By John Schaffner
editor@reporternewspapers.net
Zone 2, which includes Buckhead, was awarded three top Atlanta Police Department awards at the fourth annual “Crime Is Toast Breakfast,” hosted by the Atlanta Police Foundation Oct. 30 at the Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta.
Zone 2 won the award for the Greatest Reduction of Crime for the Year, an award honoring the work of all of the officers, supervisors and staff of Zone 2. The Buckhead police zone recorded the greatest reduction in crime among all Atlanta Police zones for 2006 and is doing so again for 2007.
Zone 2 Commander, Major James Sellers, was presented the Manager of the Year award and Sergeant Anthony Singh of Zone 2 was presented the Supervisor of the Year award from among all sworn managers and supervisors in the Atlanta Police Department.
The awards were presented at the end of the annual breakfast event by Mayor Shirley Franklin, Police Chief Richard Pennington and Assistant Police Chief Alan Dreher. The event was attended by about 1,000 representatives of the Atlanta business community, public officials and police personnel.
The event was staged to highlight the men and women in blue of the Atlanta Police Department and to provide a progress report on new crime in the city and new initiatives the Atlanta Police Department is employing to fight crime.
Atlanta Police Foundation President & CEO W. David Wilkinson explained two of those initiatives—Crime Stoppers Atlanta and Operation Shield, which use a network of technologies to share public safety alerts to security directors, facility managers and property managers metro wide, to provide more eyes and ears on the streets through a combination of public and private security professionals.
The Atlanta Police Foundation raises funds to support a police recruitment program, a training program, a scholarship program, an affordable housing program to encourage officers to live in the city, the Crime Stoppers anonymous tip line and the mounted horse patrol.