Atlanta and Fulton County citizens who have a little extra time on their hands — as so many of us do in this economy — can help their neighborhood crime-watches through a cool program called Citizens CourtWatch. CourtWatch is run by the Fulton County District Attorney’s office as part of its Community Prosecution Program, and it allows neighborhoods to track the criminals arrested in their areas as they move through the courts. 

 

Adam Brackman, our area’s CourtWatch King, had been encouraging members of our neighborhood group to get involved in CourtWatch forever.  We’re members of SAND (South Atlantans for Neighborhood Development), representing Ormewood Park, North Ormewood Park, Boulevard Heights, Woodland Park, Benteen Park and McDonough-Guice.  Crime has escalated in our part of town and in East Atlanta (and yes, Chief Pennington, we hear ya… it’s “just” property crime and that violent crime appears to be down), and many of us were tired of reading about yet another neighbor’s home being bashed into and burglarized.  But it took the announcement of the sentencing in the Johnny Dennard case to get a SAND crowd down to the courthouse.

 

We’ve been CourtWatching now since early February. We went through the training in March.  Because our time is limited, we’ve been focusing on cases in Zone 3 and Zone 6.

 

Adam has been on the road a lot, and his absence has left quite a void.  It takes six of us to fill it, and even then, we’re not sure we six have the impact that one Adam Brackman has.  But we try: Jonna Patillo and Jim Ledford from Boulevard Heights (BOHO), Karl Harden and Rodney Lamar from East Atlanta, and Kris Raper and yours truly from Ormewood Park. We all have our navy blue CourtWatch (CW) t-shirts that could use a re-design but do make us visible in the courtroom.

 

My feelings about my CourtWatch experience have been mixed.  There are the small victories – a defense attorney spots us in the courtroom and decides not to ask for bond – and large ones – Fulton County Court Judge Marvin Arrington’s $1M bond for a defendant charged with drug trafficking. Many times, though, we see less progress: the defendant doesn’t show up, for example, or the case is continued for another reason.  Sometimes we can feel the hostility from the defendant’s group.  

 

But recently, CourtWatch Coordinator Janet Martin and one of our community prosecutors Assistant District Attorney Kimani King alerted us to State of Georgia vs. Andre Grier 09SC77314, a case coming before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Wendy L. Shoob.

 

This was a bad guy, but we knew that wasn’t enough to ensure that he wouldn’t be put back out in our neighborhoods. According to the information we got from the DA, Andre Grier’s record includes 27 arrests with at least three felony convictions. He was also convicted of entering auto and he has at least two drug convictions. At the time the latest incident occurred – a car break-in – he was out on bond on robbery charges that were later upgraded to armed robbery. 

 

Grier was in court to ask to be released on bond. And not just any bond, a signature bond, which – as I understood it – he just signs his name, puts up no money and swears to be good if they let him out.  Additionally, although he had two other bonds on pending charges which he had committed while he was out on bond, he was asking to have this third bond lowered.

 

Really, who could make this up?

 

So Andre Grier was brought before Judge Shoob (whose name every CourtWatcher and their neighborhoods will remember when judicial elections come up).  Judge Shoob was discerning enough to note Grier’s record. In doing so, she outlined to the defendant and his lawyer – in an Are-you-sure-this-is-what-you’re-asking? tone – that he had been arrested in January, and while he was out on bond for that one, he committed the crime he was there for today… and that these two most recent crimes were while he was out on bond for yet another pending case – the armed robbery – and that in essence, he was asking to be let out a third time – well, third time’s the charm, right? – even though he had violated the terms of his previous releases.

 

Judge Shoob observed to Grier that it appeared that every time he was released on bail, he went back to the same neighborhood and committed the same kinds of crimes, and yet he expected to be released again as he had been before.

 

But I guess Grier got “third time’s the charm” mixed up with “three strikes and you’re out.”

 

Judge Shoob didn’t.

 

She told him that he was not getting out of jail today or tomorrow or anytime soon. In fact, she said, with the armed robbery on top of his other convictions, he was looking at a mandatory 10 years to life sentence. So, she said, Mr. Grier, you are not going anywhere for a long, long time. No bond. Back to jail. Period.

 

Hooray!

 

What’s more, when the prosecutor pointed out the six CourtWatch people representing the members of the community, Judge Shoob smiled and waved at us, which no judge has ever done in my CourtWatch experience.

 

We were all so thrilled that we took ourselves out for breakfast and strategized about how to get even more neighbors involved in CourtWatch. 

 

Now if we could just help them redesign those t-shirts…