SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — A metro Atlanta mayor is fighting back against police bonuses, saying all city employees deserve extra cash in their pockets.
The South Fulton City Council approved $3,000 hiring and retention bonuses for the city's police force, but the new mayor vetoed it.
Mayor Khalid Kamau said he doesn't believe police should be singled out for bonuses and thinks all city employees working for South Fulton since 2020 should get them.
“[Police] Chief Meadows and some members of council have warned that if we don't give these $3,000 checks out to police officers, that our city is going to be less safe and that our businesses are going to be less safe. That sounds to me like extortion," Kamau said.
Kamau said he signed the veto because city council already planned to talk about bonuses for city employees in February.
Kamau thinks all city employees with at least two years on the job should get $2,500 bonuses.
“Chief Meadows and some members of council felt that police were more important than the rest of the employees in the city and forced this item on to the agenda, so that they could skip the line in benefits ahead of all other city employees," Kamau said.
South Fulton Police Chief Keith Meadows said he was "disappointed" the mayor took that position. Meadows believes the bonuses would have made the city more competitive for both attracting and keeping officers.
“Competition for recruitment and retention in the Atlanta metropolitan area, it's really stiff," Meadows said. "Retaining police officers is really important to the organization because we are a very young city, we started off with 87 police officers, and we've grown to 178. “
Meadows is worried not offering the bonuses could lead to issues with public safety.
“If you become short staffed, as many police departments are throughout the region, then it becomes particularly problematic for you to be able to respond appropriately," Meadows said.
Meadows said a lot of neighboring police departments are offering similar or even higher bonuses.
"Basically, it's a contract between the City of South Fulton and our current employees to maintain employment with us for the next 36 months, which is extremely important for us making sure that we retain all of the people that are recruited into our organization," Meadows said. "As you can imagine, it cost about $100,000 from the time to bring a police officer into your organization to send them through the police academy and get them through field training."
Some city council members sent out a press release Wednesday supporting the police chief. A city councilman told 11Alive he wasn't aware of the release until it came out. The mayor responded with his own statement, saying he believes the council's actions are political because the majority of them supported the former mayor.
“In 2021, five out of seven council members endorsed the old mayor, and 60% of the voters endorsed me," Kamau said.
The mayor will present his proposal for all city employees to get bonuses at city hall next week.
“We're going to have a vote on bonuses in 30 days," Kamau said. "I would question whether any police officer who would leave because they can't wait 30 days for a bonus."
The City of South Fulton is a fairly new municipality and was founded in 2017.
"When we first started up as a city, one of the things we did was we went to Georgia Tech and commissioned a study that was a beat study," Meadows said. "It told us we needed 18 patrol beats, as opposed to the eight patrol beats that we had at that time. In order for us to get to that space, we had to ramp up our recruitment really fast. That was one of the reasons we grew from 87 police officers to 178. It's our goal to make it ultimately to 300 police officers."
Kamau said city police make up 30% of the budget, and the city spends less than 1% of the budget on economic development.
"We cannot police our way to prosperity in South Fulton," Kamau said. "We have had double digit decreases in crime, which is excellent, but one of the things that we've seen repeatedly from police is that when the crime numbers are going down, police tell us, ‘We need more money to keep this trend going.’ When crime numbers are going up, police say, ‘We need more money to stop this train from happening.’ Whether the crime is going up or down, police are always asking for more money."