Paul Howard was a Real Advocate for Victims, But No Defender of Police. Can we Ever Get This Right?

I was very sad to hear the news about Paul Howard being involved in a financial scandal.  I was shocked.  I can’t say I knew him, but I knew his door was always open to crime victims for the twenty years I worked in victim advocacy and lobbying in Atlanta.

Nobody in politics has a perfect record, but more than a few times, I heard from victims of horrific crimes that Howard himself comforted them and sustained them through very difficult circumstances.

No DA is fair to the police in big cities, but Howard was, as far as I know, not openly hostile to police officers.  Well, let me amend that.  I’ve heard from police now.  He persecuted Officer Ray Bunn.  Here is a post from Bunn’s wife: https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/raymond-bunn.200567/.  Here is more information about what Paul Howard did to Bunn: https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1854702/posts; https://www.wsbtv.com/news/judge-tosses-ex-atlanta-cops-murder-charge/241699160/.

Of course, the “Reverend” Markel Hutchins, an Al Sharpton acolyte, was involved in persecuting the innocent officer.

Two nights ago, I was giving a speech; I mentioned Paul Howard in passing, and I met a crime survivor whom he had literally saved.  Her tragedy is her own to tell, and I hope she tells it.  But it reminded me of all the times Howard went against the political establishment and the media establishment to fight for a woman or child or man who had been horrifically brutalized and now faced a hostile reception in Atlanta’s courts.

And so I want to say this.  Paul Howard made a mistake.  And according to impeccably reliable police, Howard regularly screwed police.  So Paul Howard was by no means a perfect politician, because no such thing exists.  But I watched him for two decades offer comfort and dignity to people who had those things stripped from them.

And that –that — perhaps, should be his legacy.  If he apologizes to the police he defamed along the way

 

 

 

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