APD chief regrets not taking action during protests

ATLANTA, Ga. — Atlanta’s police chief says her department is getting set for more potential protests after the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

On Sunday, protesters marched through downtown Atlanta in solidarity with the victims. When the march reached Piedmont Park, part of the group covered part of the statue with red paint, put a chain around it and even ripped part of it off.

The more than 100-year-old statue commemorates the effort to bring the North and South together after the Civil War.

“We welcome marches. Atlanta is a welcoming city and it’s a tolerant city. We understand that marches are part of our history and historically they’ve been handled in a very peaceful fashion,” said Chief Erika Shields.

Shields says it's not her job to be critical, or not, of how Charlottesville handled clashes between two sides culminating in a suspected white supremacist plowing through counter protesters, killing one.

But when it comes to Atlanta, she said it's critical that her department is prepared for whatever is thrown their way.

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“It’s critical that we be in a position that we can respond immediately. Once you get behind, once you start to lose control of the crowd, it is so difficult to close the gap, and that’s where stuff starts to go wrong,” she said, “We wanna position ourselves — and that’s where the intelligence gathering is critical, so that we’re in a place where we have sufficient number of individuals, and properly trained and equipped individuals positioned where we need them.”

Shields explained APD has people on the joint terrorism task force but it’s not their primary tool for incidents like this. APD uses several different conduits to glean information.

She said she won’t gloss over some things she saw in APD's handling of Charlottesville-inspired protests in Atlanta last weekend.

“We saw a few anarchists insert themselves into the activities, to try to just disrupt what was largely a peaceful march. We saw some areas that we could improve on,” she explained.

Going further, Shields said she regrets not taking action during the protests at Piedmont Park.

“We should have identified, removed and arrested a couple of people earlier in the march, absolutely. And we should have,” she said. “We have the intelligence, we have the probable cause, we need to take action, so people understand, they’ll tighten up.”

Cox Media Group