Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms is presenting herself as a “proven fighter” and “battle-tested” leader in her campaign to become Georgia’s next governor.
Yet the former Atlanta mayor’s record on crime is facing renewed scrutiny as public safety takes center stage in the race against Republican Rick Jackson.
Bottoms has strongly defended her record, highlighting historic pay increases for Atlanta police officers and firefighters, along with her backing of the city’s Public Safety Training Center.
“So I have a very strong record when it comes to public safety,” she said while launching her campaign for governor in May 2025.
One of the most painful chapters associated with that record is the unresolved murder of Katherine “Katie” Janness, 40. She was brutally stabbed while walking her dog through one of Atlanta’s best-known parks in July 2021.
Janness was discovered by her partner, Emma Clark, near the entrance to Piedmont Park after she failed to come home and stopped responding to calls and messages.
She had sustained more than 50 stab wounds, and her dog, Bowie, was also killed.
Five years later, no charges have been filed, and police have never publicly named a suspect or established a motive.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, 56, is facing renewed scrutiny over the 2021 killing of Katherine “Katie” Janness in Atlanta, which occurred while Bottoms was mayor
The killing’s impact extended well beyond the fear it sparked in one of Atlanta’s most prominent neighborhoods.
It also sharpened an already intense debate over crime, policing and whether Bottoms was sufficiently visible as the city experienced a surge in violence.
Those questions became especially pointed in the immediate aftermath of Janness’s death.
At a vigil near the murder scene on the evening of July 29, Janness’s friend Chip Powell publicly demanded that City Hall and the mayor provide answers.
‘We need to have our mayor and people come in and tell us what the hell happened because it is not right,’ Powell said.
He also questioned the lack of useful surveillance at the park.
That same day, Bottoms was more than 1,000 miles away on Martha’s Vineyard, where she was photographed attending a reception for Jennifer Hudson’s movie Respect.
Images showed the then-mayor smiling alongside Hudson in Edgartown, Massachusetts.
Instead of racing back to Atlanta after the murder, Lance Bottoms was pictured with actress Jennifer Hudson at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival the day after
There is no indication Powell knew Bottoms was on Martha’s Vineyard when he demanded the mayor ‘come in’ and explain what had happened.
But the timing added another layer to criticism that had already dogged Bottoms over whether she was sufficiently present as Atlanta struggled with violent crime.
Several weeks before Janness was killed, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s editorial board had publicly questioned Bottoms’s visibility during the city’s crime crisis and accused her of seeming ‘absent from the fight.’
The newspaper called for a ‘fully engaged and active mayor’ and urged Bottoms to be more visible at crime scenes and community meetings.
Bottoms pushed back, arguing that simply appearing at crime scenes was a ‘hollow suggestion to a complex issue’ and that Atlanta was hardly alone in seeing violent crime rise during the pandemic.
The Janness murder nevertheless crystallized many of the fears already gripping Atlanta.
Clark had gone looking for her partner after Janness failed to return from walking Bowie.
She first came across the dog’s body.
Janness was found murdered in Piedmont Park in July 2021. Her case remains unsolved
‘As soon as I realized he wasn’t alive anymore I immediately shot up and started yelling her name and looking around, screaming,’ Clark later recalled.
She then discovered Janness.
Clark checked her pulse, but said: ‘You could tell that she was not alive.’
One of the most troubling questions to emerge from the investigation concerned surveillance inside Piedmont Park.
The cameras there were not providing detectives with footage that could potentially have helped reconstruct Janness’s final moments or identify anyone around the scene.
Nine cameras had previously been installed in the park but were not integrated into the Atlanta Police Department’s Video Integration Center.
Plans for upgraded surveillance had been approved during Bottoms’s administration, but the new cameras were not installed before she left office.
Her successor, fellow Democrat Andre Dickens, moved ahead with the project and 30 operational cameras were installed in April 2022.
Authorities credit the park’s lack of working cameras as part of the reason Janness’ case remains unsolved
Dickens has since acknowledged how valuable working cameras could have been to detectives investigating Janness’s murder.
‘If we had more cameras that were working at that time, we would have been able to have more investigative power,’ he said on the fifth anniversary of her death.
The failure of the park’s surveillance system became another source of anger among residents.
At the vigil held the day after the killing, Janness’s friend Kristy Jo Stupa warned: ‘Walk with someone else right now. Walk in a group and don’t walk at night. This community is not safe.’
Another resident declared: ‘The crime in the city is out of control and we have had it. We have all had it. Enough is enough.’
Janness’s murder came during an exceptionally violent period for Atlanta.
The city ultimately recorded around 160 homicides in 2021, among its highest totals in decades.
Across Bottoms’s four-year tenure, more than 500 homicides were recorded in the city.
Janness (left) was one of the 159 murders that took place in 2021 under Lance Bottom’s administration. At the time, it was the highest homicide rate since the 1990s
The violence was not unique to her administration. Her successor, Dickens, also saw more than 500 homicides during his first four years in office.
But crime became one of the defining political problems of Bottoms’s final year as mayor.
Then-City Council President Felicia Moore attacked her approach to public safety, saying: ‘We need a mayor who knows the number one job of any mayor is to keep our city safe.’
The criticism followed Bottoms after she left City Hall and later joined the Biden administration.
Now, as the Democrat campaigns for governor, opponents are again attempting to make her Atlanta record a liability.
Jason Esteves, who challenged her in the 2026 Democratic primary, branded Bottoms a ‘one-term mayor’ who, ‘when the city needed her,’ was absent while public safety was at risk.
Last month, two Democratic Georgia sheriffs crossed party lines to endorse Republican nominee Jackson, citing public safety.
‘Public safety is more important than political affiliations,’ Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk said.
Lance Bottoms faces Rick Jackson in the November election
Bottoms and her campaign strongly reject attacks on her record.
She has also argued for a broader approach to criminal justice while insisting that supporting police and holding law enforcement accountable are not mutually exclusive.
‘I also believe you should hold public safety accountable,’ she said during a campaign stop.
Defending changes including eliminating cash bail for certain nonviolent offenses, she added: ‘Incarceration is not always the answer. It becomes a revolving door.’
Her campaign points to the police and firefighter pay raises, the Public Safety Training Center and plans to expand forensic resources, violence-reduction efforts and support for local law enforcement.
‘As mayor of Atlanta, Keisha made major investments to support Atlanta’s police officers and keep communities safe,’ a campaign spokesperson told Our News Outlet.
‘As governor, she will continue to support local communities in recruiting and retaining officers and her priority will be keeping Georgians safe.’
Her campaign also responded directly when contacted by Our News Outlet about Janness.
‘Keisha continues to hold Katie Janness’ family in her thoughts as they grieve her tragic loss,’ a spokesperson said.
Five years after Katie Janness was brutally murdered in Piedmont Park, her family and friends are still waiting for police to identify her killer.
Despite years of investigation, the case remains unsolved.
