For the second time in
three months, the Atlanta Citizen Review Board has chosen an executive director
to run the police watchdog agency.
On Thursday, the
Atlanta Citizen Review Board voted 5-4 to hire Samuel Reid of Minneapolis to
serve as executive director of the embattled police oversight agency created
after the fatal shooting of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston. The agency has been
short-staffed since November, when Cristina Beamud resigned from the
$100,000-a-year position in frustration with her board, her staff, the Atlanta
Police Department and the mayor's office.
"It's been too
long that we've been without an executive director, and we're looking forward
to this," board Chairman Paul Bartels said after a brief private
discussion and then the vote.
A job offer will be
formally extended to Reid, now assistant director of the Minneapolis Department
of Civil Rights and Civilian Police Review Authority, after he is vetted with a
criminal background check.
Reid could not be
reached for comment Thursday night.
"My hope is he
will come in with a full understanding of who brought him here: Kathryn
Johnston," said the Rev. Anthony Motley of Lindsay Street Baptist, which
is just a short distance from the home where the the elderly woman was shot to
death in her living room in 2006. "Her death gave him a job."
The difficult road to
choosing another executive director was indicative of the agency's struggles
since it was born out of outrage over a botched raid built on lies from
informants followed by cover-ups by cops who killed a frightened, innocent
92-year-old woman in her home — and then planted drugs in the house.
The board was given
investigators, subpoena power and a mandate to provide a credible, independent
and "safe and welcoming place" to bring complaints and accusations of
misconduct and abuse by public safety officials.
Yet almost from the
start, the ACRB met resistance — and in some cases, resentment — from officers,
the police union, the APD and the mayor's office. Officers initially ignored
subpoenas to answer questions from the board's investigators. Most of the time,
the chief has accepted the board's recommendations concerning complaints from
citizens only if they favored the officers.
At the same time, the
board was divided and somewhat dysfunctional. Members seldom were in agreement,
and sometimes their meetings would disintegrate into nasty debate.
Five months after
Beamud left the position, the board voted to hire a former federal prosecutor
and onetime deputy police monitor in New Orleans to replace her. A week later,
they decided to reopen the hiring process because some board members were upset
with how the city's human resources department had taken the 164 applications.
The second time, 247
applied, and out of those, five finalists were chosen. But three of them
withdrew from consideration, one just hours before Thursday's vote. The woman
chosen the first time, Holly Wiseman, was among the finalists in the second
round as well, but she withdrew.
Motley suspects the
three had second thoughts because of the hiring process and "what they
hear about the culture of the city. If not the opposition of the mayor and the
chief of police, the lack of cooperation" may have given them pause.
Motley said there is
"no question" Reid is walking into a difficult position.
"It's vital for him to understand the
culture of the city," Motley said.