ATLANTA — An Atlanta City Council member is defending his words after body camera video captured him criticizing Atlanta police (APD) during a recent encounter at a local gas station last month.
Officers were conducting a directed patrol in the parking lot of a gas station on Jonesboro Road, near I-285, at around 6:04 p.m. on Sept. 20 when Atlanta City Council member Antonio Lewis walked up to the officers and began talking to them about a previous parking citation he had received while parked in the city, police said.
The body camera videos, which were obtained exclusively by Channel 2′s Michael Seiden, show the officers pulling into the gas station at the same time that Lewis is walking back to his car.
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One portion of the video doesn’t have any audio, but it appears to show the officers stopping in front of Lewis’ car, and moments later, Lewis can be seen walking over to the officers’ car where he shakes their hands and appears to have a short conversation before he heads back to his car.
Lewis returns to the officers’ car holding a parking citation that he had received in the past.
Lewis begins complaining to the officers about the ticket, but he also makes it clear that APD is not responsible for giving him the ticket.
As the conversation continues, the two officers get out of the vehicle and Lewis continues talking about his parking citation.
At one point, two identified men and a woman join the conversation.
Throughout the encounter, Lewis can be heard criticizing the officers and the hiring practices of APD.
“Always say ‘not guilty’ when you go to court,” Lewis told the group. “You know why? Police officers lie!”
“We’ve hired Black and brown police officers but some of the Black police officers, they ain’t from the city,” Lewis added. “They from New York and they don’t even like us.”
The woman standing off camera attempts to ask one of the officers a question about getting back some personal items that belonged to her deceased husband when she’s interrupted by Lewis.
“Who you think support our community more him or me?” Lewis asked the unidentified woman who appeared uncomfortable with the question. “No! Be real! No, you gotta be we ain’t scared of the folk no more . We ain’t trippin’! He trippin’!”
The officer tries to bring calm to the situation.
“I come out to these streets to make sure everybody in Atlanta is safe,” the officer replied.
During the conversation, Lewis explained to police that he stopped to get gas when he was approached by some constituents who were asking him for help getting a job.
Audio from the body camera video revealed that officers suspected that Lewis was under the influence of alcohol, but they didn’t say anything because he was a passenger in a car.
The encounter ends without any citations or arrests.
On Wednesday, one of the leaders of the APD union spoke out against Lewis.
“I think it’s appalling, and I think it’s disgusting that a city council member would talk to a police officer like that,” Vince Champion said, who serves as the regional director for the International Brotherhood of Police Officers.
“If somebody you know, at two, three o’clock in the morning, somebody’s breaking in their house or they’re getting robbed or anything of that nature, are they going to call the councilman to come and take care of it?” added Champion. " No, they’re going to call the police!”
Champion also expressed that he was very concerned for his officers after learning that Lewis serves on the city’s Public Safety committee.
Late Wednesday, Seiden received a phone call from Lewis who told him that he had no regrets about what he said last month.
“I stopped at the gas station to use the ATM and I was stopped by a young person who was looking for a job,” he said.
“While we were talking, the police whipped up on us like it was a drug deal,” he added.
Lewis said that one of the officers was Hispanic and the other was Black.
“At the time, the Black officer tried to antagonize me by asking me about a ticket that was in my window,” he added. " And so I asked him, ‘What does that have to do with you?’ He was antagonizing me, trying to get other words out of me.”
Lewis told Channel 2 that he immediately reported the encounter to Chief Darin Schierbaum and hopes APD will take his complaint seriously.
“Why were they at that gas station?” he asked. “What made them whip into that gas station like that? They weren’t parked at a pump. They weren’t parked in that space. They parked in front of my car to where I couldn’t move. "
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Lewis also addressed his criticism of APD’s hiring practices.
“We’re hiring police officers by promoting the house and the money,” he said. “And so we’re recruiting at different states, at fairs and we’re only recruiting officers who’ve already been already post-certified as an officer. We’re gonna give you a house, a big raise, and a car in Atlanta. And so people in my district have told me that they’ve been running into some officers who have been moving that way.”
Lewis also addressed allegations that he may have been intoxicated.
“Man, I wasn’t driving. It was six, seven o’clock in the afternoon, I was being stopped by some young people who asked me about a job,” he said.
Lewis added that he hopes people see his passion because he claims that he was speaking for not only himself but also the people of his community.
“The biggest issue of that day is how often do they do that at our stores?” he said. “How often are they pulling up on people and our kids?”
Lewis said he would like to find a way to work with police and help bridge the gap.
But former and current law enforcement officers told Channel 2 that Lewis’ comments are not only dangerous but they also widen the gap.
“Maybe he needs to have a closed-door conversation with the chief of police,” Champion said. “It’s very concerning to me that he’s out there making those comments publicly.”
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