The Mirtha Ramos Interview

DeKalb County Police Chief Mirtha Ramos and I talk hotspots, homicide clearances and transparency. We were polite. Mostly.

Attorney General Merrick Garland was in town last week and I missed it. Garland was here Thursday to give the DeKalb County police an award for innovative community policing. I had spent the previous week preparing an hour-long presentation to Leadership Atlanta in the halls of the Federal Reserve Bank at exactly the same time. I nearly canceled.

I have been critical of DeKalb’s policing strategy, but this isn’t one of the reasons. DeKalb County Police Detectives Latosha Prather, Khary Ricketts and Dan-nae Webber started a virtual summer academy last year, focusing on mentorship, education and athletics. Somehow, they made it work over Zoom and Instagram.

In the face of drive-by shootings on the news every night, such things might seem small. But if you’re connecting the right kids to human beings who can show them what a normal life looks like — and, critically, connect people to jobs and a real shot at a career path — after school programs save lives.

“Eight of the initial nine participants gained employment. The ninth joined in a dual enrollment program here at the college,” Garland said at the ceremony at Perimeter. “I want to underscore that these actions would have been tremendous during the best of times. They occurred though, during a pandemic. And the fact that they did is further evidence of their commitment to the community they serve.”

This award is the backdrop for a long-awaited interview with Ramos. I’ve been asking, repeatedly, for time for a conversation with her since April 2021.

The conversation was enlightening … and frustrating.

DeKalb County has far fewer police officers than had been previously disclosed in public. The department is down to about 675 uniformed officers, with about 500 out on patrol. That compares to the 860 listed on the county’s website … and the 1600 or so that Atlanta fields. Atlanta has roughly the same number of people in its jurisdiction — about 500,000 — and violent crime rates that are in the same ballpark.

One might ask how DeKalb is managing. One might also ask what Atlanta is doing with almost three times as many cops and about the same amount of crime. Really — one might ask if police staffing levels correlate with crime rates at all.

My conversation with Ramos left me with as many questions as I had when we started. This conversation has been edited for clarity, length, and to ensure we both sound as smart as we hope we are.

“Our biggest struggle is our violent crime. … It’s the violent crime that continues to stay up. And then when we have a good week, we don't even celebrate it, because we just try to see what did we do right, that maybe we could emulate for the next week? The violent crime is the problem. I mean, there's no getting around that.”

GC: So, I'm writing a book about violent crime in Atlanta. And there's a lot going on between Atlanta and DeKalb that make interesting comparisons. Like, it's why I've been desperate to sort of start getting more information out of DeKalb County because you cover about 500,000 people in the county, and Atlanta covers about 500,000 people. Demographically there are a lot of similarities. Geographically, we're close. And so, as I look at the differences, I could say this approach in this place is getting this result, this approach, and that place is getting this result. We can start to see what's actually working and what isn't. The so the first thing I wanted to ask you, broadly: there's been an increase in violent crime in DeKalb. To what do you attribute that?

MR: You know, it's really hard to attribute it to any single thing, because even based on our investigations it is very difficult. And as you know, it's been happening all over. And I don't think anyone can really, truly pinpoint it. I do see an increase of people not being able to manage their problems and their temper. Because a lot of it is ... you have your road rage, you have your dispute, you have domestic disputes. I mean, we have family members killing each other over turning the fan off. So, kind of difficult, because it's a wide range of reasons why people do what they do.

GC: I'm seeing that, like broadly in Atlanta, like there's this thing last night with the bowling ball. (Editorial note: I discovered the context for that killing later Friday.) I don't know if you saw that. A woman was killed in a bowling alley on metropolitan Avenue over an argument that started over bowling ball. I mean, nonsense. I know there are a lot of different reasons.

MR: I will tell you this though, the more we publicize it, I think the more it puts people on edge. So now we're talking about all of this violence in DeKalb County or in Atlanta. If I live in one of those cities – which I do – now, I'm actually on edge, because now I know that this person is just going to pull out a weapon at any given moment. So now I want to make sure I have my weapon. I think the constant publicity as well doesn't help. It puts the citizens on edge. Sure, not everybody wants to carry a weapon, because it's so dangerous. Now it’s “let us all carry weapons, I need to protect myself.” So, I think that whole thing is “I'm going to get you before you get me” type of mentality. And I think just that talking about all of the violence doesn't help.

GC: It's interesting. The mayor, (Andre) Dickens has been very vocal about this sort of retaliatory violence that like that you're describing, and has been calling on the public regularly to a way to resolve things without violence, trying to pull in community members and whatnot. I'm not expecting you to pull this out of your breast pocket, but I don't have a good statistical model for violence in DeKalb County. How are you tracking that? Crime stats? By precinct? By beat area?

MR: The way we do it is we have CompStat. And I've been meaning to open that to the public. Haven't done it just yet. We have CompStat bi-weekly comms. Before, we would all come into this room. Now we do it via Zoom. And we talk about crime in general. But we also talk about crime in each precinct. So, you know, each precinct – we have four precincts in DeKalb County – that precinct commander will talk about “these are my issues, these are my concerns, and this is what I'm doing about it.” And we address that bi-weekly so that we do stay on top of where our increases and where our trends are on a weekly basis.

GC: Gotcha. So broadly, right now, like, sort of walk me through the last CompStat meeting, like what, what are the trends that you're seeing today?

MR: Okay, and so just know, I don't have that information right off the top of my head. Our biggest struggle is our violent crime. So, our entering autos, which is the auto theft and people breaking into vehicles is actually trending down. It’s the violent crime that continues to stay up. And then when we have a good week, we don't even celebrate it, because we just try to see what did we do right, that maybe we could emulate for the next week? The violent crime is the problem. I mean, there's no getting around that.

“So, we have certain new people that focus completely on community policing, which is very tough to do when you don't have enough manpower to do what you need to do. However, I would not give up that unit because they have been doing phenomenal work.”

GC:  So what is DeKalb doing? Has there been a specific strategy to say “this is how we're going to reduce violent crime? Let's do X, Y, and Z.”

MR: Okay, so what we've done is a myriad of things. One of the things that we've been doing for a while now is really putting as many offices as we can on the street. I mean, you very well know; you cited our numbers at some point. Our numbers are low. So, how do we maximize that visibility of the officers? We have our community roll calls out in the public. That's a way for the police to be visible to the community.

As of last year, about mid-July, we started our hotspot initiative. What is that? That is identifying what those hotspots are for a quarter – we're doing quarterly evaluations – we run all of the numbers, what areas are seeing a spike in violent crime during this time period. And then what we're doing is we're literally flooding all of our resources into those areas. So, it's sort of like putting out the fire where our fires for this quarter; this is where they are. And we're sending everybody in there. Our narcotics units are working in there, our SWAT unit is working. And then we have our detectives from the police. And they go out once a week into the streets in uniform – which doesn't make them happy because their caseload is epic. However, how do I increase that visibility? How do I increase that communication?

In addition to that, we've increased our community engagement, which goes a long way to solving our crime and getting the community's buy in, which I feel we do a very good job in. Every precinct has monthly meetings with the community. They have a monthly clergy meeting. And they also have a majors night out, which means that precinct commander needs to leave the precinct, go out into the street, going to an area that's experiencing trouble, and introduce some stuff and make sure that he talks to that community to let them know “I'm aware of what's going on. This is what we're doing. And if you need something, I'm here, here's my information.”

I need to get people out to the street. So even the precinct commanders go out there once a month minimum. But that's advertised because we want the community to know we understand their issues, but this is what we're doing about it. And we want to keep an open door where you can let us know what your concerns are, so we can address them.

GC: It's interesting. Atlanta's doing similar things. There, they've got a hotspot thing going. There's a really interesting methodology that they're using to try to figure out what a hotspot is and trying to break the hotspots one by one. I actually think their community policing is less engaged than, DeKalb’s in some ways. The majors in in Atlanta are very visible. I've got phone numbers for all of them. They show up to NPU meetings. This hotspot thing is from a national perspective; that's sort of like the gold standard for trying to get at this stuff.

How are you defining a hotspot? Is there a specific number numerical set or percentage of violence? How do you say, “yep, that's definitely turned into a hotspot, let's go?”

MR: So, what we're doing is running the numbers per precinct for violent crime. That's our focus, because that's what our issues are. Violent crime, and what areas are at the top of that list. And that's how you identify a hotspot because that's what we're trying to address is the violent crime.

GC: How many hotspots are we are in DeKalb?

MR: At this moment, I believe we are addressing a minimum of two at each precinct. There may be a precinct that that has three, but we have two to three, because those are the ones that have been at the top of our list. And if we spread ourselves thin, then we're not going to be effective.

“We’re not at 800. I wish we were. We're currently at about 675. And I would say on uniformed patrol – and this is roughly – I'm going to say we try to keep that at about 500.”

GC: So that's the other thing I'm sort of thinking about here. You have this tremendous violent crime problem that requires you to be very hands on. it's labor intensive. You also have community policing that is necessary in order to build relationships so that you can clear cases, which is also labor intensive. Something, I suspect, has got to give. To be perfectly frank, what has been given, in order to get the rest of this stuff done?

MR: What has been given is the rest of our officers. They have to work a lot harder. But we're not giving anything. So, we have certain new people that focus completely on community policing, which is very tough to do when you don't have enough manpower to do what you need to do. However, I would not give up that unit because they have been doing phenomenal work. I'm not sure if you know, but just our power unit, just a team of three. Just got the Attorney General's Award.

GC: I really wish I'd been there. Sorry about that.

MR: Oh, we have our detectives doing one thing. And so now SWAT. SWAT, usually they are training and-or on a call out? Not anymore. Now SWAT is actually out patrolling in those hotspots as well. People have just been tasked with more work and more responsibility. And the good thing about it is that the majority, I'm not going to say all the majority of our officers are not complaining about the extra task.

GC: How many? How much overtime is being paid?

MR: Oh, you know, overtime is being utilized. And I can't give you a number but this is what I will tell you that while we're doing more, I will tell you that we're spending less overtime.

GC: Can I follow up with you or (PIO Michaela Vincent) in order to get that overtime number? Email me.

MR: Okay, you know, we can give you the overtime numbers, I will tell you that in comparison to where we were a couple of years ago, the number is drastically low.

GC: So, you're saying that you're not giving up anything because your police officers are working overtime. But you're also saying that the overtime numbers are low. I don't see I could get both of those.

MR: I'm not sure how the overtime was managed prior to me getting here. I can only speak about how I'm managing it here.

GC: Gotcha. So, there's this the staffing thing? Because it comes up in community discussions. I'd like to know how many police officers are actually in a car, ready to answer calls on evening watch in each precinct. Like that raw number? Because you've got like, what, 800, 900 police officers? Maybe 600 or 700 of them are guys in cars? Just give me the right number.

MR: We’re not at 800. I wish we were. We're currently at about 675. And I would say on uniformed patrol – and this is roughly – I'm going to say we try to keep that at about 500. Now, officers in a car, we have one-man units for the most part, unless you're in a NET team and those team are proactive units. But uniformed patrol, we have one person in the unit. We try to keep at we would hope for two in a zone. But we do keep at least one in a zone. Because once again, we're trying to maximize our exposure, that number can range from nine to 12 officers on a shift simply because these are very known for 10s, which means everybody has a different day off. So that would vary on that if somebody calls out sick, so that number will vary.

“Okay, so I will say that there are gangs in DeKalb. Obviously, we can't deny that. But we've evaluated our 2021 homicides and all of the violent crime that we've been experiencing. … But if we talk about gang violence and the homicides related to gangs, we attribute three percent only out of our numbers.”

GC:  There was some talk about moving to like a 5-2 shift or something like that. It comes up and then it goes away.

MR: I'll be honest with you. I thought it was something that would give us additional coverage. However, I actually met with the troops, you know, because I do have to take into consideration what they feel. After discussion with them, I felt as though that the pros didn't necessarily outweigh the cons. With the strategy of trying to keep as many officers as possible, I felt as though that 4-10’s is a draw that DeKalb County has that I was not willing to lose.

GC: Yeah. And that's ... that's normal. This is sort of nitty gritty, technically interesting to me, but not a giant thing. The Extra Duty Solutions thing was super interesting to me. (Editorial note: I’m referring to an attempt to move managing off-duty police work to a third-party vendor). Quietly, I say: I have been concerned over time that the way that police officers do their private work, so to speak, could be an avenue for corruption. I’m worried about club owners – somebody who's paying them $25 an hour upfront and like $50 under the table and ... yeah, nobody's getting arrested in this club. That kind of thing. Which, frankly, is a problem in Atlanta, and I'm going to be writing about it. And it's going to be all kinds of fun.

When I saw that you had come in to say “Alright, we're going to change this system,” in my head, I'm going, “What did she see? Where did that come from?” What happened with it?

MR: I mean, I guess I felt a little concerned – not that there was anything prompting me to be concerned about it. You know, obviously, I didn't come up in this department. So, I'm used to doing things a little differently. I thought I would want a little bit more oversight. However, you know, that's not oversight that we as a department could have done, which is why I was looking into an outside agency to do it, as I have. It's a heavy lift for us to be able to do it. But I did want it to be able to have a little oversight. But that goes a little bit into me kind of making a decision a little prematurely, and not realizing that the county itself had a policy in place. And so now they're working on a policy that would go across the board to county, so I had to pull back and wait to see what the county presents so that I can't go against what they're doing as a county overall.

GC: It’s been a year since this this came out. I want to say maybe even more than a year. Like, there hasn't been any movement on any of this stuff.

MR: You know, you would have to take that over to the CEOs office because it's out of my hands that this is still under review. Yeah.

GC: Okay. All right. So, let's like get into this, with the heart of the thing that I'm trying to write about: gang violence. There are a couple of cases that are floating through DeKalb in particular that I think are going to be enlightening, like the one with this rapper Yung Mal who, with a crew shot a guy at a at a convenience store last year. That trial is going to be starting this year. What's your view of gang activity in DeKalb, and its relationship to the increase in violence?

MR: Okay, so I will say that there are gangs in DeKalb. Obviously, we can't deny that. But we've evaluated our 2021 homicides and all of the violent crime that we've been experiencing. We are only attributing about twenty percent of those subjects as gang members. However, the actual crime itself was not gang related in the sense of, if I'm a gang member, and I kill Shane because he's my neighbor, and he's gotten on my nerves. (Sorry, Shane.) We don't categorize that as a gang incident. It happens that he was a gang member. But if we talk about gang violence and the homicides related to gangs, we attribute three percent only out of our numbers.

GC: (sputtering confusion) Do you ... have ... did ... was that ... like, was there a formal evaluation looking at this stuff?