Law Enforcement Incompetence

I lived in the Atlanta metropolitan area for 27 years, beginning in 1977, and I can honestly say that the Atlanta Police and Sheriffs departments are perhaps the most clueless and inept organizations of their type in the entire country. At the risk of appearing racist, I will say that these law enforcement departments are treated as “jobs programs” by the city’s African American politicians and city council. Actual law enforcement is a secondary or tertiary concern.

Former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, whom was recently indicted on federal corruption charges relating to his tenure as mayor from 1994 to 2002, appointed an unqualified woman named Beverly Harvard as Police Chief during his tenure. Beverly’s qualifications? She had been the driver and administrative assistant to the former Atlanta police chief. Her entire term of service was a joke, and Atlantans looked forward to laughing their way through any news conference in which Ms. Harvard participated due to inability to clearly speak the King’s English.

Meanwhile, Fulton County Sheriff Jacquelyn Barrett, another Bill Campbell cohort, was elected to run the Sheriff’s department and Atlanta Jail from 1993 until she was defeated last in last November’s elections.

Barrett was defeated because of her own incompetence and numerous scandals relating to the construction and operation of the new Atlanta Fulton County jail. Besides being unable to keep the inmates locked securely inside (she allowed a dozen people to escape or be mistakenly released in 2003,) she also had trouble keeping people from outside from getting in, as in when a video crew was allowed inside the jail to film a rap video for inmate rapper T.I. last year. Some of the guards were even in the video.

Needless to say moral and discipline were in the toilet when an imminently qualified gentleman named Myron Freeman took office as the new Fulton County Sheriff this past January. Unfortunately, Mr. Freeman hasn’t had enough time in office to make improvements in the jail or in inmate handling procedures relating to the courts and the City of Atlanta has suffered a tragedy as a result.

Today the Fulton County Sheriff’s department allowed Brian Nichols, a violent rape suspect who had previously been found with two homemade knives in his shoes, to steal a gun from a female deputy and shoot four people in the courthouse, escaping down through eight floors of the building and onto the streets of Atlanta.

First things first, the Sheriff’s department has lost control of the Atlanta jail which they are charged with operating, supplying administrative staff and guards in the facility. As I stated earlier, they can’t keep the inmates in and the rap video crews out. Inmate violence is rampant and somebody is making knives and the guards and deputies are letting the inmates to walk out of jail and into courtrooms with sharp instruments in their shoes. They left a lone woman deputy to guard an unshackled 6’-1”, 200 pound rape suspect who had been caught with weapons before? That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?


Next, how the heck did this guy get off the eighth floor of the courthouse and onto the street without having to pass more than one other deputy? The one that he did see he killed, but I would expect the courthouse to be literally teaming with law enforcement personnel.

Finally, there is a thing known as a “magnetic safety trigger” made by Magna-Trigger that numerous security and law enforcement officers use when in close contact with inmates in places you don’t want a gun getting loose in—places like jails and courthouses.

When the device is installed in a Smith and Wesson handgun, the gun will not fire unless the user wears a magnetic ring on their trigger finger. Similar magnetic devices are available for other gun brands like the Colt Maglock.

What a neat idea, huh? Make the guns in courthouses useless except to the deputies.

Of course the conversion costs money, between $200 to $300 per gun, but with three people dead and one wounded, the $6200 it would cost to modify 20 guns seems to me to be a small price to pay.

Hopefully this is a wake up call for law enforcement everywhere to look at their security efforts and possibly employ some technology to make things a little safer for everyone involved.