Atlanta Unfiltered

It pays well to be Atlanta’s police chief. It pays better, apparently, to raise money for the police.

Dave Wilkinson, president of the Atlanta Police Foundation, made $215,500 in 2008. That’s roughly $15,000 more than Police Chief Richard Pennington makes in a year.

The foundation raised $919,000 last year, so Wilkinson’s salary represented 23 cents of every dollar collected. Other staff salaries amounted to $291,444. The foundation’s tax forms report spending of $574,976 on police support programs, including a Crime Stoppers tip line, the mounted patrol and life insurance for officers.

Wilkinson, a former Secret Service agent who worked in presidential protection, started at the foundation in 2005 at an annual salary of $175,000, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported.

Footnote: Chief Pennington makes $200,211 a year. To find this out last week, we called the chief, two people in police public affairs, the mayor’s office and two folks in Human Resources, all of whom referred us to someone else or did not return the call. A third person in Human Resources agreed to track the information down if we would submit a written request. Then he gave us a bad e-mail address to submit the request to.

Finally, we called a pal at City Hall who looked it up in 30 seconds. Lesson learned.