An Atlanta Tabloid Creator's Hypocrisy

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A new kind of tabloid is being sold in convenience stores around the country: the mug shot rag. Now, Atlanta has one of its own.

Caught Up in Atlanta is a $1 bi-weekly with pages and pages of regular people behaving badly. The most ridiculous mug shots make on the front cover, and short crime articles under kitschy headlines are interspersed throughout the publication.

At first glance, the tabloid appears to be a funny glimpse at crime in the area. Atlanta, home to the Centers for Disease Control, Coca-Cola, Delta, CNN, and recently dubbed Black Hollywood, is a prosperous city simultaneously riffed withcorruption, socioeconomic disparity, chronic homelessness, andchild prostitution. Narcotics rank near the top of its list of problems, especially as meth and prescription pain killersbecome increasingly prevalent in the region. For all its cultural and financial gains, Atlanta’s reputation as the Southeast’s most progressive city is sullied by its many troubles.

So here, in the middle of this urban paradox, lies Caught Up in Atlanta. The paper is littered with hundreds of ordinary citizens, many (if not most) of whom arrested on charges somehow related to drugs, alcohol, or mental illness. For a small fee and little effort, anyone feeling voyeuristic can see which locals committed a crime that week. Although none of the featured arrestees have been found guilty in court, their information is put on blast, thanks to public record made available by theFreedom of Information Act. 

Ironically, though, Mychel Dillard (the person running the tabloid) has been arrested for drug offenses as recent as June, in addition to multiple times over the past several years.

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Dillard was arrested in June for drug possession.

 

Mychel Dillard owns KRD Media Group, which publishes Caught Up in Atlanta, in addition to versions of the paper around the Southeast. Caught Up can be found in convenient stores inGeorgia, Kentucky, Florida, Tennessee, and Indiana. The tabloids have a total circulation of 20,000.

The latest edition contains tons of mug shots, sprinkled with ads for Crime Stoppers Atlanta and tacky headlines. There’s a section including arrestee’s hair disasters, while the last page is dedicated to the attractive women arrested that week, titled “Bad Girls.” The meaner the person looks, the more likely they will end up in one of the special sections, or worse, the front page. 

Caught Up includes a photo, first and last name, and offense for each arrestee. None of the arrestees have been found guilty of the crimes yet. At the foot of the front page of each edition, the paper warns:

“Please do not contact us requesting that your picture be left out of the paper. It’s your job to keep it out of the paper, not ours. Disclaimer: ‘Caught Up’ is NOT responsible for typos or erroneous information.”

Due the unapologetic nature of Caught Up, I wondered, who is publishing this paper? And more importantly, are they in a position to throw proverbial stones at others, or are they living in a glass house themselves? Intrigued, I decided to contact the publisher of Caught Up in Atlanta. It was slightly difficult to find the owner, but thanks to Facebook and Google, I was successful.

Mychel Dillard, as the head of KRD Media Group, personally publishes, distributes, edits, and writes the vast majority of Caught Up in Atlanta. She was concerned that I knew her full name, and told me that she likes to keep it out of the media.

Before I get into Dillard’s criminal record, I will publish parts of my phone interview with her last week. At the time of the interview, I knew little about the publication or Dillard:

Addict Minded: How did you get started on Caught Up in Atlanta, and where did the idea come from?

Dillard: Well, there are other papers like this throughout the country, so I decided to break off on my own. I started in Tennessee. I had already done two other papers originally. I guess the idea came about because I wanted to get information about crime out there. I noticed people are specifically interested in jail information and want to know about the crimes in their community.

Addict Minded: What kinds of crime do you notice in Atlanta?

Dillard: I moved to Atlanta almost a year ago from Nashville. Honestly, I was scared at first. Atlanta has the most crime of any region I have lived in. A lot of robbery, scams, theft, drug crimes, murders…

Addict Minded: What do you hope to accomplish with Caught Up in Atlanta?

Dillard: Well, there are a lot of social articles to make people more aware of crimes being committed in their community. In the most recent issue, I put in an ad for no charge for a rape crisis center. I’m also helping the police department find fugitives and criminals. There’s normally a sex offender section. People have a right to know who is living in their neighborhood. We even put their address. I get calls all the time from people upset about their names being featured because it rehashes things from 2-3 years ago, but sex offenders have the highest recidivism rates and a mother needs to know if there is a sex offender on her street.

Addict Minded: What the most common types of arrests published?

Dillard: In Tennessee, in the eastern part of the state, there’s a lot of meth and pills. Codeine is really big and Walgreens will get broken into. In Atlanta, not so much pills, but harder drugs like cocaine, crack, and also marijuana of course…There’s lots of meth in Tennessee, not so much in Atlanta.

Addict Minded: What kind of drugs are younger people getting busted for in Atlanta?

Dillard: There seems to be a lot of younger drug offenders here in Atlanta. Mostly marijuana.

Addict Minded: What types of readers do you have?

Dillard: A little bit of everybody. Some readers are offenders themselves, community members…I have a broad range of readers.

Addict Minded: Do you ever get calls from offenders, or feel that your personal safety is threatened for what you publish?

Dillard: I get calls all the time from offenders who are angry or upset, but I’ve never been threatened. For this reason, when I make deliveries to convenience stores, I do not tell them I am the owner or publisher. For these reasons, I try not to get any personal notoriety, but I’ve had no issues or threats. Anyone who is just upset…it is public information. Unfortunately it’s part of the price you pay when you do a crime.



Mychel Dillard in a Facebook picture.

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When talking to Dillard, she seemed to honestly think that she was protecting the community, and had no reservations about publishing people’s full names and mug shots. Thanks to public records, I uncovered an arrest as recent as June and past guilty verdicts against her.

Dillard was arrested for possession of marijuana on June 30 of this year in Atlanta. Since the case is still under investigation, the Fulton County Solicitor General could confirm the arrest and her birthdate, but could not speak any further about the case, since it is still under open investigation. The Fulton County’s inmate locator has an online record of the arrest.

Additionally, on May 5, 2008, Dillard was found guilty of Implied Consent in Davidson County (Nashville, TN) General Sessions Court. In Tennessee, Implied Consent is a DUI-related charge, meaning that Dillard refused to submit her BAC (hence, police assumed her to be driving while intoxicated). She was also foundguilty of reckless driving, but her conviction was reduced to a lesser charge. Her criminal background check states that she was sentenced to 6M of incarceration and 6M of probation. I’m assuming “6M” means 6 months, but it’s unclear from court documents.

Dillard’s record is also littered with all sorts of other criminal charges in Nashville. On August 30, 2010, she was charged with drug possession or casual exchange. At the disposition, charges were dropped after Dillard paid a fine. On October 5, 2009, Dillard was caught driving with a suspended license. Charges were dismissed with costs to the defendant. On December 4, 2010, she was charged with possession of a revoked license. In October of 2010, charges were dismissed (with costs to the defendant) for an alcoholic beverage violation.  

Even sketchier, it appears that Dillard lived in owned a house at 708 Oneida Avenue in Nashville. Records indicate that she owned the house in June of 2009, the same time it was busted for hosting a drug and prostitution den. Called the Kitty Kabin Lounge, operators would turn on a red light at 9:00 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday to show that the joint was open for business. In addition to having strippers, the establishment offered beer, liquor and marijuana. One of the operators, Adrian Hayden, was charged with unlawful gun possession during the bust.

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Unfortunately, a mug shot for Dillard was unavailable (although her Facebook is currently open to the public). All the information obtained here about Dillard’s criminal history is available online (cited throughout the article) or at the Fulton County (Atlanta) or Davidson County (Tennessee) courthouses.

Shamelessly, Caught Up characterizes people with substance abuse problems as society’s untouchables, degenerates, and fools. The paper exploits criminality, and makes a buck off of other people’s miseries. There are many ways to combat drug-related crime in the United States. This is not one of them. It makes the addict the “other” in society, publicly castigating people for nonviolent crimes that mightultimately be dismissed in court.

Dillard is not the first to invent this form of tabloid. In Arkansas, The Slammer sells 7,000 copies a week. These trashy rags are increasing in popularity, but doing little to solve crime. 

Dillard tells people who ask not to be included in Caught Up that she is simply publishing public record. It’s the arrestee’s job to stay out of the tabloid, not Dillard’s. Fittingly, this blog post aims to simply state and analyze Dillard’s public record. 

Here are some gems from her Facebook profile: