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Atlanta police department code enforcement section - September 2019

Atlanta Police Department Code Enforcement Section
Released September 2019

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We conducted this audit of the Atlanta Police Department's Code Enforcement Section because City Council members expressed concern about the timeliness of resolution of code enforcement complaints. In addition, the code enforcement section staff expressed concern about employee turnover.
We found:
  • The section processed nearly 90% of property maintenance and highly hazardous cases within performance goals over the three-year period from March 2015 through February 2018.
  • The section would have processed over 90% of property maintenance and highly hazardous cases within performance targets if more than 30% of the highly hazardous cases had been correctly re-categorized as property maintenance cases.
  • Resolution of code enforcement cases has improved significantly since the function shifted to the Atlanta Police Department.
  • The Accela system is not programmed to require supervisory review of cases prior to closure. Officers who perform inspections should not be able to close code violation cases without supervisory review.
  • We identified 42 former section employees who still maintained access to the Accela system.
  • We found that the section did not ensure that complete records were maintained to validate permitting credentials for 15 officers.
Our recommendations focus on ensuring that the section's performance is accurately measured and that it is able to direct resources appropriately to expedite the processing of cases, improving controls over tasks performed in Accela and mitigating the risk of error or improper case closure, and ensuring that code enforcement officer qualifications are up-to-date.

NB: Titles for Exhibits 6, 7, and 9 and the description in the text of Exhibit 6 were corrected on September 24, 2019.