Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms blames the city's increased crime rate in her city on eased COVID restrictions, schools being closed and a lack of gun control at the federal level.
She told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle on Friday that police officers were not hesitant to respond to crime following increased scrutiny of law enforcement over the course of the past year.
Remember in Georgia we were opened up before the rest of the country, even before the CDC said that it was safe for us to open so our night clubs and our bars remained open so we had people traveling here from across the country and partying in our city.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp eased coronavirus restrictions in late March despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not relaxing its guidelines for the vaccinated until May, according to Fox News.
In Atlanta, there was a 58 percent increase in homicides in 2020 despite COVID-19 lockdowns in the city and across the state, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Killings rose from 99 in 2019 to 157 in 2020.
The mayor attributes the increase in homicides in her city to lax gun control laws and residents suffering from mental health issues.
We’re getting at least 1,000 young people to work this summer. That will help until we deal with systemic issues of the gun violence epidemic in this country - how easily young people, people with mental illness can access guns in this country.
She also said that city officials are making an effort to get young people jobs this summer, because schools being closed during the the past year amid the pandemic left many young people restless.
However, Kemp said that Bottoms is attempting to deflect the blame and that her leadership is the reason for the spike in crime.
According to the mayor, rising crime in our capital city is everyone’s fault but her’s. Getting Georgians back to work, back to school, and back to normal didn’t lead to more crime.
— Governor Brian P. Kemp (@GovKemp) June 19, 2021
The left’s anti-police, soft-on-crime agenda is to blame. https://t.co/RcjvW7wQaT
The city's rise in crime has led residents of Buckhead, a residential Atlanta district, to look to separate from the Georgia capital to create their own police department that will be tough on crime.