Biloxxxi's Woodshed

Don’t it always seem to go,
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Big Yellow Taxi – Joni Mitchell

In keeping with the spirit of my last post, I’d like to once again delve into the history of Atlanta. This time with something that could have changed some of the most vibrant parts of the city forever.

Atlanta is world renowned for its traffic. It’s up there with New York and LA, sometimes even worse. Back in the 70′s and 80′s, the solution to traffic was just to build more and bigger freeways. A simple cruise down I-85  from I-285 on the the top end to the bottom end will sufficiently demonstrate that. With so many Atlantans moving out to the suburbs yet still working in town, the proposed solution was to build new freeway arteries to ease the flow of traffic into town. This is the story of the three most notorious proposed projects.

I-420
I-420 (Also called GA-166) is sort of an oddball proposition in today’s terms. It was slated to begin in Douglasville, run south of I-20 into Atlanta and intersect with the Downtown Connector. It would then run from the connector and intersect I-20 East somewhere near Gresham Rd. This project was eventually canceled, because quite frankly, it was pointless. The section of the proposed freeway running between I-285 and the Connector was already planned and it became know as Lakewood Freeway (now Langford Parkway). This relieved most of the traffic issues on that side of town. The entire project, minus the Lakewood Freeway portion, was scrapped in 1983.

Here’s a map from 1981 of the eastern end of the project I was able to find. Notice how I-675 is slated to connect to the proposed I-420. We’ll get to that in a moment.

I-420 eastern portion

I-485 East/West (GA-410)
This is where shit gets weird. I-485 had two proposed segments; one running east/west and one running north/south. If these had been built, Atlanta would be a very different place.

Think back to your last visit to Stone Mountain Park. (I contend that if you’ve lived in Atlanta for any period of time and have never been to Stone Mountain, you’re probably a Carpetbagger and not worthy of my time. Rectify this.) You most likely traveled on US 78, also known as Stone Mountain Freeway. It’s a freeway, but it’s only like 4 miles long and it’s in such an odd spot. What’s the point in that?

Now, let’s say you’re leaving the Ted after another Braves victory and you’re heading north on the Connector. You need to get back to Decatur where you live, so the best route is to get off at Freedom Parkway and take Ponce De Leon Ave. to Decatur.

Freedom Parkway is about the oddest stretch of road you’ll ever drive on. It’s a full-fledged interchange that’s almost never crowded and seems way too complicated for its purpose. Combine this with Stone Mountain Freeway and what do you have? You guessed it, the beginning and ending of a freeway cutting through the Hwy. 78 Corridor east of Atlanta.

It’s nearly unthinkable to imagine a freeway cutting through this portion of town now, but the reality is, it mostly followed the old Seaboard Coastline Railway. It would have continued on where Stone Mountain Freeway ends today, cut through the property where North DeKalb Mall is located (although the mall was still in its prime when this plan was proposed), and follow Peachtree Creek until it reached the railroad tracks. It would follow the railroad tracks south across Ponce De Leon and then swing west running roughly parallel to Ponce through a heavily wooded area and clipping off the northern section of Candler Park.

Here’s where the story gets interesting. Right of way for the proposed freeway had already been purchased by the state for the portion west of Candler Park, and construction was underway. If you look at Atlanta on Google Maps, you’ll see a large X-shaped swath of green just east of Freedom Parkway that’s now known as Freedom Park. This was the route I-485 was to take to connect to I-75/85. In fact, the freeway was already under construction beginning at the Connector, before neighborhoods such as Druid Hills, Morningside, and Atkins Park were able to muster enough opposition to stop the project.

I-485 North/South (GA-400)
I have a hard time believing this section of I-485 ever even got off the ground.  It was a proposed route to connect GA-400 with I-675. There would have been a large Spaghetti Junction type interchange in that are where Freedom Park is that I mentioned above.

Despite the fact that the area the freeway would have run through was far more blighted than it is now, bisecting these neighborhoods would have amounted to heresy in my eyes. Imagine the Virginia-Highlands or Grant Park today with a freeway running through them. Jenn, of Curiouser and Curiouser fame, used to live in a beautiful house on Greencove Avenue in the Virginia-Highlands. There’s a park across the street from her former house. Had they built this freeway, you’d have seen that freeway instead of the park.

I’m not one to fuss too much when the powers that be want to tear down a shanty town to run a freeway through or build a stadium, but shanty towns aren’t million dollar turn of the century homes. Thankfully, these neighborhoods were able band together and put up some real opposition. The entire project was permanently put out to pasture when Jimmy Carter put his Presidential Library right in the middle of the land purchased for the I-485 interchange where Freedom Park is now located. When the 1996 Olympics came to Atlanta, Freedom Parkway was finished and the remaining land was turned into Freedom Park.

Here are a couple more maps I found of the proposed routes and a Google Map with the entire proposed layout of both I-420 and I-485. The maps differ slightly so I did the best I could with the information I’ve gathered.

1972 Exxon map of I-485

1972 Map of I-485

View I-485/I-420 in a larger map

We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man.
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand.
-Rockin in the Free World
Neil Young

A couple of weeks back, I heard something on the Neal Boortz Radio Show that intrigued me. He was discussing the Minimum Force Bill currently proposed in New York with a caller who was a former City of Atlanta Police Officer. Essentially, this bill would require cops to “shoot to maim” rather than “shoot to kill.” The bill is misguided because once the situation has escalated to the point where a police officer has to pull the trigger, lives are in danger, and the situation must be ended ASAP. Shooting a gun at a suspect is a high pressure situation and aiming at gunman’s shooting arm is a difficult proposition, especially when that gun is pointed at you.

What really interested me about the call was the conversation that followed. Neal asked the officer if he remembered back in the late 70′s when officers still used .38 revolvers as their service weapons and the Atlanta Commissioner of Public Safety at the time required the officers to use  Wadcutter bullets as the service rounds in their weapons. The officer did, in fact, remember this and explained the significance of it, which I will get to in a minute, but first let’s frame the picture of the late 1970′s in the City of Atlanta.

From the March 22, 1976 issue of TIME Magazine

To many Atlantans it smacked of capricious cronyism when Maynard Jackson Jr., the city’s black mayor, appointed A. Reginald Eaves as commissioner of public safety in 1974. A blunt-spoken black lawyer whose chief qualification for the job appeared to be his friendship with Jackson, a college classmate, Eaves seemed totally unqualified to command the city’s 1,500-man police force, then struggling ineffectively against a crime surge that had made Atlanta one of the homicide capitals of the U.S. But today the top cop is being cheered more than he is being jeered—even by some of his harshest early critics. Says Hal Gulliver, editorial page editor of the Atlanta Constitution, which vehemently opposed his appointment: “Eaves must be doing something right.”

Last year violent personal crimes in Atlanta dropped 9.9%. Murders decreased from 248 to 185, burglaries dropped from 16,802 to 14,501, and armed robberies fell from 4,357 to 3,887. Overall, reported crime increased by only 3% in Atlanta last year, compared with an estimated national average increase of 11%. One big reason: Reg Eaves and his tough approach to “black on black” crime.

In Atlanta, which is 60% black, crime had followed a grimly familiar pattern. Most violence occurred in largely black areas, where the city’s largely white police force was least effective. Eaves, now 41, took on his $34,000-a-year job with a simple conviction: “Blacks suffer the most from crime, and if given a chance to relate to the police, they will help fight it.”

No Excuse. Eaves launched his campaign with characteristic directness: he demoted more than 100 acting sergeants and other commanders and installed his own team, promoting more than 30 blacks. He also increased recruit training from six weeks to 19 weeks, and required all cops to take “crisis intervention” classes to learn how to deal with domestic squabbles. Most important, he began spreading what might be called Eaves’ law through black high-crime areas: “No matter how poor you are, there is no excuse for knocking a lady in the head or stealing her purse.”

A. Reginald Eaves is the name we need to concentrate on here. The article continues…

His most conspicuous achievement has been to win the admiration of Atlanta blacks—sometimes with behavior that makes whites cringe. In one typical episode, notes TIME Correspondent Jack White, Eaves ordered an option-loaded car that cost more than the $3,900 the city usually allots for commissioners’ automobiles, then airily dismissed the subsequent howls: “I’m giving too much time and effort to this city to try to prove that I’m the good nigger. If I can’t ride in a little bit of comfort, to hell with it.” Eaves eventually had to pay the difference between the cost of the car and the city allowance, but his chutzpah had the desired effect. Says Black Councilman James Bond: “In my district, Eaves is a hero.”

This article accurately paints the picture of Reginald Eaves; seemingly effective, but not the shining bastion of ethics that one might hope for. In any case, Reggie decided to require all APD officers to use wadcutter ammo in their .38 caliber service pistols. Wadcutter (and its close relative Semi Wadcutter) rounds are essentially target practice bullets. They’re designed to shoot accurately and put a hole in a paper target without a lot of tearing.

Wadcutter

You can see what sort of problem might arise when it’s time to shoot a perp with a target round. They’re underpowered and they tend to flatten upon impact without much penetration. This results in limited stopping power.

Reginald Eaves’s  problem was that he had a lot of black-on-black crime, and an overwhelming majority of his officers were white, even with the promotions mentioned in the article above. Anytime violence escalated, and lethal force was used, there was the perceived problem of  ”a white cop shooting another black man,” whether it was warranted or not. His solution to this problem was to have every officer use Wadcutter ammo in their service weapons, since they’d be less lethal. These bullets came to be known as “Reggie Rounds” or “Reggie Pellets.”

From a handgun forum post:

Same thing happened to a couple friends of mine on the Atlanta PD.

This was back in the day when those no-goods Maynard Jackson and Reginald Eaves were in charge. Not only did they make the patrolmen carry .38s, they had to use lead wadcutters loaded in a reverse position (in other words, target loads) because Eaves didn’t want to hurt the criminals – his and Maynard’s constituents, I guess.

The cops called these anemic loads “Reggie pellets.”

Anyhow, these two guys I knew answered a call on a “demented person” – they walk in the front door and this guy on crank or angel dust came howling down the stairs swinging an axe. They emptied their .38s into him and it didn’t even slow him down. One of them grabbed a chair and broke it over his head, the other one beat him with his MagnaLite until they managed to get the axe away from him. Meanwhile, backup arrived – they managed to subdue the guy enough to get the handcuffs on him, all administering wood shampoos with all their might. (This was before the days of Rodney King.) They stuffed the guy (bleeding heavily) into the back of a patrol car, and he kicked all the windows out (meanwhile screaming like a banshee.) They had to chain him to a gurney down at Grady while they tried to treat him.

All the officers involved went out and bought .45 Long Colts, but Reggie wouldn’t let them carry them. A lot of them carried them anyway.

That story might be slightly exaggerated, but I’ve heard similar ones from APD Officers that work the bar beat in my neighborhood. The law of unintended consequences definitely reared its ugly head when Reggie Rounds were mandated. The idea of a less-lethal bullet sounds awesome in theory, but what happens a cop actually needs to put down a suspect? You wind up with four cops emptying their guns into a perp just to knock him down. That’s 24 bullets. It doesn’t look real good when you open the newspaper the next day and the headline reads: Cops Shoot Suspect 24 Times in Confrontation on Confederate Ave. (See Sean Bell Case in New York City.)

The entire culmination of this post is this: guns are designed with one explicit purpose, and that purpose is to kill. Everyone knows cops carry guns and are authorized to use them if the situation warrants. If that isn’t deterrent enough, crippling an officer’s ability to quickly end a potentially deadly situation will have dire consequences. Cops are trained to shoot suspects in the torso because that’s widest target area of the body to hit, it also happens to be the most lethal. Requiring an officer to shoot a suspect in the arm holding the gun is the same as requiring the officer to use inferior ammo. The end result is innocent people get killed. Guns are made for killing quickly and efficiently. As the inimitable Buda so eloquently put it, “Guns are like condoms. You don’t buy condoms to show to your buddies.” Well said my friend. Well said.