Atlanta Progressive News

(APN) ATLANTA — The Public Safety/Legal Administration (PS/LA) Committee of the City Council of Atlanta approved a substitute to a resolution proposed by Councilman Michael Julian Bond (Post 1-at-large) regarding an apology related to the Atlanta Eagle raid of 2009.  However, the substitute limited the scope of the apology to only the named Plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit which was settled in recent days.

The Atlanta Police Department victimized 62 bar patrons that evening; however, only 26 were Plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit.  The 28 Plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit consisted of 26 bar patrons and two businesses, the Atlanta Eagle and Rawhide Leather. 

Therefore there are 36 other victims of the Atlanta Eagle raid who were left out of the apology.

A closer examination of Mayor Reed’s apology reveals that he too apologized solely to the Plaintiffs; that is a nuance some may not have initially picked up on.  What it meant was that the City was not sorry to anyone who was not a Plaintiff.

The Committee passed the resolution with little public discussion or debate.  The real discussion apparently took place in the Committee’s briefing.  The City contends that the briefings are only open to the public if they have a quorum, which they often do not.

Bond told Atlanta Progressive News that City Attorneys objected to his resolution because of a pending claim by bartender Chris Lopez, and the potential for other claims to come forward.

Behind the scenes, the Committee and the City’s Law Department crafted the substitute resolution.

“It was a legal question,” Bond told APN in an interview today.  “Because if we had waited, we would have to wait for the statute of limitations to run out for the City to issue an apology.”

“The Mayor apologized to the Plaintiffs because the case was closed and over.  But there’s a universe of other [possible] Plaintiffs,” Bond said.

“If these other persons file a lawsuit and they go through the course, we can issue another resolution to apologize to them as well.  To get it moving, we had to delineate that category of persons who already went through the process,” Bond said.

“As soon as his [Lopez’s] claim is done, I’ll introduce another resolution for his.  Or anyone else who’s outstanding.  As long there was potential of any other person, until the statute of limitations run out, we would never be able to act on it,” Bond said.

“I wanted the apology to be timely.  They’ve concluded their business with the City legally from this matter, so to keep the apology timely with it, it was better to go ahead and move forward,” Bond said.

“If there are others in the community, if they’re ready to file a claim, when they reach this same point, I will make an effort to make an apology to them as well,” he said.

“It’s not preferring one set of victims to the other, these people happened across the finish line first,” he said.

“But what we will have for Chris and any other folks who file, that we don’t have now, is precedent for issuing an apology when we get to that point with the others.  We want to help Chris too,” Bond said.

Bond insisted the apology is still a victory, noting that the City has still never formally apologized in the APD murder of Kathryn Johnston.

As previously reported by APN, Bond introduced the resolution seeking a Council apology for the raid in January 2010, after being invited to visit the bar by the present reporter and upon speaking with co-owner Robby Kelley.  Bond took tremendous leadership on this issue and got little support from his
Council colleagues.

Indeed, the Council and PS/LA Cmte objected to its passage at the time, because the federal lawsuit was still pending, and City Attorneys argued that apologizing could complicate the lawsuit.

The Council was prepared to wait two years, three years, as long as it took for the federal lawsuit to be resolved before they would apologize.  The resolution sat as a Held Paper in the Committee since January.

After the one million, twenty-five thousand dollar settlement was announced in recent days, Bond told APN that he would push for his resolution to pass Cmte.

However, a claim recently filed by bartender Chris Lopez, who was excluded from the lawsuit by the Plaintiff’s attorneys because he had been arrested that night–albeit, wrongfully arrested–seems to have complicated matters.

Lopez believes his situation is unique because he filed a complaint with the Office of Professional Standards (OPS), or internal affairs department of the APD, just days after the raid.  He, and another excluded bartender, Ernest Buehl, are believed to be the only two out of the 36 non-Plaintiff, raid victims who directly filed written paperwork with the City–thus putting the City on notice regarding what happened to them that evening–by filing OPS complaints.

As previously reported, Lopez and Buehl were excluded from the lawsuit as part of a legal strategy.

At the Committee meeting, Chairman Ivory Young (District 3) asked that the substitute resolution’s caption be sounded.  Then, he asked City Attorney Jerry Deloach to address the substitute.

“There was an original paper that was pending before the Committee.  As a result of briefing yesterday, we have gone back and we have provided a substitute,” Deloach told the Cmte.

“The substitute limits the apology, or the extension of the apology, to the named Plaintiffs in the lawsuit.  That is the primary difference between this substitute paper and the original paper,” Deloach said.  “It lists the style of the lawsuit so we have a record as to who the apology is being extended to.”

“After having a discussion with the Law Department, we’re with the substitute and I urge its approval,” Bond told the Cmte.

The Committee then unanimously approved the substitute resolution, without any discussion or debate.

“You all are truly the greatest Council Committee there is,” Bond told the Cmte after its approval.

The substitute resolution now heads to the Full Council.

(END / 2010)