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Atlanta mayor Keisha Bottoms is dedicated to lowering crimes rates in the city. Bottoms, along with her Anti-Violence Advisory Council, unveiled a plan to City Hall last week that would include her creating a violence reduction office to enforce crime reduction strategies, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Bottoms’ plan for a safer Atlanta included hiring 250 more police officers before July 2022, providing crime-ridden areas with local security officers, installing 250 more security cameras before this year’s end, tracking violent repeat offenders, adding 10,000 more streetlights by December 2022, installing more cameras across the city, property development and invest in mental health services with the creation of youth councils and partnerships with faith leaders. The council said these changes would require a whopping $70 million investment.
“Because our state was open, and there were many people coming into our city, we were starting to see an uptick in crime before many other major cities, and unfortunately what we saw was just not something happening in Atlanta,” Bottoms said according to the AJC.
It’s reported that Atlanta homicides spiked up 60% in 2021. In 2020, police investigated a total of 157 murders, more than they have in the past two decades. The increase in crime is related to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The police force also lost 200 officers in 2020.
Bottoms is hoping to put this plan into motion before she leaves office this year. In May, she announced that she was not going to run for re-election.
“My love for the city was the love planted in my heart moments before I was formed in my mother’s womb,” Bottoms said during a press conference. “In the same way that it was very clear to me almost five years ago that I should run for mayor of Atlanta, it is abundantly clear to me today that it is time to pass the baton on to someone else.”
