Sunday, November 01, 2009
Opinion, Politics, Atlanta
Something about Mary
Mary Norwood was willing to deprive most of the city of its regular police protection while her own affluent neighborhood paid for a private security force.
A corner in English Avenue.
By Stephanie Ramage
A couple of weeks ago, I shared a hug with former state legislator “Able” Mable Thomas. One excuse is that I had just tossed back a sizable White Russian (it was my birthday, I was at a reception). The other is that Thomas, like the mayoral candidate she endorsed, Councilwoman Mary Norwood, is, under pleasant circumstances, a likable person.
Unfortunately, she has something else in common with Norwood: The things she says just don’t add up.
No sooner had I walked away from Thomas than I remembered one very
unpleasant event at City Hall in August. Numerous residents of the English Avenue and Vine City communities had turned out at a City Council meeting to voice their anguish regarding vacant houses, prostitution, drug dealers, and rat infestations. They were understandably anxious. They wanted help.
Councilman Ivory Lee Young, who represents the area, asked them to meet with him outside the Council chamber. But Thomas had beaten him to the punch. She was out there howling for more money for the neighborhoods. She angrily charged that Atlanta Police were profiling residents and harassing them, yet I had just heard some of those same residents say they needed more cops in the area because drug-dealing thugs were taking over.
Councilman Young stood his ground and pointed out that English Avenue and Vine City get more money from the city than any other area of Atlanta.
That's true. English Avenue and Vine City do get more money than any other section of Atlanta—which is shocking, considering the dangerous, crime-ridden condition of those neighborhoods. You can read about the more than $23 million the city has dumped on the area in the Aug. 23 edition of The Sunday Paper under the headline, “Atlanta’s Combat Zone.”
Money is not the problem. Proper use of the money is the problem. And it’s a problem with which Thomas is closely associated.
As first reported by Creative Loafing’s Scott Henry in late 2007, when the city’s old Empowerment Zone system ended, the Atlanta Coordinating Responsible Authority inherited the task of doling out cash to needy neighborhoods. “There are questions as to whether some of the organizations set to receive grants are likely to be good stewards of public money,” Henry wrote, giving among his examples this: “..one organization had its $109,000 grant request approved even though its principal—well-known state Rep. ‘Able’ Mable Thomas of Atlanta—sat on the very committee tasked with deciding who would receive grant money.”
You can’t help who endorses you, but the way Mary Norwood greeted Thomas’ endorsement says something about Mary. She held a press conference. She was proud to have the endorsement of someone who stood in City Hall and yelled for more good money to be thrown after bad, someone who acted as if the police were to blame for the neighborhoods’ problems, even though the residents themselves want more neighborhood policing.
The proud touting of an endorsement becomes, at some point, an endorsement itself. Does Norwood endorse Thomas’ stand that the cops are the problem?
Norwood voted against ending the police furloughs. No doubt there are some who will say she merely voted against raising property taxes in order to end the furloughs, but there was no other expeditious way to end them.
In July, I asked Norwood six times how she would have ended the furloughs without raising taxes. “If I truly believed there was no other way to end the furloughs except with the tax hike,” she said, “that decision would have been different, but I don’t truly believe that.”
“But you also did not suggest any ideas for finding that money,” I said.
To which she replied: “I don’t have access to that information.”
By then, Atlanta Police had suffered more than six months of furloughs. They had taken a 10 percent cut to their already meager pay. Atlantans Together Against Crime held rallies at which hundreds of residents, shaken by crimes more brazen than any they could remember, demanded an end to the furloughs, but Norwood was in no hurry to end them. When I asked her how long she would be willing to allow the furloughs to continue while she tried to gain “access to that information,” she didn’t know.
On July 19, at a forum sponsored by Campaign for Atlanta, Norwood said she didn’t believe that some people should be safe while others are not. Yet Norwood was willing to deprive most of the city of its regular police protection while her own affluent neighborhood paid for a private security force.
“In my own neighborhood, we have had a patrol—it is not off-duty police officers, it’s a private security force—and my husband and I have participated in that and paid hundreds of dollars every year since 1984 in addition to whatever taxes,” Norwood said at the CFA forum. “So I understand with our challenging topography, with our tree cover, it is very hard to have somebody on the street every place you need them.”
But that’s even harder when you don’t have those hundreds of dollars to spend on private security, and the police who are supposed to protect you have been furloughed.
Norwood does not understand the way that less-affluent areas rely on the police for protection, and she does not understand how overextended Atlanta’s police are. That’s something about Mary that Atlantans need to think about before heading to the polls on Nov. 3.
SP
To see Mary Norwood's comment on her neighborhood's private security force for yourself, visit http://www.campaignforatlanta.org/videos.php and click on Mary Norwood's photo in the row marked "Police Part 2 with Lou Arcangeli," then fast-forward to 5:41.
While you're there, be sure to check out what the other candidates have to say about private security forces. Reed says they're a "knock against the mayor" because if people have adequate police protection, they don't feel as much of a need for private security.