Thursday, June 11, 2009 | Opinion
BENEFIT DINNER FOR SGT. SCOTT KREHER TONIGHT!

One of the Atlanta Police Department’s rules is that officers who have been suspended can’t work extra jobs. Like many, or perhaps most, of his fellow officers, Sgt. Scott Kreher worked a couple of security jobs on the side to support his family—four kids and his wife. He was suspended a couple of weeks ago for the now-infamous “baseball bat” comment, so those sources of income have dried up.

 

One of the Atlanta Police Department’s rules is that officers who have been suspended can’t work extra jobs. Considering that the officers were underpaid before the 10 percent pay reductions via the furloughs instituted by Mayor Shirley Franklin last December, such a rule takes a substantial bite out of a suspended officer’s household budget.

 Like many, or even perhaps most, of his fellow officers, Sgt. Scott Kreher worked a couple of security jobs on the side to support his family—four kids and his wife. He was suspended a few weeks ago for the now-infamous “baseball bat” comment, so those sources of income have dried up.

 The irony of this is that Kreher made his comment out of frustration over the city’s withholding of payment for medical services for police officers seriously injured in the line of duty.

 While Mayor Franklin bellyaches about her fake fear of Kreher, his family faces the very real difficulty of a shrinking budget—a budget that was already reduced last December by the police furloughs.

 To help him out, some fellow police officers and community activists have put together a benefit dinner tonight at 8 p.m. at Cosmo located at 45 13th Street in Midtown. Please pitch in and help ease the damage done by a petty mayor to the family of a courageous man.

 Another way you can help is by downloading the poster (by clicking the image below) for the dinner and plastering it where lots of people will see it. Thank you!