Six Georgia State Lawmakers Introduce New Bill To Hold Police Officers Accountable For Shootings

Atlanta, GA — Six female Georgia law­mak­ers have tak­en his­toric action by fil­ing a bill that requires all state and local law enforce­ment depart­ments to cre­ate a ‘use of force’ data­base that is acces­si­ble by the pub­lic. The Use of Force Act (House Bill 636) was filed by State Representatives Renitta Shannon, Sandra Scott, Erica Thomas, Pam Stephenson, Park Cannon, and Bee Nguyen.

he Bill comes on the heels of a con­sid­er­ably large num­ber of high pro­filed offi­cer-involved shoot­ing cas­es in Georgia. The names of the vic­tims include Jimmy Atchison, Veltavious Griggs, JaMarion Robinson, Caine Rogers, DeAundre Phillips, Nicholas Thomas, Anthony Hill, Alexia Christian, Kevin Davis, and many oth­ers. The cas­es of Atchison and Griggs were both heav­i­ly fea­tured on BET’s Copwatch America docuseries.

After the show pre­miered, for­mer Atlanta police offi­cer Sung Kim was forced to resign for the shoot­ing of Jimmy Atchison. Witnesses say the father of two say was sur­ren­der­ing with his hands up when he was shot in the face. The FBI Task Force attempt­ed to arrest Atchison for his alleged involve­ment in an armed rob­bery. The APD police report stat­ed at the time of the Atchison’s mur­der that “a fol­low-up inter­view is need­ed with Brogan to check the dis­crep­an­cies in the two sto­ries.” A wit­ness to the alleged armed rob­bery told police that Atchison didn’t rob anyone.

The pro­posed Georgia law would require law enforce­ment to take sig­nif­i­cant action in offi­cer-involved inci­dents such as:

* Report every use of force inci­dent in writing,

* Ensure that the inci­dents are entered and main­tained in a data­base that can be accessed by the public,

* and detail any and all law enforce­ment offi­cers that have been dis­ci­plined as a result of the use of force.

If the leg­is­la­tion pass­es, law enforce­ment agen­cies will be required to update the data­base with the infor­ma­tion from the pre­vi­ous month.

News of the lawmaker’s his­toric ini­tia­tive went viral on social media, includ­ing retweets from Kathy Griffin and Shaun King. You can fol­low the dis­cus­sion below:

Driving account­abil­i­ty for exces­sive use of force by #police is some­thing I’ve con­sis­tent­ly fought for. This arti­cle talks about a bill I spon­sored in 2019, that is the first of a series of bills.
Help me con­tin­ue the fight

https://​secure​.act​blue​.com/​c​o​n​t​r​i​b​u​t​e​/​p​a​g​e​/​s​h​a​n​n​o​n​f​o​r​g​a​h​o​u​s​e84 …#BLM#JimmyAtchisonhttps://​twit​ter​.com/​A​t​t​o​r​n​e​y​G​r​i​g​g​s​/​s​t​a​t​u​s​/​1​2​1​4​5​8​1​7​8​4​6​0​1​6​6​1​441 …