Can Forest Park keep its Hispanic residents?
That may depend on the police.
This story was reported in partnership with Canopy Atlanta , a community-powered journalism nonprofit. This story was informed by feedback from Forest Park community members and was reported in collaboration with a Canopy Atlanta Fellow, community members whom Canopy Atlanta trains and pays to learn reporting skills.
Number of Traffic Citations issued by Forest Park Police Department (2016-2020)
But policing in Forest Park changed in late 2018, as divisions grew between city leadership and longtime police chief Hobbs: in October 2018, the Forest Park City Council fired Hobbs, a white man, and several months later hired Nathaniel Clark, Forest Park’s first Black permanent police chief. Hobbs subsequently filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging that the City of Forest Park had already been planning his retirement and that his firing was motivated by his race, according to the complaint he filed in court. In April 2021, the City of Forest Park voted to settle the case.
Clark is bespectacled, with a Southern drawl, and previously served with the police department in Albany, Georgia, among others, in several decades of public service. When he joined the department in 2019, he assessed community needs at churches and schools—which is where he heard concerns about the number of traffic stops. When asked about hearing that certain communities were feeling targeted by police, Clark says, “I took a look at the data, and it appeared that some of their concerns had validity,” referring to the number of citations being issued by the department. “Even other law enforcement officers [in other cities] had the same concept about the traffic stops and citations being an issue” in Forest Park, Clark adds.
Ibarra says trusting that Forest Park will stay hospitable might be harder for people in her parents’ generation, whose prior experiences with police have “just taught them to be a little more careful or cautious.” Her parents still instinctively text her whenever they see police cars, she says: There’s a traffic stop that way. Don’t go over there. But, over the last two years, she’s noticed a difference. For the first time, she knows police officers by name: there’s a Hispanic officer who went to school with her; another is a client of hers.
Knowing these people, and them being Brown and Black people, you get to relate to them a little more in this community.
By Sonam Vashi and Rachel McBride Contributing reporting by Angie Tran Photos by Audra Melton. StoryMap by Ayush Kumar
This StoryMap is part of a larger collection of stories that contextualize community data with lived experiences and historic insights. These personal narratives, available in the Metro Atlanta Racial Equity Atlas, capture the aspirations of those experiencing disparities across the region and the organizations advancing racial equity.