Dekalb County GA - High Level Feud Embarrassing, All Too Familiar

AJC: Once again, a county CEO and police chief are pointing fingers at each other, and old disputes still cast a shadow.

Dekalb County Georgia. The first "majority Black county" in Georgia as of some years ago. If you listen to a old civil rights leader they'd tell you that in the 1950's a Black man walking down Memorial Drive at night without a good reason was likely to be arrested by the Dekalb County police. With great pride they welcomed the CHANGE in the county leadership. Black and Democratic officials took control of this county once the population of Blacks, many of whom exited the city of Atlanta, began to tip the population balance of the county.

Fast forward to the modern day Dekalb County Georgia. As is the case all too often the Black community focuses its collective pride on "the vehicle" by which we are going to travel to "the Promised Land" rather than the COURSE that we will take and insuring that the vehicle is put back on track.

After the near universal pride of having "the first Black" assume power now with the "second, third and forth Black" many have seemingly lost their way. They forgot who they are in office to work for.

To be clear - where there is power there is always going to be conflict. I am not saying that the police chief of Dekalb County should "make nice" with the new CEO in order to put a nice face on the situation BECAUSE THEY BOTH ARE BLACK. What I am saying, however, is that there seems to be a pattern of conflict that needs to be nipped in the bud BECAUSE they all fear backlash by the voter. Last year Lithonia (Dekalb County) faced an inordinate amount of foolishness which had its top officials in the news on a near daily basis. In Clayton County there has been a slow moving train wreck in place over the past several years.

The backdrop of all of these conflicts is a Black community which is more smitten by seeing a Black face in office as this purports to "represent our best interest". Even when the aggregate effects of this favorable alignment on paper does not turn out to be as such in the real world - this alone is not enough for the voters to change course, focusing upon those who can actually deliver. Instead many of these same voters emigrate out of these areas and more into areas where the idealized environment is in existence already.

CONSUMER vs MANAGER. There are too many people who are inclined to "consume" the favorable environment while not having any idea how to express this same standard of living in a place that presently falls short of their target.

The local Dekalb county newspaper "Crossroads" is so interested at getting the favorable news about their elected officials that it fails to perform the necessary pushback against those which are out of line. They are not champions but instead cheerleaders.

AJC STORY:

A police chief and his boss, the county’s elected chief executive officer, openly at odds. An investigation of unspecified allegations against the outspoken police chief. Questions about the safety of a public official. Counterallegations about the CEO’s security detail.

It’s the kind of controversy no police department wants, but it’s also not an entirely new phenomenon in DeKalb County. Many of the elements have precedents in recent DeKalb history or in the history of Terrell Bolton, the police chief now halfway through a two-week “administrative leave” ordered by CEO Burrell Ellis.

No one other than Bolton and Ellis can say exactly what caused the dispute that erupted last week in a public relations disaster for DeKalb government.

Ellis fired Bolton’s top civilian aide and put Bolton on leave pending an investigation into unspecified allegations. He said he is not satisfied with Bolton’s practice of taking comp time, his frequent trips to his family home in Dallas or his job performance, including Bolton’s efforts to reduce crime.

Bolton labeled the investigation a “witch hunt” and asked the GBI to take over that probe and investigate Ellis as well. The GBI said Friday that it could not do so based simply on Bolton’s request.

Among Bolton’s complaints was the conduct of county sheriff’s deputies in Ellis’ security detail. The presence of those deputies —- from the independent Sheriff’s Office rather than the county government’s own police force —- has its roots in DeKalb’s history and Ellis’ political experience.

Violence and threats

On the night of Dec. 15, 2000, Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown was shot to death in his driveway. It turned out he was assassinated at the behest of the man he had defeated for the office, Sheriff Sidney Dorsey, who is now serving a life prison term.

Just weeks after the killing, Vernon Jones took office as chief executive officer with an expanded county police security detail. Jones cited Brown’s slaying as justification after the disclosure that the county was spending about $250,000 a year to protect Jones.

One of Jones’ defenders in that controversy in 2003 was then-Commissioner Burrell Ellis, who told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that commissioners “receive threats, and [Jones] probably receives more threats.”

But by late 2007, Ellis said in a public meeting that Jones was threatening him. Ellis accused Jones of muttering threats to him, which Jones branded “outright lying.”

Ellis said: “He is sending a signal to his Police Department to not provide protection to certain members of this Board of Commissioners, putting us at direct risk. Yes, he’s putting me at risk, and he’s putting my family at risk.”

When Ellis took office less than 18 months later, he said he did not want police protection because Bolton had made a comment in a television interview about having “enemies” who wanted to hurt Bolton’s reputation.

Bolton has said he personally assured Ellis that he was not referring to him. But Ellis repeated his explanation about the “enemies” remark as recently as Tuesday.