Can Atlanta crime be fixed?

Based on experience and facts, Sommer earned the right to disparage the capital of the New South. First, her brother, Kaliq, an Atlanta police department sergeant, deals with the personification of crime statistics every day. Next, if there’s an award for the family who has been robbed the most times in Atlanta, the Murphy family might win the prize. Nobody wants the dubious achievement, but it is what it is.

I wrote about Kaliq and Sommer’s robberies, but forgot that it happened to me.

When Kaliq was a student at Morehouse, he was held up at gunpoint late at night on his way from the library. Accomplices waited in the car while Kaliq was held face-down on the ground. His wallet and laptop were stolen. Weeks later, I received his muddy driver’s license in the mail with a note that it was found on the side of the road.

Years later, Kaliq, now a police sergeant, arrested a suspect who looked familiar. He was the his robber. The perp didn’t recognize Kaliq, who remembered the crook and said, “You don’t forget someone’s face when they pull a gun on you.” The night was harrowing, but he lived to tell his tale.

Who knows how many people he terrorized. What a sad life, but I don’t waste sympathy on criminals. Everyone makes choices every day. Kaliq graduated, and the crook kept committing crimes.

Crooks targeted Sommer at Atlanta’s airport. Per routine, she left my house in Carrollton at 4:30 am in pitch black dark. When she gassed up her rental car, a man reached inside, stole her wallet and phone, and fled with waiting accomplices. No words were exchanged, and they drove off, leaving Sommer shaken.

She doesn’t carry cash, but had to replace her cards and phone. After filing a police report and Homeland Security confirmed her identity, she barely made the plane back to DC. But she lived to tell her tale. I wanted to stick pins in dolls to hex the man who robbed Sommer. In her wisdom, she refrained, saying life already dealt him a raw deal. I still wished him harm.

I wonder how many families endure our fate, where everyone has been robbed, or if we’re unlucky poster people for wrong place, wrong time. I wonder if Guinness Book of World Records has a category for us. According to their website, they “… work with leading global brands and businesses to break world records as part of bespoke marketing campaigns.”

I’m current on trends, but had to Google “bespoke marketing.” Guinness World Records will “…engage your audience through unforgettable moments of sheer amazement and wonder, whilst delivering bottom-line results.” There’s a wide variety of online record titles to choose from and they can be attempted across a broad range of digital platforms including popular social media sites, video conferencing apps and customized systems.

My crime story was submerged deep in my memory. We stayed on the executive level of a major hotel in downtown Atlanta. After we turned in, a man came in the room, riffled through my purse and left a few hundred dollars richer. I woke up while he was still there, and he just calmly finished robbing me and left.

I was equal parts furious, hysterical and happy to be alive. Sommer was in Law School and argued with hotel management to no avail that they shouldn’t charge me to stay in a room with a broken door lock. They made me pay for the privilege of being robbed in this peach pit of a city.

Here’s what my family has learned: Even careful citizens are preyed upon and become crime victims. Don’t carry cash. Don’t sleep in a hotel room with a broken door lock. Atlanta is not safe. A few years ago, a worker at the CDC went missing. Because of the sensitivity of his job, an all-out search took place. Days in, the police reported that the missing man hadn’t been found, but a handful of other corpses were located.

And Sommer won’t be hired to work for Atlanta’s tourism bureau.