Just days after Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said his goal was to lower crime across the city by 15 percent, Police Chief George N. Turner said the department would do everything it can to meet that mark.
“[Mayor Reed’s] challenged us to be one of the safest cities in the U.S,” said Turner, addressing the Buckhead Business Association at its weekly breakfast meeting today at the City Club of Buckhead.
An Atlanta native with nearly 30 years of experience as an officer, Tuner has helped lead the department to a 10 percent overall crime reduction last year after being appointed by Reed in January 2010.
“There’s absolutely nothing we can do by ourselves,” said Turner. “We’ve had numerous partnerships with the Buckhead Coalition, Downtown Community Improvement Districts and more.”
Along with reducing crime by 15 percent in 2011, Turner shared the department’s other goals, which include implementing the beat redesign drafted last year. “There are some concerns over the ex-pansion of the geographical area of [Police] Zone 2,” he said of the district that includes all of Buckhead.
“At our 911 center on Peachtree Street, we will have all the camera feeds in one place. We will be able to have a professional monitor thousands of cameras,” he said.
The department is also working on creating ways to send those live and recorded feeds to responding officers so they can literally see what is happening, he said. Turner said the crime trends in the Buckhead area include a decrease in robberies but an increase in other areas.
Business association member Terry Love asked Turner, “How does the 911 call center work and how efficient is it?” Turner said until 2008, the center’s 911 system was outdated. “What we did is piecemeal it to get where we are today,” he said. “Now more than 92 percent of calls are answered in 10 seconds.”
Please click here for the entire story on Atlanta’s safety goals for 2011 from the Northside Neighbor.
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