Crime, Taxes and Politics: Three Questions for Ceasar Mitchell

My car was broken into last week. Under normal circumstances this would be a routine hazard of urban living. You see a parking spot; someone else sees an opportunity. But these are not normal circumstances – or even more disturbing – they may come to be. This is the eighth break-in on my block this summer (one neighbor’s car was stolen, likely used in a robbery and then totaled in an accident.)

These are the nuisance crimes but they’re also part of a much bigger picture: the friend who looked out the window to see someone kicking in the door of her neighbor’s house, the gang-related shootings and armed robberies. The general feeling of peril, or at least lack of safety, that seems to be creeping across the city.

I suppose that it is something of a left-handed blessing that if you’re going to have a crime wave at least it can occur in an election year. One, the people in office are forced to pay attention to the issue. Two, there’s always a chance that you might just elect someone capable of making serious improvements.

I met city council rep Ceasar Mitchell last year at the Democratic convention (he’s now running for President of the Atlanta City Council) and it occurred to me that it might be worth talking to him about what he thinks it will take to move the city beyond these bullet days and back toward something at least a little less forboding.

WJC: A neighbor’s car was stolen for the 3rd time. A cop comes and says that there are only eight officers patrolling the entire zone. If two crimes occur in the zone at the same time they cannot possibly respond to both of them. Now, I’d hate to have my car stolen but on the other hand what if I called the police and they get to my house and are then delayed responding to a homicide across town? How does the city council president address that?

CM: I think that’s part of our experience. We’re not just elected officials. We live and work in the community. We’re impacted by taxes and water rates and crime just like everyone else. In December I went to an event at Hammonds House and when I came out my car window was broken. They stole only one thing – my computer was in the car, my checkbook, they only thing they took was my Ipod. It didn’t matter that I was a councilmember. I had to call 9/11 like everyone else. We bring our experiences to bear. I live in West End, my experiences there are not different from anyone else there.

The city charter says we have to provide for the safety, health and welfare of the residents. I served as chairman of the public safety committee for years. My father was a police officer. Years ago I authored legislation and got it passed despite a mayoral veto that requires all graduates of the police academy to spend 8 weeks on neighborhood foot patrol. That’s about community policing. That came from having a father who patrolled in Perry Homes and from hearing residents in South Atlanta saying they wanted to see police officers walking in the community because that has an impact on crime. Community policing makes a difference. It’s really about preventing crime, not responding to crime.

The original plan was to create a program called COPTAP to create a foot patrol over in every zone in Atlanta over a 16-month period. I still hope to do that. I want to see that happen. I plan to really push that as council president.

WJC: How can you pay for these programs given the state of the budget?

In this current environment we’re faced with a somber choice about whether we want to raise taxes in order to continue delivering services at a certain level plus eliminating furloughs. Right now furloughs are killing our ability to deliver services. We’ve rolled back taxes for the last 6 years. We have to continue to look for other sources of revenue. For instance, we fired the person handling parking enforcement and now are not generating any revenue from parking. When I was chair of public safety I introduced legislation that would require a fee for pre-trial intervention for ordinance violators. If you violate a city ordinance and go through a pre-trial intervention we should collect revenue. We’ll have to be creative about fees and revenue.

Every year the city council is required to draft a resolution with our budget priorities. This year I took the leadership and drafted a resolution communicating one priority — to fully fund public safety and eliminate furloughs. We reserve the right to institution a tax increase if we deem it to be appropriate. But how does that impact the community?

One of my ideas was to host two town hall meetings in zone four. I did that for two reasons. The first was to give residents a chance to interact with public safety officials. The second was to really show and exemplify just how big zone four is. We had two meetings, 15 miles apart, both in the same zone. That was to make the point that the zone is too big. The problem that the police officer was trying to express to you is that you have a zone and a beat. You have a number of officers in a beat and umbrella officers without any particular beat. When you have eight officers, you don’t have umbrella officers on that shift, there are beat officers missing. It means that the police officers are undermanned. If we had two officers per beat and an umbrella, I think we can improve the situation and prevent crime.

WJC: This sounds like it would require a serious increase in taxes. To the ordinary resident in Capitol View, for instance, worried about a break in or another crime, it would look like he or she was being penalized because the city didn’t budget correctly in the first place.

CM: The old saying is that you never raise taxes in an election year. We could easily skirt the issue and try to save our political hides and fake the funk with the people telling them that they’ll have a city government that can actually deliver services. I think we’ll put ourselves in a real state of emergency if we don’t make up for the revenue that didn’t come in because of the economy. The focus is on public safety and we’re going to continue to look for ways to cut costs.