Atlanta's Chief, Assistant Chief Resigning

Atlanta is a prime example of how NOT to handle a budget crisis.

Do you actually believe that the chief and assistant chief are leaving under good terms or because they WANT to?!?!?

They're leaving because the city of Atlanta government has placed the public and its police officers in a position of dire, critical risk of safety. They want nothing more to do with it.

Best wishes to them both.

You can believe a 13 % reduction in crime if you want to but I watch the Atlanta news everyday. Talk to any street officer to get the truth about crime in Atlanta. Atlanta is beyond help!

Any large municipality is turning into a war zone. The basic fact is does the city want to stop the war or put a finger in the leak and hope the whole thing doesn't get destroyed.

Stat manipulation is not a new thing for cities in which Pennington has worked. I am not saying he is the one heading the manipulation but it does seem to follow him. I worked with NOPD when he was the Superintendent and the Comstat reports were always skewed.

Redders is correct. The large cities are war zones and the governments don't have the political desire or will to do anything about it. The police management will call for the downgrading of crimes from UCR crimes to non-UCR crimes. If they don't DOJ will take them over even though Constitutionally-speaking they don't have the power to do it.

This is not the 1st time that a former MPD District or Executive Command Officer has left cause he did not want to fight for his people and got caught because of it. Pennington, along w Tapscott, were well known for skewing their respective District crime stats in DC when they were there. The results were both tragic and inevitable. Both Pennington and Tapscott`s districts had amazingly low reported crime rates reported under the UCR. But when the community meetings were held suddenly those UCR stat`s disapeared and the community got a huge case ot the flying too-too`s with both of them. And when the DC drug wars started, making UCR stat`s impossible to skew, both Dickie and Marty suddenly left for far greener ($) and politically safer pastures.

And where did they go Pennington goes to New Orleans (pre-Katrina) and we all saw where that wound up. Tapscott goes to Richmond. He thought he was safe until Doug Wilder showed up. Suddenly Marty decides to retire. Gee, I wonder why Might it have anything to do with a sudden surge in retirements right after `King` Marty decides he knows best about everything and tells his rank and file that he will not bother with anyone submitting any ideas for imrovement until they have been sent thru his personal staff ? Can we all say `cooked books` ? Richmond PD is still rebuilding after that one.

No, Dickie Pennington and his chief flag waver are getting out of town before any more of the locals start screaming for blood. And given the mess that Dickie caused by A-S-S-U-M-I-N-G that the Narc Squad was actually working (if there was ever a legitimate case for IAD supervision, here is was) I doubt anyone is going to really cry. Atlanta already has enough to cry about from the civil suit over Grandma Johnson.

I know for a fact that King richards way of reporting crime is a scam. Does he "follow the rules" for reporting myabe but when you have 50 cars broken into in one night that is not 1 crime....I was reported that way though. Same goes for multiple gunshot scenes. If they happened within a certain amount of blocks/minutes from one another they were 1 incident.
pennington or as we like to call him missington is nothing but a sham, and a total politician. He has no leadership ability, and can care less about his officers. He has proven this time and time again a total waste of a chief. Lets not forget the city has closed most f it's "projects" while he was here....Im sure that had a little to do with the drop in crimeWe are glad to see him go and wish the best to wherever he lands....lord knows they are going to need it.

yeah, but aren't you guys worried about who the Mayor will appoint next? Isn't she the one that would rather go to a hip-hop album debut party than attend a line-of-duty wounded Officer's appeal hearing for assitance?

As for the stat skewing, oh heck yeah every major agency does it. I work the WORST (WORST) ghetto area in my city. Because they falsify the stats it actually shows up as one of the top safe spots to live based on crime numbers.