Atlanta, Wednesday, May 16, 2012 – The Atlanta Police Foundation will host the seventh
annual A Night in Blue Gala on Saturday, May 19, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in
Downtown Atlanta. The prominent event honors the men and women of the Atlanta Police
Department and their impact on public safety.

“The Night in Blue Gala is our signature annual event and has become a staple in Atlanta,” said
Dave Wilkinson, President and CEO of the Atlanta Police Foundation. “We are delighted to have
Mayor Kasim Reed serve as the event’s Honorary Chair, Whitney and Brian Leary as Event
Chairs and Sharon James Jordan as Auction Chair. Their work and leadership will help raise
more than $400,000 for several key programs like Crime Stoppers, Housing, Mounted Patrol
and Training.”

The gala attracts more than 800 supporters and partners, including APD officers and local civic
and business leaders. At this year’s event, Mayor Kasim Reed, Atlanta Police Chief George
Turner and Atlanta Police Foundation President Dave Wilkinson will pay special honors to the
Loudermilk Family for their contributions and support of public safety in Atlanta.

“Major crimes are down more than 36 percent since the Foundation was established in 2003
and this is the safest the City has been since 1969,” Said Police Chief George Turner. “These
results are a product of the hard work of the men and women of the Atlanta Police
Department, as well as the leadership and support of Mayor Reed, City officials and our
business and community partners. We are thankful the Foundation hosts this annual event to
celebrate our hard work and achievements in creating a safer city.”

Highlights of the evening include dinner and dancing to the music of Yacht Rock, silent and live
auctions that include a trip for six on a luxury yacht and several domestic and international trips
compliments of Delta Air Lines, and a special tribute to fallen officer Gail Thomas, who tragically
lost her life while answering the call to protect the citizens of Atlanta. Proceeds from the silent
and live auctions will benefit the Crime Stoppers reward fund.

A Night in Blue Gala
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Hyatt Regency Hotel
6:30 pm ‐ 11:00 pm

For more information or to purchase tickets visit, www.atlantapolicefoundation.org.
The Atlanta Police Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non‐profit organization charged with mobilizing the
community in support of public safety and funding strategic programs that impact crime
reduction, drive the Atlanta Police Department to be a best‐in‐class police force and move
Atlanta towards becoming the safest large city in the nation.
2012 Night in Blue Gala Sponsors:

Presenting Sponsors

Target Corporation
Chief Sponsors
Aaron’s, Inc.
Delta Air Lines
United Parcel Service
Deputy Chief Sponsor
Lanier Parking Solutions
Major Sponsors
Alston & Bird LLP
The Coca‐Cola Company
Tyler Perry Studios
Captain Sponsors
AT&T
Atlanta Falcons
Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Bold American Events and Design
Cox Enterprises, Inc.
Ernst & Young
Invesco
KPMG
National Distributing Company
Novelis
Turner Broadcasting Systems, Inc.

By Louis Mayeux 

The Buckhead Community Improvement District has joined other business organizations in stepping up support for the 2012 transportation tax referendum.

At its June meeting this week, the Buckhead CID board approved a $175,000 contribution to the Metropolitan Atlanta Voter Education Network (MAVEN), formed to support the proposed 1-cent sales tax to fund transportation projects in metro Atlanta.The expenditure brings the Buckhead CID’s total contribution for the referendum to $200,000.

Michael E. Paris, president and CEO of the Council for Quality Growth, and Bob Voyles, CEO of the Seven Oaks Corp., appeared before the Buckhead CID board to request the funding. They said that other metro area CID boards had approved up to $300,000 for the voter education effort. In addition to the education campaign, corporate funds are being sought for an “advocacy” campaign for the referendum.

The transportation tax, approved by the General Assembly with passage of the Transportation Investment Act, is projected to raise nearly $8 billion for regional transportation projects. The Atlanta Regional Transportation Roundtable, formed by the Atlanta Regional Commission, is now in the process of determining which projects will be submitted to voters. Here is a link to the roundtable’s web site.

Paris told the board that the business community sees approval of the transportation tax as vital to the metro area’s continued growth. He said that traffic congestion is crippling the metro area’s efforts to attract new jobs.

Buckhead CID Chief Executive Director Jim Durrett told the board “I think this is the most important effort for us. If this fails, we all are going to see a significant setback. Everything the CIDs have been working for is at risk.” He said the tax represents the biggest metro investment in infrastructure in years.

Board Chairman David Allman after the vote said of the MAVEN education and advocacy effort, “I think it is critical,” adding that he sees the education component as “the higher of the two.”

The CID board also agreed to be the lead agency in working with the Atlanta Police Foundation’s campaign to link private video surveillance cameras in Buckhead with the Atlanta Police Department’s video integration center downtown. The move would allow police to monitor video cameras in businesses.

Police Foundation CEO Dave Wilkinson appeared before the board to give details of the video camera effort, which would also add 16 video cameras in Buckhead, two of them outside of the CID boundaries.

The board also agreed to contribute $60,0000 over two years for Wilkinson’s effort to give police officers incentives to live in the city of Atlanta. The money would be used to help police officers find housing in Buckhead.

By Ernie Suggs

Atlanta police officer Antonio Matos and his family chose five years ago to live in Dacula rather than Atlanta for Gwinnett County’s award-winning school system and its lower cost of living.

But a divorce earlier this year meant Matos needed a new place to stay — and that’s more likely to be inside Atlanta city limits because of a program sponsored by the Atlanta Police Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the police department.

The foundation just revamped a housing program in the hopes of luring officers like Matos inside city limits.

“Hopefully, I can get one of these foreclosures,” Matos, 44, said.

Matos, a former Milwaukee police officer, is living in an apartment near Turner Field, in Atlanta, temporarily. But he wants to buy a place in the spring or summer, and the police foundation wants to keep him close.

“It’s a critical part of our strategy to create a safer city — to have police officers living in the city,” said Dave Wilkinson, the foundation’s president and CEO.

Wilkinson’s plan is simple: More officers living in Atlanta increases police visibility and helps deter crime. It also gives officers an emotional investment in the city and makes them less likely to leave for police jobs in the suburbs, he said.

The concept isn’t new. Other cities have struggled with the same issue: Urban living is often prohibitively expensive on a police officer’s salary.

Only 22 percent of Atlanta police officers live within city limits, according to the police foundation. The top reasons officers prefer the suburbs over city life, the foundation said: safety concerns, cost of living and the quality of schools.

Apartment complex owner Brent Sobol says he’d jump at the chance to have officers living in either of the two complexes he owns in southwest Atlanta.

“I think this is one of the best programs I’ve seen in a long time,” said Sobol, who sits on the foundation’s housing committee. “Why? Because it’s easy to do and everybody wins.”

The police foundation had a housing program for officers in 2006-08, but it focused largely on down payment assistance for homebuyers.

This time, the program will have a “comprehensive menu” for officers in all stages of their lives, said Stephanie Cruse, the housing program manager. The program has a $77,000 budget for 2011, all of which comes from community donations.

The foundation is offering $1,000 bonuses for officers to relocate to the city.

But other choices will be offered: short-term city housing for recruits while they’re in training; rent-free and rent-discounted apartments in exchange for officers providing security while off duty; discounts on home purchases; and reduced interest rates on home loans.

The foundation will work with landlords, community groups, developers and banks to offer the incentives.

While the foundation wants options for all officers, its strategy is to focus on new recruits.

Recruits are less likely than police veterans to have put down roots. Single or married, they are generally not yet parents, Wilkinson said.

“The goal is to engage and cultivate a housing relationship from the very beginning of the application process,” Cruse said.

The timing of the housing program appears ideal. Atlanta police are on a major hiring push, planning to hire 900 officers over a three-year span.

Officer Glenn Cross, 28, finished the police academy in October. He heard about the $1,000 relocation bonus recently and applied for it.

“I thought there was a catch,” said Cross, originally from Stone Mountain. “I couldn’t understand why I could get $1,000 just for moving into the city.”

Matos, the Milwaukee transplant, said he’s hoping to buy a house in the Grant Park area, where he is currently assigned to patrol. From his apartment near Turner Field, he can walk to work. He doesn’t want to go back to his 45-mile commute to Dacula.

“The closer to work, the better,” he said.

A stream of seemingly random and senseless violent acts in Atlanta this year have stoked fears and increased perceptions of runaway crime, putting public safety at the top of this fall’s mayoral campaign agenda.

The Atlanta Police Foundation has worked since its founding in 2002 to improve public safety by raising private money to support programs designed to increase the retention, training and overall strength of the city’s police force. We believe that any discussion of improving public safety in Atlanta must begin and end with boosting the number of police officers — whether it’s those on routine patrols or assigned to specialized units.

Any suggestion that the department’s staffing problems result from a misallocation of personnel is simplistic and short-sighted. The department has many missions; all need sufficient personnel. Here are six priorities for the next mayor and City Council.

Increase police visibility. More police on the streets reduces crime. The police force needs to be increased to 2,000 officers by 2012 and 2,300 by 2014. (Current size is 1,675.) More officers enable the police to saturate criminal “hot spots”; improve public perception; focus specialty units on drugs, gangs and other organized crime; better enforce code violations; prepare for emergencies; and improve their own morale and safety.

The mayor and City Council should increase the uniformed officers of the APD to levels warranted by a city of our size.

Stem attrition. Retain current officers and improve morale by increasing starting pay, ensuring pay raises, replacing outdated vehicles and equipment, implementing an effective career ladder and creating incentives to encourage officers to live within the city limits. The mayor and council should also commit now to increasing the force of uniformed officers. Improved retention and morale will lead to a force that is prouder and more invested in its communities.

Increase effectiveness. Work with the Atlanta Police Foundation, local businesses and others to ensure Atlanta has the best research, training and strategies in law enforcement. The foundation’s relationship with the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance can ensure that the best practices for police training, narcotics investigations, leadership and progressive community policing are made available to the APD.

Select the right chief. The mayor must attract a hands-on and proactive chief to focus on crime prevention and perception, emergency preparedness and officer morale. The next chief should also possess strong leadership skills with an eye for the “big picture.”

Communicate broadly, and often. The mayor and public safety leaders must maintain a steady dialogue with the community, helping to ease concerns and lay out a plan of action. Our 24/7, wired world demands effective, comprehensive and transparent communications.

Invest in crime-fighting technology. Establish collaborative video surveillance and radio channel networks with neighboring police departments and area businesses. Real-time communications through a program known as Operation Shield can enable a “force multiplier,” serving as extra eyes and ears to nab criminals.

We’re at a critical juncture. City leaders must move swiftly and decisively or risk higher crime rates. The Atlanta Police Foundation stands ready to help.

Dave Wilkinson is president and CEO of the Atlanta Police Foundation.

ATLANTA (MyFOX ATLANTA) – Surveillance cameras have popped up all over the metro Atlanta area. Just in the past couple of months, Mechanicsville, College Park, Decatur, and Piedmont Park have decided to install cameras in an effort to fight crime. Now, Atlanta is looking at the bigger picture and will possibly connect all the cameras together to watch out for residents 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

In Jack Bauer’s world on the FOX show, “24,” surveillance cameras track the bad guys effortlessly almost anywhere in the world.

The concept offers great entertainment on television, but it may not be as far-fetched an idea as one might think.

In downtown Atlanta cameras watch people from every angle, all the time.

“Right now, downtown and midtown areas are saturated with cameras. There are over 2,000 cameras in downtown alone,” said Dave Wilkinson, head of the Atlanta Police Foundation.

More cameras may be on the way.

Wilkinson said he wants to see more cameras that are all connected together and blanketing the city.

“Create a mesh network in which all existing private sector and public sector cameras are integrated into one video network that would be monitored at the 911 center,” said Wilkinson.

The overall surveillance plan calls for a series of cameras that are all connected and all in sync. So the cameras would be able to see someone walking out of a business, and then one by one the cameras could pick up that person’s motion as they walk down the street.

Police said the system would be ideal for tracking a suspect on the run.

“If a [situation such as the Brian Nichols case] occurred, the cameras would train onto [the] individual [and] trade off from camera to camera as [the] suspect moved throughout city,” Wilkinson said.

In midtown, the first cameras went up in 2005. That area of the city now has 41 cameras, which are monitored 24 hours a day by off-duty Atlanta police officers inside the midtown public safety headquarters.

Colonel Wayne Mock said Atlanta police have proof that the cameras help solve crimes.

“We have 41 cameras up with a little over 700 arrests. Everything from illegally parked cars, to bank robberies, entering autos, theft by taking, vice related issues, a little bit of everything,” Mock said. “Our conviction rate is 100 percent. We’ve never lost a case with a camera arrest.”

According to Atlanta police, the cameras have been shown to deter crime. When Buckhead first installed cameras in the bar district in 2004, things changed.

“Crime went down 34 percent,” said Major James Sellers.

Only about 40 of the 161 Buckhead cameras are still operational, but there are plans to bring new and updated cameras back to the area.

“In these economic times, you can’t have a police officer on every corner, or even a security person on every corner, but you can have police and security and cameras and put together a nice security package,” said Maj. Sellers.

There is a hefty price tag associated with the cameras. The Atlanta police foundation estimates that it could cost $10 million just to get the program off the ground. Wilkinson said eventually the network would include the Georgia Tech area, Piedmont Park and even tie in DOT cameras which could cost millions of dollars more.

Wilkinson insists the system would be worth every penny.

“The cameras are there, folks are already walking by these camera and suspects are already walking by these cameras. Just think about the deterrent factor once the bad guys know we have a sophisticated, integrated video surveillance network. They may think about going to another city to commit their crime and that’s our goal,” Wilkinson said.

Atlanta was turned down for a $13 million federal grant for the cameras a couple of months ago, but Wilkinson said the city is looking at other federal grants.

Wilkinson said both the mayor and the police chief are behind the system and he is confident the city will find the money, even if the city puts up the first million and businesses putting up the rest.

Mayor Kasim Reed’s commitment to public safety and the impending announcement of a new police chief are giving us renewed optimism for the Atlanta Police Department to turn a major corner.

The city has a chance to roll back years of high officer attrition rates, job furloughs, pay freezes, lack of promotions and other morale-busters — and let police commanders and officers get down to the true business of fighting crime.

But a $48 million shortfall in the city budget is threatening to put a damper on those high hopes. We can’t let that happen.

Mayor Reed has proposed adding 100 new Atlanta Police Department officers to the fiscal year 2011 budget, which the City Council will vote on June 21. The mayor has also proposed a 3.5 percent salary increase for officers, those who put their lives on the line to keep peace and confront outlaws every day in our great city.

The Atlanta Police Foundation believes those are two good steps toward keeping our status as the South’s premier city and keeping our residents, workers and visitors safe.

We believe it boils down to two simple facts, borne out by studies conducted on behalf of the Police Foundation and shared with Mayor Reed upon his election:

Police visibility is a key factor in reducing crime. The city of Atlanta is losing more police officers, on average, during a typical year than other large departments.

So, getting more officers on the street — and more importantly, keeping them there — is essential.

On average, 83 officers resign from the APD every year, a rate of roughly 9.1 percent over the last few years. The national average is between 5 percent and 7 percent.

In 2007, that number was 121, and in 2008, 85 left for reasons other than retirement. In exit interview data, 73 percent who left from 2006 to 2008 cited pay as the most compelling reason for leaving the department.

Atlanta police officers are highly sought after for their excellent training, skill and big-city experience. With new municipalities such as Dunwoody, Milton, Sandy Springs and others formed in recent years, those new police forces and other local and federal agencies are able to lure APD officers away with higher pay and benefits.

Some City Council members are understandably concerned about the city’s difficult financial picture, and have already expressed a reluctance to offer raises to police officers, while not to other city workers.

Big-city budget problems are real, particularly in these difficult economic times, and should not be shrugged off lightly. But budget-cutting on the backs of our men and women in blue has consequences that are easily measured in the form of increased crime.

The city has largely benefited from improved policing and a national drop in crime in recent decades. Still, city residents felt the sting of random violent acts in 2009 that shook our conscience, and property crimes were up slightly. It’s simply not good enough to sit still. We must act now to make the Atlanta Police Department the greatest force in the nation.

The Atlanta Police Foundation is doing its part. We’ve committed $2.4 million this year to improving the police department, including the launch of a Web site to streamline the recruit hiring process, joinatlantapd.org.

We can’t do it alone. City Council members need to hear from residents, business owners and other constituents that public safety just can’t be sacrificed this time. Fund the Atlanta Police Department properly, and let’s hire and keep the best of the best.

Dave Wilkinson is president and CEO of the Atlanta Police Foundation.

In part ceremony, part promotion, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed officially removed the “interim” from George Turner’s title by naming him the new Atlanta Police Chief.

But the interim tag was crucial in Reed’s decision. The mayor said that since he appointed Turner to temporarily hold the office in January, the performance and morale of the police department has been markedly improved.

Overall crime is down 14 percent and violent crimes are down 22.7 percent over the last six months, Reed said.

“We don’t have time to lose,” Reed said at a news conference this morning. “We do not have the luxury of waiting for a new chief to come in and learn about the issues that most concern our residents. Chief Turner knows the city’s neighborhoods and the people who live in them. The results we are seeing suggest we are moving in the right direction and I want to build on the progress we have made. To disrupt that momentum would not be in the best interest of the city.”

Turner, who has been at the APD for 29 years, said his goal is to keep improving the department, making it a model for the country.

“We’ve had tremendous success thus far. We have done a tremendous job over the past six months,” Turner said. “Our goal and mission is to reduce crime and improve the quality of life. This is my hometown and I will work diligently to drive our APD to be the best police department it could be.”

Mayor Kasim Reed has picked a native son of Atlanta who has steadily risen up through the ranks to lead the city’s police force.

At a news conference this morning, Reed will recommend his interim police chief, George Turner, to be the next chief of the Atlanta Police Department. Turner’s nomination must be confirmed by the Atlanta City Council.

“What matters to me are results,” Reed told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I think you can certainly demonstrate in a powerful fashion that during the time he’s been interim chief the results are concrete and undeniable.”

Turner was elated after learning the news late Thursday.

“I’m so excited about the opportunity to continue to serve,” Turner said. “I’m just extremely humbled by this chance to serve the citizens of this city and work with the men and women in blue.”

During last year’s campaign, Reed made public safety his top priority and said his preference was to hire from within the APD. But he has also said Atlanta candidates had to compete against outsiders in a nationwide search for the city’s next “super cop.”

The mayor’s office enlisted an executive search firm and appointed a search committee. But when all was said and done, Reed found his chief in Atlanta. In January, the mayor had appeared to give Turner a leg up on any competition when he named him interim police chief.

Turner made the most of the opportunity, Reed said, citing Turner’s results while heading the department.

Naming a longtime APD veteran like Turner also sends a good message to the men and women who are recruited to the Atlanta police force, the mayor said. “It tells them one day they’ll have the opportunity to lead,” he said.

Reed said his search brought “very strong candidates” into consideration. But the mayor noted that every candidate from outside Atlanta told him he would need an initial 90 to 120 days to assess the situation at the APD before presenting an action plan.

Reed said he did not find that unreasonable. “But in my administration, there is an urgency to turning the tide of violence in the city,” he said. “We don’t have time to wait. We just don’t have time for any good candidate to learn this city.”

Turner won the recommendation over two other finalists — Cecil L. Alexander, director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, and Robert Crump White, chief of the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky.

Turner, who enjoyed the support of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, the city’s largest police union, has not acted like a caretaker during his time as interim chief.

On his first full day on the job, Turner shook up the APD’s command structure, reassigning a number of high-ranking officers. He has also gone out of his way to mingle with the rank and file and make appearances in the community. That’s in contrast to former APD Chief Richard Pennington, who was widely criticized at the end of his tenure as being aloof and disengaged.

More recently, Turner persuaded the City Council’s public safety committee to approve a proposal to reinstate the position of captain in the Police Department. Last month, he fired two veteran officers and punished several others for their roles in the 2006 shooting death of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston in an illegal drug raid. He said the firings signaled that dirty cops had no place in Atlanta.

During the first four months of this year, crime dropped by 14 percent when compared with the same period a year ago, according to FBI-certified crime statistics. This includes a 22 percent decrease in violent crimes and a 12 percent drop in property crimes.

The APD also began an aggressive recruiting campaign, hiring 147 officers in collaboration with the Atlanta Police Foundation during the first six months of 2010. The APD hired just 35 officers during the first six months of 2009 and 80 during the same time period in 2008. In January, according to the APD, the department had more than 100 vacant positions. At the end of June, there were 26 vacancies.

Just last week, when the City Council passed its budget, it approved a 3.2 percent pay hike for police officers and paved the way for the department to hire 100 officers over the next year.

Turner, a Grady baby, grew up in Perry Homes, one of Atlanta’s first housing projects. He attended the city’s public schools. His childhood dream was to be a pro football player, and he starred as a cornerback at Clark College, now Clark Atlanta University.

But when no pro teams asked him to sign up, Turner had to find a job. In 1981, he joined the APD and since then has worked his way up through the ranks.

He served as then-Mayor Andrew Young’s driver on a security detail, oversaw the human resources section, headed the recruitment unit and commanded the Zone 1 precinct in northwest Atlanta.

Before being named interim chief, Turner was deputy chief of the APD’s Support Services Division. The job included managing the department’s $160 million budget and overseeing recruitment, training and the APD’s troubled communication system.

After being named interim chief, Turner said his priorities were to target gang violence and aggressive panhandlers, hire more officers and continue to improve the APD’s 911 call center.

The two candidates leading the polls in the Atlanta mayoral race defended themselves Sunday night against criticism that they bear some responsibility for the city’s current crime problems.

During the campaign’s first televised debate, City Council President Lisa Borders and Councilwoman Mary Norwood answered pointed questions from candidates Kasim Reed and Jesse Spikes and the debate panelists regarding the council’s vote in June 2008 against Mayor Shirley Franklin’s property tax increase. That vote led to the city furloughing police officers late last year through the first half of this year.

The council this past June voted to raise taxes at a higher rate than Franklin originally proposed in 2008.

Borders said she didn’t support the tax increase in 2008 because she thought city government was too bloated. She added that then-Chief Financial Officer Janice Davis rejected her suggestion to re-amortize the city’s pension plans to save money that year.

Norwood reiterated her concern that she did not trust the budget numbers from the city’s finance department, several times describing what she called “Enron-type of accounting” from City Hall.

Borders said Norwood, who did not vote for this year’s tax increase, was absent from budget discussions.

“I knew what was going on,” said Norwood, who is leading the polls. “I did not get the information that the city was going to be right-sized.”

The debate was sponsored by the Atlanta Police Foundation. The four invited candidates were selected based on polling data, fund-raising and other factors. At least three other candidates are also running for mayor.

Sunday’s jabs weren’t directed solely toward Borders and Norwood. Spikes, the only candidate at the debate who has never held elected office, accused the other candidates of failed leadership for their inability for get help for the city from state government.

“You must be pretty good from the cheap seats,” said Reed, a former state senator.

City Council President Lisa Borders

Borders touted her recent endorsement by the union representing about 1,100 Atlanta police officers as evidence she is the best candidate.

She also suggested she has connections at the White House. Borders argued she will get more federal funding for her initiatives, saying she was the first municipal elected official to endorse President Barack Obama.

“I think he remembers my name,” she said.

Borders said she would support a public-private partnership to run the city’s jail, which is consistently over budget. She mentioned an “intercollegiate” public safety plan to have officers patrolling local college campuses to better work with Atlanta police.

Borders argued she’s the only candidate with specific plans to pay for improved public safety.

City Councilwoman Mary Norwood

The candidate focused largely on her message of improving safety, but seemed to suggest Borders is too closely connected to the Franklin administration when she asked Borders for three instances when she differed from the mayor.

Norwood said she’d bring a “multi-faceted” approach to public safety that includes keeping more officers on the force, better code enforcement and keeping repeat offenders in jail.

“This cat-and-mouse game will not suffice,” she said.

The councilwoman said she’d hire a police chief from within the department, remove the city’s 911 operations from the police department and expand video surveillance to college campuses to ensure student safety.

Former state senator Kasim Reed

Reed said the council’s actions in 2008 helped create several problems, such as the furlough situation and the closing of nearly two dozen recreation centers.

During the question-and-answer portion, Reed attempted to grill Borders on what proposals she offered last year to avert the furloughs.

Reed said he would use more money from the property tax increase approved by the City Council in June to pay for public safety improvements.

“That’s how you turn the tide [to reduce crime],” said Reed.

The candidate said he would review city contracts, cut the Information Technology budget and cut overtime to fund some of his ideas, which includes hiring 750 officers during his first term.

Reed said he would act cautiously on privatizing more city services, noting the failed effort several years ago to hire a private company to manage Atlanta’s water and sewer system programs.

Jesse Spikes, partner, McKenna, Long & Aldridge

Spikes took the offensive against the other three candidates, arguing they are part of the politics-as-usual system that hasn’t produced results.

“Promises, promises, promises, but show me the money,” Spikes said after listening to the other candidates’ responses for keeping police officers from leaving the force.

The candidate said he supports creating a public safety commissioner position that would focus on obtaining grants and other sorts of funding for the police department.

Spikes said the city must “close” up college campuses in the city to improve their safety. Spikes said he’d encourage more residents to get involved in Neighborhood Watch programs.

First they used pagers. Then, cellphones.

Now gangsters and other criminals are using Facebook and Twitter, and the police are chasing them online.

In Atlanta, detectives scribble down gang tags scrawled on walls then search social networking sites for anyone posting under that tag. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation spotted pornographic photos of children that were posted on Facebook, leading to an arrest. And in Cobb County, investigators department-wide have incorporated online social networks into their daily routines, said Sgt. Dana Pierce, a police department spokesman.

“When a detective has a person in their sights,” Pierce told the AJC, “one of the first things they do before they hit the road is look for them on Facebook, or any other tools that are out there.”

Pierce said criminals, such as unwitting gang members, will sometimes post information that can help with an investigation. While not essential to a case, the details can reassure detectives that they’re following the right suspect.

“There’s not the detail there that would allow one to get a conviction,” Pierce said. “But it tells us what’s going on.”

Even rural counties are plugging in. The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office uses Facebook to learn about subjects in missing person cases, for instance.

“If we have a missing teenager, we’ll go to their Facebook page,” Lt. Jay Baker told the AJC.

On Thursday, Crime Stoppers Atlanta got into the game, integrating Facebook and Twitter into its Web site. Now, with a few clicks, people can add a photo of a wanted suspect to their Facebook page and spread the word to their friends. They can also send anonymous tips to Crime Stoppers, which is funded by the Atlanta Police Foundation. And authorities can spread warnings about dangerous suspects on the lam.

The idea is to make it easy for residents to communicate with police, Miguel Sepulveda, the Atlanta Crime Stopper’s director, told the AJC. “The reality is that most people nowadays, especially the age group we are targeting, are on Facebook and using these tools.”

Lt. Byron K. Martin, the Atlanta Police Department’s Homeland Security commander, said online social networks have helped police keep pace with a changing society. When Martin started on the police force a quarter century ago, he was assigned a walking beat. He gained the confidence of people he met on his daily rounds, and some of them became tipsters. But these days, the people committing crimes don’t necessarily live on the block, and the residents don’t necessarily know them, he said. Increasingly, the criminals are just passing through.

“It would be very difficult to police that way now,” he said. “It’s a lot more transient and a lot more hi-tech.” He said evidence like gang tags on a wall can become a doorway to more information on the Web. Enter the tag — which is a kind of pseudonym or handle — into a social networking site, and you may find a wealth of information, he said.

“Not that we would use it as evidence, but we would use it as case-building,” Martin said.

The new technology can also help with crowd control. Martin said the Web service Twitter came in handy during the recent effort to resurrect the Freaknik party — a sprawling and rowdy car-based event that, in its prime over a decade ago, would lock down Atlanta streets for days on end.

Officers monitored postings on Twitter to track the location and nature of spontaneous gatherings, Martin said. “It helped us develop intelligence about what was going on and what our response needed to be.”

John Whitaker, the special agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s hi-tech unit, said social networking is still in its infancy as a policing tool.

Each year, the GBI charges more than a hundred people with child pornography, a major focus of the hi-tech unit. Most of these cases are made with the help of older Web sites, such as Craigslist, peer-to-peer networking sites or internet chat rooms, Whitaker said.

But recently the GBI used Facebook to make an arrest after a suspect actually posted pornographic pictures online, Whitaker said.

The GBI tried to use Facebook to build another case, but never made an arrest because the suspect, who was involved in chats with undercover officers, didn’t quite cross the line into soliciting sex, Whitaker said.

It’s unclear whether online social networks will become more useful to police in coming years, or whether they’re a fad that will fade away.

But one thing is clear: police are paying attention. Within the past year, the GBI held a seminar for local investigators across Georgia who wanted to learn how to use MySpace in their detective work.

There was seating for 60. And, said Whitaker, “it was completely full. We filled up every seat.”