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'Covid Crime Moving ridge' Weighed Heavily on Atlanta Mayor
Keisha Lance Bottoms, who announced she would not run for re-election, faced criticism for her city's sharp increase in violence.
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'It Is Time to Laissez passer the Baton': Atlanta Mayor Won't Seek Re-Ballot
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta rattled off a listing of grinding municipal crises on Friday, saying there was not a specific reason she decided non to seek re-election.
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In the same manner that it was very articulate to me, nearly five years ago, that I should run for mayor of Atlanta, it is abundantly articulate to me today that it is time to pass the baton on to someone else. Iii months into our term, there was the biggest cyberattack in the history of a municipality in America. A federal investigation that seemed to literally suck the air out of Metropolis Hall, into the previous administration. At that place was terminal summertime, there was a pandemic, there was a social justice movement, there was a madman in the White House. And at every plough, at every opportunity, this city rose above, and I am so proud of that. I don't know what's adjacent for me personally and for our family. But what I do know is that this is a decision fabricated from a position of strength and non weakness. If the race for mayor were held today, I would win this race without a runoff. That'southward not me making it up, I've seen the poll numbers, and even with all of those things that I know to exist true, and I know what I could do. Merely considering you can do it, doesn't always necessarily mean that you should exercise it. There was not i thing. I've talked almost it so much that literally my husband told me he was non going to discuss it with me anymore. And I am very grateful for the people who I accept talked to and sought that counsel who kept my confidence. This is not something I woke upward and decided yesterday. This is something I've been thinking about for a very long time.
ATLANTA — At a news conference in which she fought to concur back tears, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta said on Fri that there was no single reason for her sharp and dramatic decision not to run for a 2d term.
She did, however, rattle off a list of grinding municipal crises she has faced since taking function in 2018: a crippling cyberattack at Metropolis Hall, a federal corruption investigation that started under her predecessor, the coronavirus pandemic, social justice protests, and the challenge of governing nether quondam President Donald J. Trump, whom she referred to every bit "a madman in the White House."
But the most serious political threat that emerged for Ms. Bottoms in recent months was a phenomenon she had previously described as the "Covid crime moving ridge." Like many other American cities, Atlanta is struggling with a spike in violent crime, including a 58 percent increase in homicides terminal year — the likely result, researchers say, of the pandemic's strain on at-take a chance populations, equally well as institutions like courts and police departments.
The mayor'southward disability to get a handle on criminal offense has become the key theme for two challengers — Felicia Moore, the City Council president, and Sharon Gay, a lawyer — who thought they were going to take her on in the November election. "Atlanta has a mayor that is more interested in things that happen exterior Atlanta," Ms. Moore said in a contempo statement, referring to Ms. Bottoms'due south emerging national stature, including talk that she was rumored to exist a possible vice-presidential candidate. "We need a mayor who knows the No. 1 chore of whatsoever mayor is to keep our city prophylactic."
Ms. Bottoms on Fri pushed back against the idea that she was worried about re-ballot, saying that she was pop plenty to accept won without a runoff. But others were not then sure. And Ms. Bottoms's predicament could become common for city leaders around the U.s. every bit crime concerns take a political toll.
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The dynamic is already rippling through other cities. In Philadelphia, a city suffering from a spike in homicides and gun law-breaking, Larry Krasner, the progressive district attorney, is facing a serious challenge from a candidate, Carlos Vega, who says Mr. Krasner "has not delivered on safety."
In San Francisco, where burglaries were up 46 percent in 2020 and automobile thefts up 22 pct, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, a similarly progressive prosecutor, Chesa Boudin, is facing a recall effort from critics focused on offense.
In St. Louis, where homicides were up 35 percent last yr, quondam Mayor Lyda Krewson decided not to run for a second term after the wearying trials of 2020. The city's new mayor, Tishaura Jones, is, like Ms. Bottoms, an outspoken advocate for criminal justice reform who now faces the challenge of radically reimagining policing and incarceration while bringing her metropolis'south crime numbers down.
In Atlanta, crime has continued raging into 2021. In the first 18 weeks of the year, law statistics show homicides up 57 percent, rapes upward 55 percent, aggravated assaults upward 36 percent and auto thefts up 31 per centum compared with the same period concluding twelvemonth.
The state'southward speaker of the Business firm, David Ralston, a Republican, plans to hold hearings this summer to consider putting state troopers on Atlanta's streets. Weapons detectors were installed at the entrance of the Lenox Square mall in the upscale Buckhead neighborhood, making shopping feel like a trip to a courthouse. Some Buckhead residents are so fed up they have formed a group to explore whether to secede from the metropolis — a move that would devastate Atlanta's tax base of operations.
A written report released in February by the Quango on Criminal Justice gave a snapshot of the crime that afflicted American cities in 2020, with many of them suffering a sharp rise in homicides, aggravated attack and gun assaults.
But the researchers besides noted that the numbers were "well below historical highs" before law-breaking began plummeting nationwide in the 1990s. And for now, the fear of crime does not appear to take the same political juice that it had in previous decades, when scare campaigns could help determine presidential contests and go-tough rhetoric was a winning tactic in big-urban center elections.
Indeed, the widespread demand for criminal justice reform in liberal-leaning cities like Atlanta appears to accept tempered the language and platforms of candidates promising to solve the crime problem.
Prototype
Both Ms. Gay and Ms. Moore, for instance, argue that the next mayor of Atlanta needs to be smarter about law-breaking, not necessarily tougher. Instead of criticizing Ms. Bottoms for embracing criminal justice reform, Ms. Moore — who, similar Ms. Bottoms, is African-American — essentially agrees that reform and safe are not either-or propositions.
"I believe wholeheartedly we can exercise both," she said.
Nonetheless, the political problem Ms. Bottoms would have faced demonstrates the enduring peril of being perceived as unable to meet the challenge of ascent crime. Critics have blasted her for allowing more 400 officeholder vacancies to become unfilled in the Atlanta Police Department, which is supposed to be 2,046 officers strong.
Ms. Moore has criticized her for failing to concord a national search for a replacement for former Chief Erika Shields, who stepped down in June in the aftermath of the fatal police shooting of Rayshard Brooks. (This week, Ms. Bottoms gave the interim chief, Rodney Bryant, the permanent role.)
Others take lashed into the Bottoms administration for botching the firing of Garrett Rolfe, the white officer who killed Mr. Brooks, a Black human. The administration fired Officeholder Rolfe the 24-hour interval after the shooting, but this week, the city's Ceremonious Service Board reinstated him on the grounds that his due process rights had been violated.
Such missteps went a long way to explaining why Ms. Bottoms had fabricated herself politically vulnerable, said Clark D. Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State Academy.
"It's non because she's too progressive," Mr. Cunningham said. "It's because she'southward also incompetent."
Over the years, a number of people who worked with Ms. Bottoms in City Hall said she did not ever seem fully engaged in the twenty-four hour period-to-twenty-four hours chore of governance. At her Fri news conference, Ms. Bottoms said she had been thinking well-nigh not running for re-election as early on as her beginning year in office. "I can't describe information technology," she said of that feeling, "but I wasn't sure that I would run again."
Paradigm
At the same time, Ms. Bottoms has displayed a passion for enacting criminal justice reform, a topic she couches in personal terms. On Friday, she fabricated reference, as she often has, to the painful story of her begetter, the R&B singer Major Lance, who was bedevilled of selling cocaine when she was a child.
The feel inspired her to limit the public disclosure of small-scale marijuana arrest records and eliminate cash bail requirements at the urban center jail. She hopes to transform the jail itself into a social services hub she calls a "center for equity."
Her Police Section, meanwhile, is engaged in a review of preparation and policy, with the goal of making the department more community-oriented.
Though revamping the department may pay off in the long run, Dean Dabney, a professor of criminology at Georgia Land University, said it could increase crime in the short run.
"If you lot switch from tactical policing to community policing, it's going to take time to reallocate those resources and go those resources doing things the new way," he said. "During that adjustment period the criminals are going to take the upper hand."
In the weeks earlier she declared that she would non run again, Ms. Bottoms seemed aware of the fashion that crime had taken center stage. She has promised to rent 250 police officers in the near future, crack down on nuisance backdrop, increment enforcement against gangs, and expand the city security camera network.
In her news conference, Ms. Bottoms said she would focus, in her remaining months in office, on keeping the city safe. "I'm doing that not considering I'm a mayor, merely because I'k a mother in this city," she said. "I desire this city to be prophylactic for my family, in the same way that I want it to exist safe for everybody else who's continuing in this room."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/us/covid-crime-keisha-lance-bottoms.html
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