Metropolitan Police Department Officer Antonial Atkins, who has patrolled Georgetown and the rest of the Second District for at least a decade, has put in for retirement. “We can solve crimes together,” the popular Atkins likes to say. He has been seen around Georgetown more often than anyone else we know.
“Get to know your neighbors,” Atkins said at a community meeting two years ago. One of his inspirations, he said in The Georgetowner’s Aug. 5, 2015, community policing cover story, came from watching reruns of “The Andy Griffith Show,” in which everyone in town knew one another. Also a big supporter of using social media and other technologies to connect citizens and police, MPD “Officer of the Year” Atkins told a story about neighbors who lived on the same street for more than 10 years and had never met. One resident thought someone was breaking into the house next door. It was his neighbor, not a burglar, and it took a cop to know the difference. And it took someone like Atkins to know the neighborhood better than most of its residents.
