What can be done?

Creative Loafing's Thomas Wheatley has an eerily appropriately timed piece today about how violent crime is becoming more brazen in the Atlanta intown neighborhoods previously thought to be "safer" than some of the tougher neighborhoods in the city. He speaks to a victim of a robbery at gunpoint who listened as his robbers discussed whether to shoot him. It is a chilling tale, and I hope it will serve as a wakeup call to many that violent crime is becoming a very serious threat to all of us here in the city.

I have been quietly worried for well over a year that violent crime was on the rise in the city of Atlanta. Each time I heard a story about a violent crime that happened near my house, or in a place that I have been to before, or in a way that makes me think "that could have been me," I shuddered and resolved to be a little safer and smarter.

But, I still walk alone at night through my neighborhood (Virginia-Highland), I still have walked alone in downtown Atlanta at night, and I still don't have my alarm system at home connected anymore. I drive to Grant Park and the Old Fourth Ward every once in awhile to play poker, and I walk to my car alone afterwards. I recognize that I have been lucky, even as a steady stream of violent crimes in places near my house or where I spend time have been occurring since 2007:

A man was shot and later died after leaving the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club in Little Five Points.

A man was shot and killed less than half a mile from my house, at the corner of Monroe Dr. and Amsterdam Ave., in summer of 2007.

Women were attacked and sexually assaulted in the parking lot of the Amsterdam Walk shopping and dining area last January.

Two lawyers were kidnapped outside an East Atlanta bar last summer and held for 13 hours.

Last month, armed robbers walked into a crowded Fellini's in Decatur and robbed the place at gunpoint.

Why do I say that Wheatley's piece is appropriately timed? Because last night armed robbers broke into the Standard, a bar on Memorial Drive near Grant Park. They shot employee John Henderson in the head and he later died. I probably don't know John Henderson, but I have spent some time at the Standard and have a lot of friends who know the people there very well. I know people who will be grieving for Henderson, and who will also be thinking today about how easily this could have happened to them. I have friends who are bartenders, who close bars late at night and could be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just like I have friends who eat at Fellini's in Decatur, or walk to their cars in Grant Park, or walk from Euclid Ave. Yacht Club to apartments in Little Five.

We should all be scared by this trend, not just when it happens to someone we know but because it could happen to any of us.

What can be done? We have a city and county in budget freefall that's scaling back patrol hours for police. We have a police department and sherriff's department that have been marked primarily by ineptitude for years. We have an economic disaster that is causing more and more people to turn to crime to make ends meet. And we have criminals who are becoming more brazen because they know they can get away with it in this environment.

I'm scared and pissed off, and I don't know what to do. Is there any realistic solution that actually reduces violent crime? (Short of moving to a farmhouse in the country and buying 87 shotguns?)