Complaint Room
On June 5, 2001, the Fulton County Complaint Room accepted its first case. Over the course of the next ten weeks, the District Attorney’s Office conducted the pilot phase of this new front-end case-screening system. The system is designed to significantly impact felony case outcomes, promote equality, and restore swiftness and certainty to the pace of criminal justice in the City of Atlanta and Fulton County.

Specifically, the Complaint Room process is intended to effect a dramatic re-allocation of police resources from mandatory court appearances to managed “front-end” case documentation. The system will also provide for a significant increase in the beneficial interaction between police officers and prosecutors when criminal cases are first being made against arrestees, which in turn results in an enhanced quality of cases accepted for prosecution and a consequential increase in the length of sentences for defendants—especially those convicted of drug crimes and repeat offenses. It is also expected that there will be a reduction in the pre-trial inmate population at both the City and County jails as well as a decrease in the number of felony cases appearing on Superior Court calendars. Finally, this new system promises a total potential savings of roughly $5 million annually to Fulton County taxpayers.

During the pilot phase, the Complaint Room processed 61 felony defendants, primarily as the result of arrests by the Atlanta Police Department’s “Red Dog Squad,” the first police unit to be phased into the system. So what were the results?

There was a considerable reduction in the number of court appearances required of police officers. Under the current system, those 61 arrests would have entailed 77 associated court appearances for the arresting officers. Under the Complaint Room system, only four were necessary—a 93% reduction.

Nor did the Complaint Room process create an unreasonable “return-to-service” time for police officers—an understandable concern initially expressed by law enforcement. “Return-to-service” time refers to the period between the time the officer first makes contact with the Complaint Room to inform staff that an arrest has been made and when the officer is released by the Complaint Room staff. On average, during the pilot phase, police officers were out of service only 27 minutes completing paperwork and procedures.

The time period between the initial arrest by police and formal charging by the District Attorney’s Office was also dramatically reduced—from 111 days for defendants on bond to six hours under the new system. For those defendants who decide to enter a plea, there was an equally dramatic reduction in the time between formal charging and final disposition in Superior Court—from 96 to five days.

There was also a reduction in the number of defendants booked into the County Jail. Of the 61 defendants processed under the new system, only 21% were forwarded on to the jail. And the majority of those were already under sentence and awaiting pick-up by the State Department of Corrections. This fact promises to save the County millions of dollars annually in jail-housing costs alone.

This new system will also aid in reducing the existing caseload in Fulton Superior Court. The pilot phase showed that, of the 30 defendants who entered guilty pleas, nine had other pending cases in Superior Court. For 30 pleas, final dispositions were entered on a total of 45 Superior Court cases.

Finally, the Complaint Room system also reduced the total number of cases that ultimately would have gone on to the Superior Court docket. Fifteen percent of the pilot phase cases were immediately screened out by this Office as inappropriate for further prosecution, while another 50% of cases were disposed by plea before ever making it to a Superior Court caseload. In total, the Complaint Room system screened out 65% of cases. While this percentage would surely be somewhat reduced once more serious felonies are incorporated, it is anticipated that the number of cases forwarded to Superior Court could be reduced by roughly 50%—resulting in nearly 7,500 fewer cases annually.

The pilot phase ended on August 11, 2001. Since that time, the Complaint Room model has absorbed other special units within the Atlanta Police Department—Vice, Burglary, Theft, and Crimes against Persons—as well as the entire Fulton County Police Department into the system.

The early results demonstrate the enormous potential of the Complaint Room system to streamline the processing of felony defendants in Fulton County. The collaboration and cooperation between the City of Atlanta and Fulton County needed to make this system work proves that a more seamless and efficient—and, in turn, fair—process is possible and promises to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system.