APD Zone 6 Commander Wants To Map Where Criminals Live

Maj. Keith Meadows, commander of the Atlanta Police Department's Zone 6 said Wednesday his team is building a database of addresses of where parolees and convicts live as a way to see what links they may have to crimes that occur in the vicinity of their domiciles.

The database would include convicted felons and parolees such as sex offenders and robbers, Meadows said Wednesday night at the February meeting of Neighborhood Planning Unit-W.

NPUs — the city is broken up into 25 of them — are citizen advisory boards, which make recommendations to city agencies on zoning, alcohol licensing land use and other planning issues. NPU-W includes East Atlanta, Ormewood Park and Woodland Hills among other neighborhoods.

"It's important for us to map where those people are in close proximity to where the crimes are happening," Meadows, who grew up in East Atlanta, said.

Several neighborhoods in Zone 6, such as Grant Park, send out e-mail alerts or bulletins to residents when a repeat offender such as a burglar or car thief who lives in that community or has been a problem there, is released from jail.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation already has a registry for sex offenders that includes photos, names and addresses of those listed. In Zip code 30316, which includes East Atlanta and Ormewood Park, has 80 registered offenders.

Meadows, who previously led APD's Major Crime Section and oversaw homicide, major fraud and commercial robberies among other incidents, said he’d bring those strategic planning skills to Zone 6.

He also is building a database of vacant properties in Zone 6 neighborhoods and directing officers to check those properties regularly.

A change enacted this year, enforcement of housing codes now falls under APD. One goal of that change is to reduce the backlog of cases.