Atlanta Citizens Review Board disputes AJC account, urges clearer MOU with APD and GBI and more investigators

The Atlanta Citizens Review Board on Monday told the Atlanta City Council Public Safety and Legal Administration Committee that it did not ignore notifications of officer‑involved shootings and in‑custody deaths reported by the Atlanta Journal‑Constitution and defended its current process while urging faster, clearer interagency coordination and more staff and funding.

Executive Director Lee Reed said the board had received notification emails from the Atlanta Police Department but had not received closure notices that would trigger the board’s investigative process. "The answer is to the question is no, emphatically no," Reed said, responding to the committee’s resolution asking whether the board had failed to act. He told the committee that, after reconciling APD data, APD listed 29 open officer‑involved‑shooting or in‑custody‑death investigations; the ACRB had received three closed APD files on Feb. 10 — 25 days after the AJC story — and had two matters currently in its process.

Why it matters: the ordinance enacted in 2020 expanded the ACRB’s authority to review and hold public hearings on certain critical incidents. Reed and deputy director Sheena Robertson told council members that the board’s ability to investigate fully is constrained unless it has access to the criminal‑investigative materials gathered by APD, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) or the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office. Robertson summarized…