Kasim Reed just absolutely hit it out of the park in the middle of the protest. He arrived in the middle of the most contentious area of the protest to cheers from the crowd. He spoke to the news briefly. He said he wanted everyone to get home safely, but he was going to respect their 1st amendment rights to protest. When he was asked about the Piedmont Park hanging (likely suicide), he addressed it directly and told people that he "respectfully knew more than them" about the situation. When he was asked about the Atlanta PD, he said that they had 1.6 million interactions last year and discharged their weapons NINE times and that the racial makeup of the force mirrored Atlanta's population. When asked about other police departments around the country, he said he was just working on Atlanta right now.
