City council members grilled the head of Atlanta’s citizen police oversight board about the group’s failure to investigate police use of deadly force and said the board shouldn’t wait to be handed cases on a “silver platter” before it acts.
Executive Director Lee Reid defended his agency’s failure to investigate police shootings or deaths while in police custody for the past four years in response to questions from the city’s public safety committee Monday. Reid said he lacks the necessary investigators and is following policy by waiting for police and prosecutors to finish their investigations first.
“You all should not wait until an investigation is handed to you on a silver platter,” said District 9 City Councilman Dustin Hillis in exchanges with Reid that grew tense at times.
District 10 Councilwoman and public safety committee chair Andrea Boone asked Reid to return to the committee in 30-40 days.
“We have a responsibility to the families and our citizens to ensure that transparency in any officer-involved shooting is at the forefront of everything we do,” she said.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
The committee’s actions are in response to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation that revealed the board failed to investigate more than three dozen police shootings and in-custody deaths since 2020. Some cases languished even after police had finished their internal affairs reviews and the district attorney decided not to charge officers.
City law says the review board must investigate and hold public hearings about police shootings and in-custody deaths, Hillis said. The board is not required to delay its investigation until others are complete, an AJC review of existing city laws and policies found.
There is currently a backlog of 47 deadly force cases waiting to be investigated by the Atlanta Citizen Review Board, some of which occurred in 2020.
Reid claimed that there was never a backlog of cases because they were still being investigated by other agencies. Hillis said that Reid’s interpretation of the law was “blatantly incorrect.”
Reid also claims his agency should only investigate cases that end in death or serious injury -- a point of disagreement on what his agency is empowered to do.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Among the cases ready for the review board to investigate is the August 2022 fatal arrest of Ricardo Dorado Jr. Police responded to an Atlanta gas station where Dorado, who was high on meth, was destroying property. Dorado went into cardiac arrest and died after police held him down on his stomach for 17 minutes despite his cries that, “I can’t breathe.”
District Attorney Fani Willis declined to prosecute the police officers involved in Dorado’s arrest. Atlanta police separately suspended two officers for using unnecessary force on Dorado and five officers for failing to intervene during the arrest, the AJC reported.
“We did not know that case was closed,” Reid told the council.
Councilman Antonio Lewis, who represents District 12, told the AJC after the meeting that the system is broken if the Atlanta Police Department is not telling the review board when cases are closed. Reid staff follows up on cases quarterly. Reid said he was told that all the cases remained open until the AJC’s investigation published.
“That person who told him ‘no, this case is still open,’ is a liar,” Lewis told the AJC.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
The council committee called the meeting to hear from Reid and to consider a “strategic legislative overhaul” at the citizen agency to expedite investigations. Reid reports to a 15-member board with a $1.6 million budget funded by the city.
Atlanta city officials promised there would be civilian review of the police’s use of deadly force following the fatal arrests of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta in 2020. But in the four years since, the citizen review board has not investigated or held public hearings about any police shootings or deaths in police custody, an AJC investigation revealed.
It is the board’s policy to wait until after the district attorney has completed her criminal investigation and police have completed their internal affairs investigation before the board begins its own review, Reid said.
A police oversight expert told the AJC that it is uncommon for a board with investigative powers to wait for police to do their own review first, and best practice is to start an investigation “as quickly as possible” to collect evidence and speak to witnesses.
In the month since the AJC’s investigation was published, the Atlanta Police Department and review board have reached a new agreement to notify the review board when criminal and internal affairs investigations are complete.
Atlanta police shared its first three completed internal affairs investigations with the board this month, including the August 2023 fatal arrest of Deacon Johnny Hollman.
Hollman died following a brief struggle where he was handcuffed and tased by former Atlanta officer Kiran Kimbrough for refusing to sign a traffic citation. Kimbrough was fired, and the department changed its policy following Hollman’s death so that officers must write “refusal to sign” rather than arrest people who won’t sign traffic citations.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Reid said in an interview after the meeting that investigators had been assigned to the cases, and that he had no comment on an anticipated timeline to complete the board’s review.
The mayor’s chief strategy officer, Peter Aman, has coordinated talks between the review board and police department for the past two weeks and said they have made “substantial progress.”
“This process in its entirety needs to go faster, it just does” Aman said.
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