It’s been a while since I last took some time to write about some buffoonery going on in the Metro Atlanta area, but a combination of time, timing and often times the fact that I haven’t really been seeking them out nearly as fervently as I had in the past has led to this particular type of draft.

But I saw this particular article, and then like riding a bike, it all came back to me pretty quickly why I always liked writing about the bullshit that occasionally happens here, because they tend to hit levels and tangents that I really wonder if people living in other cities see like we do here in Atlanta.

Long story short, the City of South Fulton AKA the part of town I used to live in, bought a tank.  Despite their insistence that they didn’t buy a tank, they dropped nearly $400,000 on a heavily armored vehicle known as a “BearCat.”  It basically looks like the Christopher Nolan Batman version of the Batmobile Tumbler after Bane seized control over all of Batman’s shit after he drove him into exile.  The image above is the aforementioned Batmobile, but the link provided will take you directly to what the new South Fulton tank looks like, and frankly there’s not a tremendous amount of difference between the two.

Sure, I’ve made tons of jokes about the rapidly degrading, warzone-like conditions of South Fulton since I got the fuck out of dodge, and it’s no secret to anyone paying attention to local news that the crime rate and magnitude south of I-20 is a tad bit higher than the rest of the Metro area comparatively, but I can’t really agree that introducing a tank into the arsenal of the horrifically undermanned police department is really going to do much for the entire area other than make people think the wrong message is being sent and/or a tremendous waste of money.

Obviously, there’s a lot of speculation that getting a tank is more or less a great big toy expenditure by some bureaucrat trying to play politics and send some sort of bold messaging to whomever might be paying attention, and ultimately in the end, nothing consequential is probably actually going to happen to the buffoons who green-lit the purchase of a tank.  But in terms of the all-important perception-is-reality mentality of the world, it does seem like it would look a little embarrassing if there’s some pretty low-tier misdemeanor weapons incident, but then the Batmobile shows up with some regular cop cars at the scene of the crime.  More so, if the presence of a tank is interpreted as an act of aggression and it escalates the situation and then there are three dead black teenagers at the end of the day, laying slain in front of, a tank.

But hey, the whole thing is being sold as this “protecting the police” narrative, so that alone is going to easily garner a lot of support for it as a whole.  And I definitely am a proponent for protecting the police, but I can’t help but think that $377,000 might have been better spent hiring, several more cops, because I think strength in numbers might be more protective for police units than, a singular tank.  But hey, if the mayor of South Fulton wanted a tank, well now he’s got one.  I’d say I can’t wait for it to start showing up on the news, but the sad reality is that nobody ever hears of South Fulton on the news unless there’s some tragic killings or embarrassing faux pas, to where the existence of a tank probably won’t matter if it’s in the equation or not.

So yeah, the City of South Fulton has a tank now.  Neat!