ATLANTA — Things heated up quickly on the first night of Operation Heatwave, as a body cam video from Atlanta police showed several people were arrested.
An APD captain told Channel 2 Action News Investigative Reporter Mark Winne that 19-year-old Willie Dennis is one of two young men charged with the murder of 16-year-old Bre’asia Powell at Benjamin E. Mays High School in the early morning darkness of May 28.
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“This is just indicative of how putting officers in the radius which shows a propensity for violence how this works. And what we found tonight is one of our homicide perpetrators,” Captain Ralph Woolfolk said.
Channel 2 Action News Investigative Reporter Mark Winne was the only reporter at the scene near the Brownlee Road and Scott Street intersection in southwest Atlanta.
Woolfolk said the vehicle Dennis emerged from was not his and the driver was not charged.
But that wasn’t the first action of the night.
Captain Woolfolk told Channel 2 Action News that two people were apprehended immediately after a car was stopped and Tremarcus Johnson fled on foot.
He then hopped in two cars at an auto auction site and was eventually arrested after a Georgia State Patrol Trooper’s car blocked him in.
“He is a member of the 27 Unos criminal street gang so we had resources that were out in a certain location. One of our radiuses in which we know weapon offense data supports us being there,” Woolfolk said.
Woolfolk also said two guns were recovered.
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He believes Operation Heatwave helps to drive down violent crime numbers in the city of Atlanta.
“It’s an operational initiative in which we use weapon offense data within a 400-meter radius of convenience stores and apartment complexes from our historical data,” he said.
The partners with Atlanta Police Department include the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives, Georgia State Patrol, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, and the Georgia Attorney General.
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