Pubdate: Thu, 03 May 2007
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA)
Copyright: 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Contact: http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/letters/sendletter.html
Website: http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/28
Author: Rhonda Cook, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/raids.htm (Drug Raids)

ATLANTA POLICE CHIEF DENIES CHARGES OF ARREST QUOTAS

The question of whether police have arrest quotas continued to follow 
Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington no matter where he went in 
City Hall on Tuesday.

He insisted that officers do not have to make a minimum number of 
arrests to avoid punishment; they do have "performance standards." 
After fielding questions on the subject at a news conference, 
Pennington was under fire as the head of the police union and some 
City Council members questioned the difference between the two terms.

"Where's the fine line between performance evaluations and quotas?" 
asked Sgt. Scott Kreher, president of the Atlanta chapter of the 
International Brotherhood of Police Officers.

City Council members H. Lamar Willis and Joyce Sheperd, at a meeting 
of the Public Safety Committee, wondered the same thing.

Pennington continued what has become his mantra: Officers have to 
work and "produce," but there are no specific numbers of arrests or 
search warrants they have to make each month.

Earlier, Pennington stood with Mayor Shirley Franklin to answer 
reporters' questions about the conditions that contributed to a 
botched drug raid in November that left a 92-year-old woman dead. 
Last week, a Fulton County grand jury indicted three officers - Jason 
R. Smith, Gregg Junnier and Arthur Tesler. That same day, Smith and 
Junnier pleaded guilty to the voluntary manslaughter of Kathryn 
Johnston in Fulton Superior Court and guilty in federal court to 
conspiracy to violate her civil rights. Tesler, suspended without 
pay, is fighting lesser state charges.

Some of the officers have contended a quota system was one of the 
reasons they lied to get warrants, such as the one that allowed them 
to break down Kathryn Johnston's door the evening of Nov. 21.

Kreher, before the committee, read from documents he said supported 
the contention that officers felt they would be disciplined if they 
did not make the required number of arrests or serve a minimum number 
of warrants.

In one e-mail sent last summer to several officers in southwest 
Atlanta, the major in charge at the time said any officer who did not 
make any cases "for that day ... will be on a foot beat until further notice."

Since the indictments of the three officers last week, pressure has 
increased on Pennington to at least justify the perception some 
officers said they had to meet certain benchmarks for arrests and 
warrants served. He's looking in to it, but he doesn't know where 
they got that idea.

"I haven't heard it. I haven't seen anything in writing," Pennington 
said. "We shouldn't have discipline attached to it [performance 
evaluations]. We shouldn't be threatening anybody with discipline."

Pennington told reporters each zone commander is required to reduce 
crime by 5 percent each month and "we hold them accountable to those goals."

Several council members were upset that they still had little 
information on the FBI's findings so far into the agency's 
investigation of the department. They also were frustrated because, 
one member said, they had been asked to withhold comments because the 
city was likely to be sued.

Indeed, the informant who first reported that he had been asked to 
lie to protect the officers has notified the city that he planned to 
sue. Johnston's family also has given notice of a planned lawsuit.

"We all have pain and rage, and we've had to hold that in check," 
Councilman C.T. Martin said.

"We don't even know who was in charge the first day of the incident. 
Who was the first officer to arrive and who was in charge of these 
officers? There is so much information we will never have," Martin 
said. "Why was it necessary to do that to an innocent person? 
"There's mountains and mountains of questions," Martin said. "Are we 
going to do it the Atlanta way and let it just disappear?"

Pennington said the FBI, the U.S. attorney and the district attorney 
told him little about what they were finding until a couple of days 
before three of his officers were indicted.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman