Judge calls Atlanta nightclub arrest a ‘set-up’

Atlanta police released the body camera footage Friday evening, along with a statement saying in part that Peterson “ran toward the commotion and immediately began yelling” at a security guard and the officer. Police said Peterson “forcibly pushed” the officer in the chest twice and “continued to push his hands away.”

In the body camera footage, Peterson yells “let her (expletive) go” multiple times at the officer before being handcuffed. She also tells a police officer to “shut up that (expletive)” as she is taken inside a police station.

Credit: Atlanta Police Department

Credit: Atlanta Police Department

Peterson refused to cooperate when the officer repeatedly sought to identify him, police said.

Peterson attended a news conference Friday afternoon at his attorney’s office but did not speak to reporters. Her attorney, Marvin Arrington Jr., called the charges against her frivolous and said they should be dropped. He asked Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis to personally review the case.

“As the investigation continues to unfold and new facts come to light, we believe Judge Christina Peterson will be completely exonerated of these charges,” Arrington said. “At least two eyewitnesses testified that Judge Christina Peterson only attempted to help Ms. (Alexandria) Love, who was being brutally and viciously attacked by a man outside the Red Martini nightclub.”

Credit: Fulton County Sheriff’s Office

Credit: Fulton County Sheriff’s Office

Love spoke at the press conference. She said she did not know the man who attacked her while they were queuing for food outside the club. She said she pushed a woman who was with the man after the woman became aggressive towards her. She said she apologized to the woman and asked the man why he was trying to provoke her.

Love said Peterson was the only person who helped her when the man attacked him, while his friends tried to catch him.

“She didn’t want to hit the officer,” Love said of Peterson. “The officer came running and grabbed me. He didn’t even care to see the big man brutally punching me in the face. (Peterson) thought I was still hurt and attacked.

Arrington said Peterson was acting like a good Samaritan and said it was “a travesty of justice” that she was arrested while the man was not.

“I think in the heat of the moment a lot of things happened and maybe the officers got confused,” he said.

Credit: Atlanta Police Department

Credit: Atlanta Police Department

“It was a set-up,” Peterson said on Instagram after being released from the Fulton County Jail on $5,000 bail Thursday afternoon. “The policeman first claimed he was charging me with disorderly conduct, all for trying to help a woman who was being attacked by men, then he took me to jail and I find out I’m now charged with a crime.”

Credit: Instagram

Credit: Instagram

The judge said the officer “knocked me to the ground for helping this woman, but let the attacker escape.”

“Here I sit with bruises, a black eye, a swollen knee and a felony charge because the officer, security and men present chose not to help this victim and instead found a way to charge me with a crime,” Peterson said. “Where is the protection and service? Wow. They will stop at nothing to tarnish my character. May God help us! We need justice.

Love said the five police cars that responded to the incident left once Peterson was apprehended. She said law enforcement “failed me horribly.”

Love’s friend Madison Shannon Kelly also spoke at the press conference. She said she witnessed the incident and recorded part of it on her cell phone.

“She stepped in and helped my friend,” Kelly said of Peterson, whom she said she didn’t know before. “I was trying to get the men around us to help me. If she hadn’t helped, I don’t know what we would be saying today.

Arrington said the officers who apprehended Peterson did not take statements from Love, Kelly or other witnesses. He called for the arrest of the man who allegedly attacked Love.

Video of the incident “will confirm that Judge Peterson should not have been arrested,” he said.

Peterson is the subject of a year-long judicial misconduct investigation, in which she faces 30 charges of violating the Georgia Code of Judicial Conduct. The Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission recommended in late March that she be removed from office. The Georgia Supreme Court has not yet decided whether and how Peterson should be punished.

Peterson, who was elected to the bench unopposed in 2020, lost the Democratic primary in May. His successor will be Douglasville attorney Valerie Vie, who faces no Republican challengers in the November general election.

The arrest warrants say police were responding to a dispute at the club “between two separate parties.”

“MS. Peterson was not involved in the initial altercation,” the arresting officer states in the obstruction warrant. “I was approached and punched with a closed fist by the “defendant, Christina Peterson.”

The warrant for the battery charge also states that Peterson struck the officer with a closed fist.

Peterson, a graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, practiced law for several years before joining the bench.