-income Atlantans whine about on the daily but don't actually come into contact with other than petty theft.
Well stated. The problem is so complex and immediately exacerbated in poor black and brown communities during downturns because these communities are already largely living in tenuous economic situations even in stable to good economic times. I have some poor students, often single parent(mom), who are a daily challenge to keep focused on simple task like assignment completion and staying awake/paying attention in class. We struggled mightily to hold on to them over this past year, but a few have sadly been just about lost. I know what they will end up doing to survive in this world, and it’s not good. Apply that same situation to poor and struggling Fulton, APS, Clayton, DeKalb, etc...schools and it’s not hard to figure out the immediate and long term impact on crime statistics. Throw police at it and you may remove criminals from the street, but you aren’t dealing with the factors that produce them, and are turning many into lifelong criminals while also continuing to feed into the situations in the homes and communities that created them to begin with. Until you are ready to deal with systematic inequities and racism, the lasting effects of ill thought out social programs and historic racism, poor performing schools, poor or non-existent family structures and poverty in general, you aren’t truly ready to deal with crime. You just want it diminished enough that it doesn’t impact you.
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