Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms blames city’s violent crime spike on Republicans reopening too early, Georgia’s governor strikes back

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Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has blamed the current violent crime spike in her city on Georgia’s Republican governor reopening too early. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp refuted those claims and told Bottoms to look at her party’s “anti-police agenda” for the surge in violent crime.

Homicides in Atlanta are up 58% compared to 2020, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which noted that there were 157 homicides in a “historically deadly 2020,” the most in more than two decades. In June, murders and shootings are up 40%. All while Atlanta’s police force “remains more than 400 officers under its authorized level.” There were 200 police officers who quit the force in 2020, and another 75 cops left since the start of the year.

On Friday, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle asked Bottoms about the violent crime spike, which the Atlanta mayor has previously called a “COVID crime wave.”

“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 to party in our city,” Bottoms replied.

Bottoms then seemed to contradict herself in her next statement, where she said violent crime is up in cities across the country, including in Democrat-controlled states that only recently opened back up this month.

“If it were an Atlanta issue alone then I’d know that there was something that we weren’t getting right… but I’m talking to mayors and hearing from mayors in cities and large urban areas, we’re all experiencing this which means that we all have to work together to find a solution to this gun violence that is gripping our nation,” Bottoms told Ruhle.- READ MORE

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