Family begs Atlanta council for answers after 2021 police shooting

“It’s been like listening to a stopwatch tick down 60 seconds over, and over, and over,” Takita Holland told the AJC. “To not have transparency, to not have accountability, and not to know the truth.”

Holland stood in front of the City Council’s public safety committee Monday to say she just wants to know how her cousin Parker was shot.

Multiple investigations are ongoing about Officer Christopher Diss, who shot multiple times into a crowd of approximately 1,000 people where other people were shooting, police records show. Two people were shot, including Parker, who later died. Diss resigned from the Atlanta Police Department in September 2022 and moved to another metro area police department, records show.

Parker’s family stood alongside Anyonna Lofton, the wife of Keith Lofton who was also involved in the shooting and faced murder charges. He entered a special guilty plea known as an Alford plea, meaning he did not admit to the crime but that the prosecution had enough evidence to convict him. Keith Lofton is serving an eight year sentence in prison for voluntary manslaughter of Parker.

At the time of the shooting, Atlanta police said, “It is unclear who shot whom.” The case was referred to the Fulton County district attorney’s office in July 2023.

“It’s very disappointing,” Lofton said the review board’s yearslong delay investigating the shooting. “It has cost a lot emotionally, financially.”

Andrea Boone, who chairs the public safety committee and represents District 10, said she was unaware the family — some of whom live in her district — had been waiting for the review board to investigate this shooting since 2021.

“I didn’t know that until today,” Boone said as she hugged Pazhedath after the meeting. The family was referred by council members to police.

An investigation of Parker’s death should be prioritized by the review board, Boone told the AJC. She wants other shootings that are years old to also be investigated, she said. The council may need to make changes to the board’s process, she said.

Currently the review board waits until police internal affairs and criminal investigations are closed before beginning its own — meaning cases often wait years before they get investigated. It is unusual for a board with investigative power to wait until after police have completed their investigation, Jayson Wechter, a police oversight expert told the AJC. Best practice is to start an investigation “as quickly as possible” to collect evidence and speak to witnesses.

“That is an issue,” Boone told the AJC after the meeting.

“I feel like we have made progress because they know that we are looking and the public is looking,” Boone said.

“We want to resolve these issues timely in a manner that the citizens can trust,” the board’s Executive Director Lee Reid told council members. He was asked to appear to provide an update about his agency’s stalled officer-involved shooting and in-custody death investigations.

An agreement is being worked on to expedite investigations by the board.

Boone instructed Reid to come back in 30 days to update the council again.

The board’s resources are stretched thin, Reid said. It has four vacant investigator jobs and 160 open investigations into citizen complaints about officers’ conduct.

When investigations are complete, the review board can recommend discipline, training and policy changes to the Atlanta Police Department. The chief has rejected only one-fourth of the board’s discipline recommendations, officials told the council.

“Right now we don’t have the authority to compel the chief to make a decision,” Reid told the council.

The police union that represents members of the Atlanta Police Department said in an interview Monday before the council meeting that the review board should not be able to overrule the chief’s decisions about discipline.

“We have more faith in the chief and command staff to make those decisions than an independent review board,” said Vincent Champion, the southeast regional director of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers.

The 15 members of the review board are appointed by the mayor, council president, City Council, neighborhood associations, business league, social groups, student organizations and professional organizations for lawyers. At least one member must have previous law enforcement experience.

The union supports the review board discussing and checking for missing information. But the review board does not have the training it needs to do more than that, he said.

“They should not have any authority, per se, over the police department,” Champion said.