The Atlanta Police LGBT Advisory Board will meet with the mayor and police chief in private meetings this week to discuss the board's role as well as disciplinary actions taken against officers involved in the controversial Eagle raid.
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The Atlanta Police LGBT Advisory group sent letters today to Mayor Kasim Reed and Chief George Turner requesting meetings with each of them to discuss the punishments handed down so far in the Eagle raid.
The board announced at a July 13 community meeting it would do so and told people attending the forum that they hope to meet with each by July 27. Board members are also asking the mayor and chief to attend a future community town hall meeting in the future.
Chief Turner responded today to the board saying, "It would be my pleasure to meet with you all," and saying his assistant would set up dates for both meetings on Monday.
Mayor Reed also responded late Friday, saying he also would be "happy to meet with ... the members of the LGBT Advisory Board."
Here are what the letters sent to the mayor and the police chief stated:
July 14, 2011
Ladies and Gentlemen of the LGBT Advisory Committee:
My name is John Patrick Curran. I am one of the plaintiffs in the Eagle Raid case against the city of Atlanta.
After the meeting yesterday evening I sat in my car for forty-five minutes and cried.
Perhaps it was long over due, sheer frustration, or emotional exhaustion.
But mostly, it was defeatism. I had found strength within myself that I never knew I had, but it’s starting to wear thin.
It's a no brainer that the officers who were found to have lied and tampered with evidence in the botched 2009 Eagle raid should be fired, said Christine A. Koehler, a criminal defense attorney based in Gwinnett County.
As past president of the gay Stonewall Bar Association and the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, Koehler said if she practiced in Fulton County, she would be immediately looking through past client records to see if any of the APD officers cited in two scathing investigations on the Eagle raid for lying and tampering with federal evidence testified against any of her clients.
"And I would seek new trials based on the officers' credibility," she said.
An attorney representing a former bartender at the Atlanta Eagle says he plans to file a lawsuit on his client's behalf for false arrest and prosecution without probable cause.
Chris Lopez, who was a bartender the night the Atlanta Police Department raided the gay Midtown bar on Sept. 10, 2009, and was one of the eight people arrested, filed a complaint with the city's Municipal Clerk on Dec. 7, 2010, seeking $250,000 for "false arrest, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution."
Lopez filed the complaint as the city settled for more than $1 million with patrons of the bar who sued the city in federal civil court saying their constitutional rights were violated.
When the city's scathing reports describing numerous illegal actions — illegal search and seizures, lying under oath, destroying evidence — made by APD officers during and after the raid were released last month, Lopez's attorney said legal action against the city is now likely.
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A member of the Atlanta Police LGBT Advisory group is demanding fellow members ask Mayor Kasim Reed and Chief George Turner to fire officers involved in the raid on the Atlanta Eagle after the department was slammed in reports released last week.
Betty Couvertier, who also hosts and produces “Alternative Perspectives,” an LGBT radio show on WRFG 89.3 FM every Tuesday, sent a letter to other board members on Wednesday expressing her dismay with Reed's revelation that he was “shocked” when he read the reports from the APD's Office of Professional Standards and an independent report by high-profile law firm Greenberg Traurig. The reports state officers lied, destroyed evidence and also showed outright anti-gay prejudices related to the 2009 raid on the gay bar.
“I find it offensive and disturbing that the mayor would be shocked, after all the Civilian Review Board [Atlanta Citizen Review Board] came to similar conclusions a year ago but they were rejected [by Chief Turner],” she said in a letter to the advisory group members Glen Paul Freedman, chair; Josh Noblitt; Tracee McDaniel; Ebonee Bradford Barnes, Tracy Elliott, Molly Simmons, Philip Rafshoon and Terence McPhaul.