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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Clay­ton County, GA

When the Clay­ton County Board of Com­mis­sion­ers voted to remove Jeff Turner as the county’s police chief, they detailed “12 issues which caused the board to have some con­fi­dence concerns.”

Spe­cial: Jeff Turner

Board mem­bers voted to reas­sign Turner to direct the county’s police acad­emy, giv­ing him until Mon­day to defend him­self against the fol­low­ing allegations:

1. On Sept. 10, 2007, a Clay­ton County offi­cer was caught and arrested by fed­eral agents for com­mit­ting the offense of entic­ing a minor child to engage in ille­gal sex­ual activ­i­ties. This arrest was highly pub­li­cized and brought dis­grace upon the depart­ment and the county. The fact that this offi­cer com­mit­ted these crimes using a county com­puter in a county vehi­cle while on duty is dis­turb­ing. The fact that he was caught not by a super­vi­sor and instead by a fed­eral agency calls into ques­tion inter­nal depart­men­tal con­trol or lack thereof.

2. In Octo­ber 2007, alle­ga­tions were lodged against a Clay­ton County offi­cer claim­ing he had engaged in sex with a female he had arrested prior to trans­port­ing her to the jail. On Dec. 7, 2007, that Clay­ton County offi­cer was ter­mi­nated after admit­ting he had engaged the ser­vices of pros­ti­tutes both on– and off-duty

3. In May 2007, a female detec­tive lodged a com­plaint of sex­ual harass­ment to her imme­di­ate super­vi­sor. The detec­tive has sub­se­quently filed suit against Clay­ton County for sex­ual harass­ment and retaliation.

4. On Oct 8, 2008, a com­plaint of sex­ual harass­ment was lodged by a female appli­cant against a sergeant. The sergeant was accused of keep­ing a female in a closed room, kiss­ing her breast and attempt­ing to fon­dle her gen­i­talia. This inves­ti­ga­tion was opened and closed in less than eight hours. Fur­ther­more, this case was not prop­erly eval­u­ated for poten­tial crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion prior to the close of the inves­ti­ga­tion. Addi­tion­ally, it appears that the chief dimin­ished the seri­ous nature of the offense com­mit­ted by the sergeant when report­ing the inci­dent to the chair­man. In early 2009 when suit was filed, it was fur­ther dis­cov­ered that Chief Turner had failed to fol­low a Clay­ton County ordi­nance regard­ing the proper noti­fi­ca­tion of sex­ual harass­ment alle­ga­tions. Clay­ton County had to set­tle this case in order to limit poten­tial dam­age liability.

5. In early spring 2009, the board of com­mis­sion­ers was deal­ing with legal mat­ters regard­ing the trans­fer of employ­ees from the police depart­ment back to the Sheriff’s depart­ment. Con­se­quently, Chief Turner was advised by both the chief of staff and the chair­man not to pro­mote employ­ees to rank of lieu­tenant as those bil­lets would prob­a­bly be trans­ferred out of the police depart­ment and redis­trib­uted else­where. Chief Turner ignored that direc­tive. His actions have gen­er­ated 2 law­suits, one of which we are still defend­ing. These actions, along with Chief Turner’s lack of coop­er­a­tion of work­ing with the board dur­ing the bud­get cri­sis led the board to coun­sel Chief Turner.

6. After receiv­ing sev­eral com­plaints over the sum­mer of 2009 from Sher­iff Kim­brough that Chief Turner had not been shar­ing vital crime sta­tis­tics with the sher­iffs depart­ment, a meet­ing was con­vened in order to deter­mine the sta­tus of the police department’s crime map­ping ini­tia­tive known as Crime View. This is a soft­ware pro­gram the police depart­ment pur­chased with drug funds which both the chief of staff and the chair­man had been led to believe is fully oper­a­tional. The chief and cer­tain staff mem­bers admit­ted that the police depart­ment had paid over $109,000 to a ven­dor for hard­ware and soft­ware. The county has not received any soft­ware to date and it is ques­tion­able what deliv­er­ables have been pro­vided to the county. Fur­ther­more, police depart­ment and admin staff admit­ted that they failed to read the con­tract which requires the county to invest an addi­tional $130,000 in order to imple­ment the project. It is unclear who within the police depart­ment was assigned to man­age this project.

7. On Aug. 25, 2009, a Clay­ton County police nar­cotics agent trav­eled in a police car to visit a female friend. Dur­ing his visit at the friend’s home, the female’s boyfriend came to the house and dis­cov­ered the officer’s pres­ence. While flee­ing the res­i­dence in a panic, the offi­cer ran into his own vehi­cle with his weapon drawn and shot a hole in it. This inci­dent was never reported by Chief Turner to the chief of staff or chair­man. To date, no inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion has been com­pleted nor has any dis­ci­pli­nary action been taken in this case.

8. On Sept 7, 2009, two machine guns were stolen from the trunk of a patrolman’s car. Chief Turner was ques­tioned and coun­seled regard­ing why he would allow a patrol­man to carry such weaponry in a vehi­cle which he drove home. The theft occurred while the county vehi­cle was parked in the park­ing lot of the apart­ment com­plex where the offi­cer lived.

9. On Sept. 9, 2009, a Clay­ton County police offi­cer ini­ti­ated a police chase because a male per­pe­tra­tor was sus­pected of solic­it­ing sex from a pros­ti­tute. The chase con­tin­ued into Ful­ton County, where it ended on Old National High­way in a motor vehi­cle acci­dent. Unfor­tu­nately, this acci­dent resulted in the death of 2 inno­cent women. A review of the police depart­ment records reveals that six inno­cent bystanders have died from 2007 to 2009 due to police chases. As a result of the 2009 acci­dent, Chair­man Bell ques­tioned depart­men­tal chase policies.

10. In late Octo­ber of this year, Chief Turner reported alle­ga­tions of seri­ous mis­con­duct on the part of cer­tain Clay­ton County police offi­cers that had arisen from what appeared to his inter­nal affairs offi­cers as a cred­i­ble wit­ness. The alle­ga­tions of wrong-doing are of such a seri­ous, sen­si­tive, and far-reaching nature that they can­not be dis­cussed in this forum. Over Chief Turner’s objec­tions, the mat­ter was reported to Chair­man Bell. Chief Turner was instructed to fully brief the chair­man regard­ing this mat­ter. Chief Turner received clear instruc­tions from the chair­man as how to pro­ceed with the inves­ti­ga­tion. Chief Turner rebuffed the chairman’s key direc­tive and pro­ceeded on his own path. The mat­ter has lan­guished unre­solved for more than six weeks, and with­out fur­ther updates to the chairman.

11. Early this year the sher­iff, dis­trict attor­ney and solic­i­tor requested assis­tance from county staff in order to con­duct an audit of their respec­tive staffs in order to deter­mine if any county assets were miss­ing. Inter­nal audits were con­ducted in each depart­ment. The final report revealed that weapons and other assets were miss­ing from the sheriff’s depart­ment. Given the sim­i­lar­i­ties in law enforce­ment func­tion exis­tent between the police and sheriff’s depart­ment, an audit of the police depart­ment was war­ranted. Chief Turner was noti­fied well in advance that the audit would take place. The audit was com­pleted in late Novem­ber. The audit revealed that there are 138 weapons unac­counted for and 85 firearms car­ried by police offi­cers for which the dept has no doc­u­men­ta­tion for how they came into the department’s pos­ses­sion. Seri­ous con­cerns regard­ing the stor­age, han­dling and dis­posal of drugs are also enu­mer­ated in the audit report.

12. There are 14 areas of audit which are red-flagged as rep­re­sent­ing sig­nif­i­cant risk or lia­bil­i­ties. The nar­cotics evi­dence room is in dis­ar­ray and over­flow­ing with drugs (over 2K lbs) much of which have destruc­tion orders dat­ing back to 2008. The report arrives at the con­clu­sion that “effec­tive man­age­ment con­trols are incom­plete or nonex­is­tent con­cern­ing firearms inven­tory and the prop­erty and evi­dence room.” The con­di­tion of the nar­cotics evi­dence room in par­tic­u­lar, calls in to ques­tion what, if any admin over­sight is tak­ing place. This area of the police depart­ment over­all respon­si­bil­ity calls for the high­est level of orga­ni­za­tional control.

– List cour­tesy of Clay­ton County Chief of Staff Alex S. Cohilas

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org