ATLANTA — A retired businessman who follows the Atlanta Public School system (APS) contends the district makes it virtually impossible to find out the level of crime in individual schools.
Crime in general and certainly crime in schools is a top issue for a lot of people, but Ed Johnson tells Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Richard Belcher that APS is anything but transparent about school-by-school data.
He says the district told him to get the information from the FBI, but the federal agency doesn’t maintain location-specific or school-by-school information.
APS emailed Channel 2 in early September that the information is “readily available” and also mentioned that APS’s police department sends data to the FBI monthly, but the district confirmed just before our story aired that the crime information is not “location-specific.”
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
“If something happens that’s not consistent with the story they want to tell about APS -- the good news story -- then it’s ignored,” Johnson tells Channel 2.
Johnson has emailed about a thousand people his detailed, analytical appraisals of APS for years. In early September, he wrote about crime at APS, posing the question: “Why won’t the district’s own police department provide school-by-school crime stats?”
Weeks later, he answered his own question with a pointed jab at the district: “Where we are today is not having any visibility, no transparency, into the nature of crime that’s happening in our Atlanta public schools.”
TRENDING STORIES:
- South Fulton homeowners say many construction errors in new home by developer
- Officials identify dismembered remains as the 4 missing men in Oklahoma
- 16 new Toys ‘R’ Us stores to open in Georgia. Here’s where they are
Earlier this year, Johnson *was* able to get several years of crime reports about Drew Charter School in East Atlanta. Among the charges listed were theft by taking, assault, illegal drugs, fighting, auto theft, trespassing and a bomb threat.
But when Johnson wanted to expand his inquiry from Drew to all APS schools, he says the district “clammed up” and told him to get the information from the FBI.
Johnson was unsuccessful. “It’s impossible to get from the FBI, as far as I’ve been able to determine, location-specific crime data...and it’s impossible to get from APS,” he told us.
Johnson says the Atlanta Police Department’s website makes it relatively easy to get location-specific crime data, but after the school district started its own police department in 2015, the city’s APD website didn’t help.
He filed a request with APS under the state’s open records law in early September, asking for school-by-school data. He told Channel 2: “The response came back: the data does not exist.”
APS emailed Channel 2: “While Atlanta Public Schools does not publish this data, it is readily available for public review and is reported monthly to the FBI...”
Told that, Johnson mockingly responded: “Readily available? Where?”
Johnson contends that having accurate crime data -- just like graduation data or test scores -- is critical to improving schools “but if you’re resistant to doing that, the schools get worse, and nobody knows the difference.”
In the second statement, APS confirmed what Ed Johnson discovered. The district says it sends information on reported crimes to the FBI monthly, but “APS does not prepare the data in the location-specific format requested by the community member.”
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
IN OTHER NEWS:
©2022 Cox Media Group
