The below message is being shared from NPU-R:

NPU -R,

As promised, attached is the APD apd-dispatched-calls 1report
presented at Wednesday’s NPU meeting.  To put the report in some context,
dispatched calls for service are the calls for service in which an officer
is actually dispatched (a call to rescue a cat in a tree, for example
wouldn’t have an officer dispatched).  The dispatched calls for service
carries tremendous weight in determining the distribution of resources. We
all know there aren’t enough police. The question is, whether there is an
EQUITABLE  (not equal)  distribution of police resources as it relates to
Zone 4.

In ’05, APD zones were realigned to ” BALANCE THE RESOURCES FOR SERVICE” .
As a result of the realignment,  Zone 4 took in a portion of 
Zone 3 ‘s Metropolitan Pkwy. at the same time  the huge developments of Camp
Creek Market Place (a portion of which is in Atlanta) and Princeton Lakes
were coming on board. It was a time of unprecedented growth in SW Atlanta.
Suddenly the Zone with the highest geographic mass went from being among
the lower crime rate zones to a high crime rate zone. Sufficient resources
didn’t come with the decision to expand Zone 4.  In ’06,  700 south Fulton
residences were annexed into Atlanta pushing the Zone to 35 square miles.
(Please see the attached ’06 report from the Zone 4 Citizens Advisory
Board.)  The “balance of resources for service”  between Zones 3 and 4 never
happened.  Zone 3’s dispatched calls for service immediately went down while
Zone 4’s went sky high to become the 2nd highest in the City. Three years
later, the “balance” is still clearly unbalanced.  Zone 3’s dispatched calls
for service for this year is 36,399, while Zone 4  is 49,761 – the highest
of all zones in the City.

The realignment was a bad decision and the Zone’s citizens and  police
officers have paid dearly for it.   Despite extensive media coverage of the
problems in Zone 4, despite Pennington’s promise to NPU R in ’07 to realign
the boundaries of  the Zone  (first it was ” in a ‘few months”, then “by
January ’08”), the Zone remains the same.  The only word we’ve heard this
year about a realignment was from what had to be a very embarrassed APD
officer’s required delivery of a question to the Zone’s NPU’s  which was to
ask what we thought would be good ideas on how to realign the Zone – as
though this was a high school poll on the most popular boy instead of a
critical public safety question best answered by the experts paid to
intelligently make such decisions.   

When police resources aren’t equitable, when a fire station is closed, when
the Bureau of Buildings approves a ridiculously unsafe and slum-style
development, the bigger question is, is this a sector of the City where it’s
considered “safe” to make these kind of moves?   Until all sectors in the
City are positioned to survive and thrive, the City will never be strong.
There are some who think that as long as an issue isn’t happening “in my
back yard”, it’s not important – the same kind of thinking in the story of
the man in a sinking rowboat who refused to help bail out water because the
hole wasn’t next to his seat.

Kwabena  (NPU T) is right, we have to make accountability reform in Atlanta
government happen.

Corliss  Claire