This year has been the deadliest in Atlanta in decades. After a shooting at a popular shopping mall, mega-producer Jermaine Dupri called for tougher police profiling. While activists are fighting against police profiling, Dupri is urging for the opposite — “code red” profiling.
On Dec. 21, 7-year-old Kennedy Maxie was shot near Phipps Plaza, a local upscale mall, EUR reported. There were three killings in less than 24 hours over the Christmas weekend, which boosted the number of Atlanta homicides this year to 154, the highest since 1998, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Kennedy was shopping with her family. She was in a car with her mother and aunt as they drove past Phipps Plaza when she was shot in the back of the head by a stray bullet. She later died while in the hospital.
Dupri was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and raised in Atlanta.
In a now-deleted tweet, the founder of the So So Def Recordings label wrote on Christmas Eve, “If you really from the A, it’s time for us to come together and stop all this shooting s**t at Lenox. And now Phipps, the police need to get tougher, the profiling needs to go to code red and I can give a f*ck about y’all getting mad about me saying this, lil kids getting shot is wack.”
In November, a man was shot in front of an Apple store at Atlanta’s Lenox Mall following a fight. Then on Dec. 5, there was an accidental shooting inside the Neiman Marcus at Lenox Mall. According to police, the gunfire was the result of a person walking through the store and adjusting his pants when the firearm he had in his waistband fired, 11Alive reported. There were no injuries.
Interim Police Chief Rodney Bryant spoke out about the Phipps Plaza shooting in a statement, saying, “Once again we’re addressing a situation of a senseless shooting that we believe arose from individuals unable to resolve a situation civilly.”
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has come under heat for the city’s rising crime rate.
A $15,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for Kennedy’s injuries
Dupri, 48, has been getting involved in community activism as of late. In November, Dupri along with Ne-Yo, Johnta Austin and Bryan Michael Cox released the new single “Change,” Revolt reported. The song calls for social justice and also features artists Kirk Franklin, Common, Rotimi, Eric Bellinger, Anthony Hamilton, and the Detroit Youth Choir.
“We created the song to call attention to these long-standing issues,” Dupri said. “Members of the global community are now awakened to issues affecting BIPOC. The global pandemic forced us all to reevaluate everything from our health to police brutality and systemic racism. We are now witnessing a paradigm shift that creates an opportunity for real impactful change. ‘Change’ only resonates the need for topics that should have always been prioritized.”
