- 11 Alive Interview
- ACRB Director Speaks Out on Chiefs Responses to Citizen Complaints
- Fox 5 Atlanta Interview
- Fulton County Sheriff's Office Interference with ACRB Investigations
- ACRB Community Alert - 3D Gun Cases
- Atlanta Citizen Review Board (ACRB) is not the Atlanta Civil Service Board (ACSB)
- Mayor Bottoms Says She Tested Positive For The Coronavirus
- ACRB NEWS RELEASE: CITY COUNCIL APPROVES ORDINANCE EXPANSION FOR ACRB
- Proposed ACRB Ordinance Changes Approved Unanimously by Atlanta City Council Public Safety Committee_from Atlanta Progressive News
- ACRB Substituted Amendments Approved by Atlanta City Council Public Safety Committee
- AJC: "Proposal would expand powers of Atlanta police review board"
- Proposed Ordinance Changes
- AJC: Article About the ACRB ART & ESSAY CONTEST: What do kids in Atlanta Think of Police Officers
- ACRB FACT SHEET
- ACRB Presentation at Atlanta City Council Public Safety Meeting
- ACRB WINTER 2016 NEWSLETTER
- ACRB FALL 2015 NEWSLETTER
- Special Report on Body Worn Camera Featured in the In The News Section
- Executive Director Letter to Chief Turner on Proposed Body Worn Camera Policies
- The Lee Reid 11Alive BWC Interview
- ACRB is a member of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement
- National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE)
- NACOLE 2015 Conference
- Proposed ACRB Ordinance Changes for 2016 News Release
- Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms Orders Postponement Of Meetings
Thank You Participants, Nominees and Winners in The 2020 Arts & Essay Contest!
ACRB 10th Year Anniversary
Come Celebrate the 10th Anniversary Commemoration of the Atlanta Citizen Review Board
The Atlanta Citizen Review Board was established in 2007 to receive and investigate citizen complaints against Atlanta police and corrections officers. It opened its doors in September 2008, providing citizens with a trusted place to seek redress. This photo collection is a journey through the 10 years of the agency’s tireless commitment to providing the citizens of Atlanta with vigorous oversight of the city’s law enforcement officers.
AJC
Some want to change focus of Atlanta police oversight board
By: Rhonda Cook
With the exit of the director of Atlanta’s police oversight agency, some think it’s time to change the focus of the Citizen Review Board.
That segment includes the police union, the police chief and the Atlanta Police Foundation — all critics of the board since its creation in response to the anger that followed the fatal shooting of a 92-year-old woman by police five years ago.
But supporters of the board say shifting from an agency that investigates residents’ complaints to one that audits the findings of the Atlanta Police Department’s internal review of complaints would only take the city back to a time when the Police Department was more concerned with protecting officers than protecting the public.
“They don’t want us to be in existence in the first place,” board member Maceo Williams said. “There’s a lot of smoke screen going on.”
The ACRB “gives citizens a chance to complain about abuse outside the Police Department. The CRB investigations are less biased,” said Tiffany Williams with Building Locally to Organize for Community Service, a police watchdog group.
City Denies in Court Filings Events of Gay Bar Raid – AJC
By: Rhonda Cook
After paying more than $1 million to settle lawsuits over police misconduct related to a 2009 raid of a Midtown gay bar, the city of Atlanta is now denying wrongdoing in a new lawsuit.
Atlanta taxpayers handed out more than $1 million to 26 men to resolve a federal lawsuit that said police officers abused the rights of patrons and employees of the Atlanta Eagle Bar. The City voted Monday to spend another $120,000 to resolve a similar lawsuit filed in Fulton County Superior Court by the bar’s employees.
Both an internal police investigation and an extensive review by a former U.S. attorney confirmed members of the now-disbanded RED DOG unit violated people’s constitutional rights in the raid.
Yet, the city’s lawyers, defending itself in the third lawsuit, denied everything the police department and the mayor have admitted since last June.
WABE
Questions Surround APD Incident – WABE
By: Charles Edwards (2011-10-10)
Is Atlanta’s Police Department policing officers who overstep their boundaries? That question is at the heart of a federal lawsuit and an ongoing debate between the Department and a citizens group.
Trenton Boyd is one of the men suing APD officers and the city. He claims an officer falsely arrested and illegally strip searched him in public in March 2010. He took his complaint to APD and to the Atlanta Citizens Review Board.
The two different groups came to two different conclusions. Christina Beamud is the board’s executive director.
Atlanta Faces Federal Strip Search Suit – WABE
By: Charles Edwards (2011-10-04)
ATLANTA, GA (WABE) – An illegal strip search in public.
That’s what 14 current or former Atlanta Police Department officers allegedly did to five young black men. The men today filed a federal lawsuit against the officers and the city of Atlanta.
In March 2010, Trenton Boyd says he was driving to a restaurant in the city’s West End neighborhood for lunch. That when, he says, an officer, from what was at the time Atlanta’s Red Dog unit, approached him.
“He pulled my pants down and then after that went into my boxers. He pulled my boxers down and went into my boxers around my genitalia area and back around to my anus area,” said Boyd.
Two months later, Kaci Daniel says 3 APD officers told him and his cousin Antonio to get out of their car, which he says was parked at a mall in West Atlanta.
Mayor Comments On Strip Search Lawsuit – WABE
By: Charles Edwards (2011-10-05)
ATLANTA, GA (WABE) – Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed says claims police officers illegally strip searched five men are not well founded. Reed’s comments come one day after the men filed a federal lawsuit against the officers and the city.
The young black men claim Atlanta officers pulled down their pants, then their underwear and searched their private areas for no reason.
Generally speaking, Reed says he takes these types of allegations very personally. “I genuinely care about how people in the city of Atlanta are treated,” said Reed.
However, Reed has doubts about this case.
“At the end of the day, we’re going to be able to prove that these charges were not well founded.”
Reed did not explain why he thought the charges are not well founded. But WABE legal analyst Page Pate says the phrase is often used.
Related Articles from the AJC
Woman, 61, Arrested for Asking ‘Why’
February 17, 2010
Four women, two of them well into middle age, were discussing funeral plans for a friend
when an Atlanta police officer told them to move. Three did but one asked “why.” In answer to her question, Minnie Carey, then 61, washandcuffed, put into a paddy wagon and taken to jail, where she was held for nine hours. The Citizen Review Board found that Atlanta Police officer Brandy Dolson had violated APD policies and had falsely arrested Carey.
“I was blown away,” Carey told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I had heard about people inthe community being harassed by the police … It really didn’t shock me as much as itprobably would have if I had not heard of people going to jail for no reason. I figured I wasjust another one. “But I had the right to ask ‘why’ I had to move,” she said.
The Citizen Review Board – resurrected after the 2006 fatal police shooting of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston in her home – voted in a recent meeting to sustain Carey’s false arrest claim and the allegation that the officer had violated the department’s arrest policies.
Citizen Review Board: APD Stonewalling Investigation into Atlanta Eagle Raid
February 12, 2010
Atlanta’s Citizen Review Board, frustrated that police refuse to answer questions about last summer’s controversial raid of a Midtown gay bar, is threatening to subpoena 10 APD officers.
At stake could be the relevance of the nascent board, which claims it received little cooperation from police under the leadership of former Chief Richard Pennington, who resigned in December. “We have been dealing with this issue of officers’ refusal to cooperate for a long time, “Attorney Seth Kirschenbaum, vice chairman of the review board, told the AJC Friday. “While Pennington was chief, officers were refusing to cooperate and no discipline was ever imposed.”
Judge Rejects Union Request on Shooting Docs – The Associated Press
July 08, 2009
A judge has dismissed a police union’s request to block the release of police records to a citizen board that is reviewing the 2006 killing of a 92-year-old woman.
The Atlanta Police Department must turn over the documents involving the fatal shootings of Kathryn Johnston and of unarmed robbery suspect Pierre George in 2008 to the citizen review panel.
Judge: Citizen Board Can Have Police Shooting Materials
July 08, 2009
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Wendy Shoob dismissed a police union’s request that she block a citizen’s review board’s investigation of two shootings by officers.
The Atlanta Police Department on Monday turned over to Atlanta’s Citizen Review Board documents pertaining to the 2006 killing of 92-year old Kathryn Johnston, who died in a illegal and botched police raid on her house, and of the 2008 killing of an unarmed robbery suspect, Pierre George.
The International Brotherhood of Police Officers had filed a lawsuit to block the transfer of the documents.
Police Review Board to Subpoena Documents in 2008 Shooting
March 16, 2009
Members of Atlanta’s new police oversight board talked Thursday evening about seeking a subpoena to get information the Atlanta Police Department is refusing to turn over. The Citizen Review Board members, in their monthly meeting at City Hall, also discussed other options, such as pursuing legal action against Police Chief Richard Pennington to get him to comply with city law.
The Police Department has refused to turn over police officer’s statements in connection with an incident the Review Board is investigating. The board has meeting for 1 ½ years and has been asking for police departments for several incidents since September.