More than two centuries after the United States declared independence from Britain, a very modern breakaway is being hatched in the plush suburbs of Atlanta -- and taxation is once again the issue.

The residents of Buckhead, the richest neighborhood in Georgia's capital, have tired of funding a city they say is failing to get its arms around crime, and they've had enough.

"The reality is that we're living somewhat in a war zone," Bill White, the leader of a movement to make Buckhead its own municipality, tells AFP in a palatial, white-columned mansion owned by a friend.

It is just days until the midterms, a quadrennial affair between presidential elections when Americans pick their leaders in Congress, state legislatures and governors' mansions -- but White isn't feeling particularly well represented.

Everywhere he looks, the 55-year-old sees a community besieged -- by threats as prosaic as neglected potholes and as urgent and shocking as home invasions and even murders.

It is not alarmist to worry over a surge in homicides that has plagued Atlanta but mayhem in Buckhead feels like a bit of a stretch, especially since crime has been falling in this upscale part of town.

White insists however that he doesn't believe the data.

The entrepreneur says he once counted Donald Trump among his friends in his New York days, and he deploys superlatives with the alacrity of the former president as he sets out his dream of an independent Buckhead, with its own mayor, schools and of course, its own police force.

For Michael Owens, a professor of political science at Atlanta's Emory University, Buckhead's potential exit would be emblematic of a country riven by political, social and cultural divisions.

"We have always created cities in the United States... The thing that's very odd these days, though, is the call to break away from existing cities to, in essence, partition them or to secede from them," he says.

Buckhead is far from being an isolated case of secessionary fervor.

In 2002, residents of Hollywood tried unsuccessfully to divorce from Los Angeles and two years ago, residents of a rural part of Oregon voted to leave the Democratic state and join neighboring, more conservative Idaho.

Atlanta relies heavily on the revenue provided by Buckhead's upwardly mobile movers and shakers and naturally its ambitions are causing officialdom to break out in a collective cold sweat.

'Law and order'

All the city has to do is "adjust" its budget, says White's host Warren Jolly, the owner of the palatial estate where waiters are starting to bustle near a staircase lined with leopard print.

The 58-year-old real estate developer is entertaining guests at a fundraiser for Burt Jones, who is running to be Georgia's new lieutenant governor on November 8.

In that position, the Republican could greatly advance the cause of Buckheadian independence. And he has pledged to do just that.

In front of a crowd of guests enjoying hamburger sliders with fried green tomatoes, the 40-year-old launches into a tirade about the need to restore "law and order."

"We do not want to be Chicago... We do not want to lead the nation in homicides," warns Jones, who raised $100,000 for his campaign war chest from the event.

It is a message that resonates in this audience of Republicans, who -- in line with the party nationwide -- accuse the Democrats of being soft on crime.

But for some Atlanta residents, this plan by the city's whitest neighborhood to break away from a city where half the population is Black smacks of racism.

"It's a land grab in the home of Martin Luther King Jr. It's insane," said Tricia Harris, 45, a resident of the city of 500,000 and a member of a group fighting Buckhead independence.

Denouncing "white entitled people, led by Trump Republicans" withholding money from areas where it is most needed, she tells AFP that the move is more likely to increase rather than stem criminality.

Buckhead's pro-secession denizens say charges of racism are misplaced, and that they are motivated by nothing more than the American-as-apple-pie dream of self-determination.

"It's an insult to us that simply wanting to reduce crime, pay less taxes and get our 911 calls is somehow classified as being racist," White retorts back at the mansion.

"It's ridiculous."

© Agence France-Presse