“I called in a couple of artists. I called in neighborhood people. What I said was, ‘Guys, let’s bring some healing to this site,'” Sheperd said. “I told people to bring flowers. There was singing. There was a lot of stuff going on for healing.”
Before an innocent 8 year-old girl was shot and killed, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said she allowed a city council member to negotiate with armed protesters who were blocking a city street.
Secoriea Turner was killed July 4 after gunmen opened fire on her mother’s SUV as she attempted to turn around in an BLM occupied University Avenue parking lot.
From the the liberal AJC:
“In a wide-ranging interview Wednesday with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial board, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said police had planned on clearing the area weeks earlier but were encouraged to wait after City Councilmember Joyce Sheperd requested more time to negotiate with activists.
“That was not the administration’s position,” Bottoms said. But ultimately, it was the mayor’s call (more “mayor’s call” here).
Those negotiations came amid numerous reports of violence. There were at least two other shootings, at least one beating and multiple reports of threats against people approaching the site.
“Don’t make any sudden moves, or you will get shot,” an armed demonstrator told an AJC columnist reporting from the scene last month.
“I called in a couple of artists. I called in neighborhood people. What I said was, ‘Guys, let’s bring some healing to this site,'” Sheperd said. “I told people to bring flowers. There was singing. There was a lot of stuff going on for healing.”
But when armed people started blocking the road as if they were operating a checkpoint, Sheperd said she, along with area residents, told them to stop. After Brooks’ funeral on June 23, police cleared the barricades. Sheperd said she never saw the road blocked again and was encouraged that tensions were easing.
She acknowledged morale among Atlanta police officers was very low, referring to a recent conversation with Interim Police Chief Rodney Bryant, who told her “the wounds were deep.”
Note: A growing IPG page on the Black Lives Matter Marxists here.
