Pandemic backlog blamed Georgia crime wave

The partial shutdown of Georgia’s judicial system during the coronavirus pandemic is adding to the crime wave that has ravaged Atlanta and other cities, a state attorney representative said Tuesday.

“We need to get our courts going,” Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Georgia Attorney General, told members of a legislative committee. “If we get COVID under control, the prisons can stay longer.”

Georgia House of Representatives Speaker David Ralston asked the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee last spring to hold hearings this summer to investigate what is behind a surge in violent crime across the state, particularly in and around Atlanta and look for solutions.

A wave of crime that began in Atlanta and other major US cities in the first few months of the pandemic last year picked up pace this year. Governor Brian Kemp responded in April by forming an inter-agency crime-fighting division to work with local law enforcement agencies to address the worrying trend.

Col. Chris Wright, commissioner for the Georgia Department of Public Safety, told the committee Tuesday that the unit was making progress.

Since April, the unit’s members have passed 10,953 traffic checks, resulting in 7,618 citations, he said. They have made 285 arrests for drinking and driving and 207 for reckless driving, while arresting 188 people with arrest warrants, including 11 murder suspects, he said.

Wright said the agency’s board of directors voted last week to make the Crime Suppression Unit permanent and assign 10 state troopers to the unit’s full-time service in Metro Atlanta.

But Skandalakis said there was a limit to law enforcement to combat violent crimes when a lack of indictments and jury trials resulted in a backlog of pending criminal cases. The backlog is causing prisons to overflow with suspects awaiting trial, forcing authorities to bail repeat offenders charged with violent crimes, he said.

“We cannot stop ourselves from the problems that are occurring today,” he said. “With the pandemic, we had a perfect storm of repeat offenders with access to firearms.”

Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, said the delay in law enforcement was fueling a lack of accountability in the criminal justice system.

“That creates a general disrespect,” he said. “A lot of people think that their actions have no consequences.”

But there have been some successes. Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant testified Tuesday that gun violence in the city had decreased after his department, in partnership with the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, launched Operation Phoenix, which targeted the most violent perpetrators.

Another anti-crime initiative near nightclubs has also paid off, Bryant said.

“We have started to see the level of violence, especially in downtown and Buckhead,” he said.

Several witnesses who appeared before the committee Tuesday said more government funding would help recruit more prosecutors and law enforcement officers.

Kemp recently pledged up to $ 7 million from the governor’s emergency fund to help fund the Crime Suppression Unit.

Ralston has proposed $ 75 million to strengthen law enforcement and mental health services in Georgia.

Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who chairs the state’s Senate, is calling for a $ 250 million tax credit to raise funds to help fight crime.

This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Capitol Beat News Service.