Keisha Lance Bottoms: Unanswered Questions

Atlanta's former mayor has never been required to answer serious questions about the decisions she made during the city's 2020 street protests.

Keisha Lance Bottoms, former mayor of Atlanta turned CNN talking head, announced yesterday on Twitter that she would be joining the Biden White House as director of the Office of Community Engagement.

“We’ve been through some very challenging times, especially for African Americans in this country,” she said to Axios. “Those challenges are still very fresh and real to me. And I live it every day: I live it as a Black woman, I live it as a mother of four children, and I know where those challenges are, but I also know where the opportunities are.”

Plainly.

The White House job is a kind of auxiliary press secretary role meant to connect grass roots leaders and “new voices” to the president. “Creating and maintaining a two-way dialogue between the administration and communities across the nation ensures that voices are heard and that concerns can be translated into action across the administration,” according to the official website.

Here’s the thing: the leader of this office does not have to sit before a U.S. Senate subcommittee and answer questions in a confirmation hearing. And boy, would I have some questions if she did.

In the last couple of years people have associated Bottoms with her public appeal for calm during the protests of 2020. I’d like to remind people that the venerable South Carolina congressman Jim Clyburn floated the idea of Bottoms as a vice presidential pick at the end of March of that year, which set off a chain of speculation about her chances. Biden effectively wrapped up the nomination shortly after that and was actively vetting VP candidates when street protests broke out in May.

So, with Biden’s team watching on May 30 of 2020, flanked by notable street protester Rev. Joe Beasley and then-police chief Erika Shields, she pleaded with demonstrators to get out of the street. “If you care about this city, then go home,” she said. She directed people to look for a video in which Shields had described her revulsion at seeing the murder of George Floyd.

Two weeks later, Shields quit. Or, Shields was fired. We really don’t know.

On June 12, 2020, an Atlanta police officer killed Rayshard Brooks at a southside Wendy’s during a DUI stop turned brawl. The next day, with protesters blocking I-75, Bottoms fired officers Garrett Rolfe and Devin Brosnan. Shields subsequently stepped down as chief of police. We don’t know if she was taken out of command because she refused to fire the two cops or resigned out of a sense of despair. I note in passing that the forms presented to Rolfe at the time of his firing have Shields’ name on it … but not her signature.

I’ve asked to speak with Shields about it in her new role as chief of the Louisville police department; she hasn’t been willing to speak publicly about it.

And neither has Bottoms.

Georgia would have been seen as the purplest of purple states by Democratic operatives, and one can imagine how the Biden team might have been considering how street protests — and the response to those protests — might play in the campaign.

The firing of Rolfe and Brosnan in the manner it was done — without a suspension pending an investigation, in violation of city policy — set off a chain of events that raise serious questions about what drove her decisions.

Was the Biden team advising her when she fired Rolfe and Brosnan? We don’t know.

On June 17, the day Rolfe and Brosnan were charged with felony murder and other crimes, police began a “blue flu” protest. More than 170 officers called in sick, while others refused to answer calls for service. A memo circulated from a police major, instructing subordinates to refrain from “proactive policing,” refusing duties where their actions might conceivably require the use of force … and a potential criminal charge.

Bottoms may have fired Rolfe and Brosnan thinking it would tamp down street protests in a moment when she desperately wanted a calm city. And I don’t mean to second-guess that decision, if that’s what it was. Governing through a crisis is difficult.

But that decision also plainly set off the blue flu, which created a different problem that deserves some plain answers.

While this sickout was happening, armed militants took over the burned ruin of the Wendy’s near the corner of University and Pryor and stopped people from driving by. The police did next to nothing to intervene.

At the time, then-city councilwoman Joyce Sheperd said she was “negotiating” with the gunmen. Bottoms told the AJC that’s why she refrained from sending in cops to break up the militant’s protest.

But that protest grew increasingly chaotic and violent over the following three weeks — something I saw firsthand, to my personal detriment — culminating in the murder of Secoriea Turner, a seven-year-old girl shot as her parents were driving by the site.

Were undercover officers operating at the site? We don’t know.

What did “mediation” with the gunmen actually produce? We don’t know.

Secoriea Turner’s family is suing Atlanta for $16 million. The discovery from that lawsuit describes some of the hostile dynamics between the police and city hall. Was any police officer ever disciplined for shirking their duty during these protests? We don’t know.

We do know that Rolfe won his job back at a city Civil Service Board hearing, though he remains suspended with pay. A Fulton County judge disqualified the district attorney’s office from the case, which was turned over to Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys'​ Council of Georgia. Skandalakis is expected to announce a decision about whether Rolfe and Brosnan will face trial soon.

I’m going to lay down a marker here: I think Skandalakis is going to drop the charges.

Meanwhile, Rolfe and Brosnan are also suing the city, former district attorney Paul Howard … and Bottoms.

The public statements of Howard and Bottoms feature prominently in the suit, which claims that Rolfe and Brosnan were smeared in public comments. The irony is potent.

Public officials regularly deflect difficult questions around public safety. “An investigation is ongoing” or “we can’t talk about pending legal cases.” We have never heard a straight telling of what went down in the summer of 2020. This gives cover to politicians to say whatever they want whenever they want, public interest be damned.

It isn’t incidental that Bottoms is taking a job that doesn’t require Senate confirmation hearings, because hearing “I can’t talk about that” over and over again is no way to start a new job in “community engagement.”