News
Conversation with Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens (Part 1 of 3)
1. What is your highest priority as Mayor of Atlanta?
The safety of our city’s residents and visitors are always my top priority. I start every morning with a phone call with Interim Police Chief Schierbaum to review the activities to stay up to date on what’s happening in our city and discuss long-term trends.
Since I took office in January, we have been prioritizing public safety activities that have meaningful impacts on violent and property crime. I announced our goal to hire 250 police officers this year, and we are on the way to doing just that. I recently announced retention bonuses for all our uniformed personnel, so that Atlanta holds onto our highly trained police force. We’ve started up a Repeat Offenders Task Force to keep career criminals off our streets. We are working closely with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to put violent gang leaders into prison.
Just as important as catching criminals and holding them responsible is preventing crime in the first place. Part of that solution is making sure young people have other opportunities. My Administration has sponsored Midnight Basketball, which has had a direct positive impact on crime in the neighborhoods where it’s played. We also launched an initiative to hire 3,000 young people across the city of Atlanta, through both City jobs and with our private sector partners.
I am excited that we’ve seen substantial progress in Buckhead in particular. So far this year, crime in APD’s Zone 2, which includes Buckhead, is down 12 percent compared to last year at this time. And we have just opened our new field precinct in Buckhead, where officers have already begun increased walking and bike patrols. In Lenox Mall and Phipps Plaza, which see an average of 1M-1.5M visitors each month, there were zero violent crimes reported in April, May and June.