Can You Imagine If The Wall Street Criminals And Hedge Fund Crooks Were Treated The Way Beverly Hall And The Atlanta Teachers Are Being Treated?

I thought $7.5 million dollar bail amount for former Atlanta School Superintendent Beverly Hall seemed a little high.

Turned out I was right:

Dr. Hall negotiated her $7.5 million bond — considered a largely punitive figure set by the grand jurors, some of whom argued for it to be $10 million — down to $200,000. She was allowed to use her signature to cover $150,000 of it, with the rest to be paid in cash, said David Bailey, one of her lawyers. She will pay only 10 percent of that, and most of it will be refunded, he said. Dr. Hall arrived at the jail to be processed around 7:30 p.m., surrounded by her lawyers. It was unclear how long she would be there.

Lawyers for the defendants, saying they were baffled by what appeared to be a lack of coordination between District Attorney Paul L. Howard Jr., the jail and the courts, were working to try to reduce the amount of bond set for teachers who had no criminal records and to keep them from spending time in jail. 

One of the first to arrive was Theresia Copeland, 56, who had been testing coordinator at a southeast Atlanta elementary school. She walked into the jail about 7 a.m. and was booked on a $1 million bond on charges of racketeering, theft and making false statements. 

“We’ve never had anything in education like this,” said Warren Fortson, a lawyer for Ms. Copeland and two other teachers. 

“Al Capone, I understand, didn’t have to post a $1 million bond,” he said. “I don’t think a Cobb County grandmother needs $1 million to secure her.” 

Later, Ms. Copeland’s bail was reduced to $50,000. Others also secured reduced bonds. Only one educator was still under a $1 million bond by Tuesday evening, said a spokeswoman for the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, Tracy Flanagan. 

 And I figured the powers that be felt safe to go after these teachers and administrators because they are all black.

Turns out I was right about that too:

While defense lawyers worked to have their clients freed, a group of black clergy members and former educators spoke out, calling the charges and the bail extreme and an indication of a deeper, long-simmering racial divide in the city and the state. 

The Rev. Timothy McDonald, a spokesman for the group Concerned Black Clergy, noted that the investigators were white and the accused were largely black. 

“Look at the pictures of those 35,” he said. “Show me a white face. Let’s just be for real. You can call it racist, you can call it whatever you want, but this is overkill. We have seen people with much deeper crimes with much less bond set.” 

35 black educators, accused of a cheating scandal, receive ridiculous bail postings while the men at Goldman Sachs who knowingly sold toxic, worthless CDO's to their customers, then shorted those same CDO's and made money coming and going, remain free and clear.

Oh, and most of those men were white.

Rich and white.

Funny how that is - the rich, white bankers and traders who nearly brought the economy down in '08, the men who stole billions, remain free and clear while the black educators who allegedly cheated with their students' state tests in order to keep their jobs are given ridiculous bail amounts until the state is finally shamed into lowering them.

Jim Crow lives.