In 2020, Atlanta police investigated 157 homicides, up from 99 the year before. That was the most the city had seen in more than two decades, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The next year was worse. Shootings climbed right along with the killings. Even CNN couldn't ignore it. It reported that by early July 2020, Atlanta had logged 282 shooting incidents, up 19% from the same point a year earlier, citing Atlanta police data. By June 2021, the number of people shot in the city was up another 38%.
More than 200 officers left the Atlanta Police Department in 2020 alone. Then-Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms did not have the backs of the Atlanta police, nor did she have the backs of Atlanta's most vulnerable citizens who depended on her for their safety. Her tenure as mayor left the city reeling as crime exploded and hundreds were killed. That is a serious dereliction of duty.
And as the bodies piled up, what did Bottoms offer? She pointed to the pandemic. She pointed to gun laws. In a national television interview, she pointed at Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for reopening Georgia's bars and nightclubs. Meanwhile, residents of Buckhead were so fed up that they launched a movement to break away from the city altogether.
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With that list of failures, she wants to convince Georgians she's the right candidate to be governor. Folks, that's a terrible idea, and it would be laughable if it weren't for the fact that, on her watch, hundreds ended up in the cemetery. Georgia cannot afford to risk this. Atlanta's families found out the hard way which kind of mayor they had.
Bottoms spent part of her early childhood traveling the world as the daughter of a famous R&B singer. Republican nominee for governor Rick Jackson spent his in Atlanta's Techwood Homes, America's first public housing project, where his family relied on welfare. He didn't learn about struggling neighborhoods from the newspapers. He lived it. He never met his father, and his mother was a waitress with a sixth-grade education. At 13, he entered foster care, moving through five foster homes and 13 schools before the right foster family came into his life and showed him what love and stability looked like.
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From there, he built Jackson Healthcare from the ground up into one of the largest healthcare staffing firms in the country, a company that now reports more than $3 billion in annual revenue. A man who once depended on public assistance, lived in the projects and went through multiple foster homes can speak to the issues that affect everyday Georgians from lived experience. That sets him apart in a way Bottoms can't match.
Jackson's public safety plan reads like it was written by someone who has listened to cops and crime victims. I hear from those families constantly through the Caldwell Institute for Public Safety, which I founded after my innocent brother Christian was murdered in Chicago .
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What they ask for is simple: evidence that gets processed, offenders who stay off the street and leaders who take trafficking seriously. Jackson's plan answers all three. He has pledged to invest in additional certified crime labs so evidence stops sitting on shelves while victims wait and dangerous offenders stay on the street. His plan calls for a statewide law enforcement division with one mission: ending child sex trafficking in Georgia. He has promised tax relief for law enforcement officers and veterans.
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Georgia has a clear choice on Nov. 3. One candidate has already been tested by a crime crisis and answered with failure after failure. The other has spent a lifetime proving that where you start doesn't determine where you finish, and he has a plan to make every Georgia neighborhood safer.
Georgia doesn't need a governor who wants the title. It needs one who is willing to put in the work. That's Rick Jackson.
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