READ MOREChattanooga officials hear findings from six months of gang research
Chattanooga City Councilman Jack Benson battered researchers Thursday for identifying Hamilton Place as a “gang hotspot” in a citywide assessment.
“This does real damage to their business,” said the 82-year-old councilman as he leaned forward in his chair. “They didn’t know they had a gang problem. I didn’t know it.”
The City Council met with the Chattanooga Gang Task Force and researchers from the Ochs Center of Metropolitan Studies and the Center for Applied Social Research at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to review results and highlights of the six-month gang study.
Boyd Patterson, head of the gang task force, defended what the study said, including its judgment of Hamilton Place, which emerged as a gang hotspot in 2010 according to the study.