PADs & the Pissing Match over Police Budgets
You may have heard the name Rayshard Brooks. You may remember the name of Kathryn Johnson in the early 2000s. These two names have arguably led to my city’s largest impacts on policing. Following Ms. Johnson’s murder, the city of Atlanta created the Citizens Review Board, which reviews police violence by citizens which are appointed by elected officials, NPUs, and organizations. Following continued murders of Black people at the hands of police, some places have begun to reimagine what safety and security means. Rising from the ashes of Wendy’s burning, the city represented by the phoenix has reimagined a portion of our safety in a Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative, or P.A.D. for short. Following the murder of Mr. Brooks, the PAD Initiative is Atlanta’s attempt to preserve life while still addressing various challenges one might find in our city. You might consider it the generational tweak to the ACRB’s creation that preceded it. This idea is getting a lot of press now, but it’s not actually new. The state of Georgia has had a somewhat similar program for a few years now. It’s almost like the state doesn’t like competition from localities. I have to wonder about why.
From their website: “The Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative works to reduce arrest and incarceration of people experiencing extreme poverty, problematic substance use, or mental health concerns, and increase the accessibility of supportive services in Atlanta and Fulton County.”
Within the city of Atlanta, you can call 311 Monday- Friday, 7am to 7pm to speak to a live person who will send out a case worker (and often an APD officer) to the scene to address whatever you may have encountered. Just to be clear: 311 is also the place you call to follow up on a Public Works request like a replacement herbie curbie, as well as reporting a water main leak. It’s a catch all number for city services.
Better not have an emergency outside of those hours though, as the only thing you’ll get is a recording, telling you to ring 911, which is both the number for emergencies as well as the APD.
Dear reader, you know I’m no saint. My bob and white jeans are more likely to be seen in a cocktail bar than a questionable interaction with the cops, save a lead foot on my gas pedal. Yet I’ve written about my neighborhood pretty extensively, most recently here. It’s quickly gentrifying, and without any real support to assist the folks being edged out or already living on the edge of poverty currently. Atlanta’s lack of addressing rampant poverty means we encounter individuals experiencing extreme poverty on a somewhat consistent basis. Aside from the unhoused encampment under our interstates, my husband and I live on a busy street where we talk to our neighbors passing by. Occasionally, because we have no fence on either side of our backyard, folks wander into it. Most of the time it’s kids, seeking Poppits, Uno decks, basketballs or bubbles with which to play.
Recently though, I encountered an older gentleman who had clearly seen some better days. While the hubby prepared food, I called 311, thinking that entering our guest into the P.A.D. system to receive services, a shelter, and regular food might be helpful. You can imagine my dismay at the message to call back during regular business hours.(M-F, 7-7)
This isn’t the first time, either. In the past, we’ve driven folks to nearby shelters (if they were willing to be taken there) and we try to connect them in spaces where we know they can be entered into systems of help- counselling, mental, and physical health services. We get calls from other neighbors too. We’ve become a Google of sorts for some services within the city, and we’re grateful people trust us enough to call upon us.
Please know our guest was fed, hydrated, and was welcome as long as he wanted to stay. He left at some point before Monday morning, when I would have otherwise called to engage someone from P.A.D.
I highly commend the CoA for initiating this service, even if it didn’t meet my immediate need. I’m sure there are instances of mental breaks and extreme poverty that occur during regular business hours, and I’m sincerely grateful this service has been initiated. The unhoused encampments across the city seem to only be growing despite commitments to affordable housing, so I’m glad to know citizens have a tool in the tool box to address this. For the vast majority of mental breaks, and encountering extreme poverty though, whose issues occur outside of the regular hours, I truly hope city council will provide adequate funding to make this a successful endeavor.
Sadly, the Governor signed into law a bill that will prohibit moving funding from police departments across the state to programs like this. I’d like to also point out that the article linked references Barrow County, which is partially represented by state Representative Tommy Benton, the sole name who requested to be left off the MLK Jr. statue featured on the Capitol grounds in 2017. AJC readers may also remember in June 2017 after Benton distributed an article to his House colleagues titled “The Absurdity of Slavery as the Cause of the War Between the States.” Prior to this, in 2016, Benton was quoted saying the KKK “was not so much a racist thing, but a vigilante thing to keep law and order.” This dog whistle seems appropriate to mention knowing that police and white supremacy have a looooooooong history together that the police acknowledge. Essentially, Atlanta can move 5% each year over, but no more of the budget. Also, whatever budget increases that may occur must be forever sustained, as the 5% rule still applies.
When I served conservatives in the Capitol, they believed in local control. That seems to be an abandoned relic of conservatism in Georgia now, with lots of power being centralized over time to the Governor’s office. Nonetheless, local governments rose to the challenge, and Mayor Bottoms created the Anti-Violence Council, creating a new Office of Violence Reduction and dedicating $70M of my tax dollars to nine critical initiatives. Effectively, this outgrowth of bureaucracy is the way to immediately fund and address issues around the city contributing to crime.
What you may not be as aware of, is that the state of Georgia provides funding for mobile crisis teams already. I remember first hearing about this in 2017, but I’m not entirely certain how long they’ve been used. The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Services employs these teams across the state that will arrive in about an hour if a person is exhibiting signs of a mental break, aggressive behavior, or is a person whose cognitive abilities may be difficult to discern. These services may be accessed by calling the toll-free Georgia Crisis & Access Line at 1-800-715-4225. Here’s DBHDD’s guide. Here’s the admissions guide. Georgians have been able to involuntarily commit individuals for up to 48 hours for mental health evaluation for some time now though. That’s not new, thankfully.
I learned about these mobile crisis teams when I served on the board of InCommunity, the largest provider of developmental disability services in the state of Georgia. At the time, InCommunity and others were concerned about how this would affect individuals with developmental disabilities and were committed to reducing the instances of incarceration of those individuals. DBHDD has been well acquainted with the realities of individuals with cognitive differences interacting poorly with police. Ask any parent of children on the spectrum, and they will tell you the very real caution they have of first responders of all kinds not recognizing their childrens’ different ability. Autism Speaks has some excellent resources for first responders of all kinds on their website.
So if the state recognized these services were needed years ago, I have to question the wisdom in limiting local control of funds to address these obvious needs. This competition over who’s going to be the hero leaves Georgians not knowing who to call nor either resource adequately funded. This siloing of responders serves no one and (I would argue) leaves our most vulnerable coming up short in their hour of need.
If we were a longer term thinking state, Georgia could employ some healthy competition among Georgia’s cities. DBHDD could train the local entities and empower local budgets to explore their own tailor made needs rather than contracting it out. Pilot programs could be engaged to determine best practices and, if DBHDD was positioned to do so, they could serve as a clearinghouse of this information. My bet is that what works in Albany isn’t the same approach that should be taken in Atlanta, yet some patterns might emerge to help us recognize needed resources and then ALLOCATE THEM ACCORDINGLY.
Instead, our state leaders have clipped the wings of the city before she can take flight. Who benefits from that is what I’d like to know.
The Ga House and Senate put on a dog and pony show regarding policing in Georgia after the murder of Ahmaud Arbery that was what some might refer to as a circle jerk regarding how much Republicans love the police. (As an aside, the conservatives I grew up with had a HEALTHY distrust of authority and centralized power that we shared. This new version of conservatism and their worship of the police is really bizarre.) I never once heard any reference to the DBHDD crisis teams’ work throughout the committee meetings, although I did hear that barbers receive more hours of training than police officers in our fair state. Yikes!!
Read that again: Barbers receive more hours of training in our state than police officers. 1,500 vs. 408, to be exact.
I find the Atlanta vs. the state mentality to be a campaign mechanism of people who either can’t let the campaign season go or don’t seem to know how to actually govern. Both are bad looks for legislators.
The reality of Georgia is that we are all interdependent upon one another. Atlanta rises only with the help of a united state. In theory, our Governor is supposed to govern the entire state- not just the rural areas that carried him to a win. Separating us out leaves us competing over resources that should be allocated across the state, with each municipality’s budgets reflecting their priorities, not the Governor’s re-election campaign platform. This grandstanding in Georgia politics is leaving Atlanta scrambling when she is making some critical shifts. It seems generally a bad PR move for white rural conservative legislators to choose to make the “Black Mecca” their public whipping boy, but here we are. I don’t understand the mentality of state legislators that wish to see individual localities suffer. That’s a level of pettiness to which I hope I never stoop.
Meanwhile, my city is taking the DBHDD idea and running with it. Let’s hope my city council can get it together enough to devote more funds to expand it.
