Zone 2 Commander Sees Benefits in Expansion

Zone 2 commander Robert L. Browning says the planned reconfiguration of Atlanta's police beats will improve response times in Buckhead.

Under the plan proposed by Police Chief George N. Turner,  , which includes Buckhead, would grow by three beats, including the Cheshire Bridge and Morningside areas.  Zone 2, which included those areas before the last configuation, would acquire them from Zone 6.

Under the plan,  Zone 2, the city's largest, would grow from 36.1 to 39.5 square miles, with 13 beats. The ratio of square miles per officer would drop from 3.6 to 3.0, but still by far the largest in the city.

Zone 2 will receive 15 additional officers to patrol the beats, which Browning said matches the standard of five officers per beat set by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

"We'll get the people to handle it," he said. "It's not that we're going to be spread thin and can't handle it."

Browning said the changes will go into effect "probably early to late spring, if we can get the people in there." He said that the new officers have to be recruited and go through the Atlanta Police Academy before they begin patrols. It might be June before the plan takes effect, he said.

The reconfiguation is part of a plan to add 12 beats of smaller dimensions and 60 more officers across the city, following the Atlanta City Council's approval of 100 additional officers for the Atlanta Police Department.

"By adding more people, we can increase our response time," Browning said. "The reconfiguation is going to be a better way to serve the public, to get police officers to calls quicker."

Under the new system, a beat with less activity can respond to help out one with a higher number of incidents,  Browning said.

"If one beat in a zone is really, really busy, one can take up the slack from another."

District 8 city council member Yolanda Adrean and District 7 member Howard Shook, who represent Buckhead,  are calling for Turner to give more manpower to Zone 2 for the additional areas.

"Zone 2 still needs more resources," Adrean told the Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods at its December meeting. "The plan is for 15 officers. We want 20. Instead of three cars, we want five, six or seven, and two more detectives."

The plan is being considered by the Atlanta City Council's Public Safety Committee and will be voted on by the entire city council.

"It's still being vetted," Adrean said. "It won't take take effect until late spring, so there'll be time."

Adrean expressed a frequent concern heard in Buckhead that the Cheshire Bridge area's strip clubs and sex shops are a crime magnet that will overburden police resources.

However, Browning said he doesn't see Cheshire Bridge as an unusually difficult area. "I don't know that theres's the problem everybody perceives over there. We're going to have the people to deal with it."

The beat redesign plan, led by Assistant Chief Peter Andresen, was based on  a study of a variety of data, including the number of 911 calls responded to in an area, Browning said. 

Adrean suggested at the November meeting that Buekhead showed a low incidence of 911 calls because its neighborhoods have a large number of private security firms to handle problems and "that dampens 911 calls."  She urged constituents to begin calling 911 when problems occur to boost its statistics in redrawing the police zones.