ATLANTA — Atlanta Police released bodycam video Tuesday of officers arresting a man who was armed — not with a gun, but with two axes and a cleaver.
When he was arrested, officers discovered the man had an extensive criminal history with previous charges going back two decades.
Atlanta Police posted video of the most recent arrest on social media, which happened late at night on March 28 at Anlsey Mall in northeast Atlanta.
The video shows officers looking inside 42-year-old Gregory Keith Johnson's backpack, finding two axes and a cleaver.
Minutes earlier, a mall security guard called police to report he saw a man walking outside the mall carrying an axe in each hand. Ansley Mall is one of the busiest malls in northeast Atlanta. At night people often park at the plaza to walk to nearby bars and clubs.
By the time police arrived, Johnson was no longer carrying the axes. They found the axes in his backpack.
He took off on his bicycle before jumping off and running away. Officers ran him down a short distance away and arrested him.
Police discovered Johnson was a fugitive, with warrants for his arrest for aggravated assault and attempted robbery.
Fulton County Jail records show Johnson has been in and out of the jail more than a dozen times in the past 20 years. His record includes convictions for aggravated assault and robbery.
The day after Johnson was arrested in March, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens was announcing a new "repeat offender task force."
"Residents of Atlanta have the right to expect that these serial offenders are dealt with seriously and sternly," Dickens said on March 29.
Police said 1,000 people who are repeat offenders are responsible for 40 percent of the crimes in Atlanta.
Criminal justice reform expert Devin Barrington-Ward told 11Alive in March that the city also needs to go after the root causes of crime, and fix broken people as well as the broken system.
"That doesn’t make sense to send them back to the same system that hasn’t corrected the behavior that is causing criminality in the first place," Barrington-Ward said.
Atlanta Police are praising the officers who caught the man without any harm to themselves or to him, and then put him back in jail.