The South Fulton Police Department applies discipline practices and promotion policies inconsistently, leading to widespread perceptions of disparate treatment among its ranks, according to an independent review launched after two former officers filed lawsuits against the city and former chief.
Mayor Carmalitha Gumbs, who was a City Council member before becoming South Fulton’s first female mayor in January, ordered the 59-page report to be publicly released last week.
“We talked about being very transparent and making sure that the residents have the information,” Gumbs said in an interview Thursday. “With the number of concerns or complaints that we were receiving, it was the responsibility of the council to ensure that a thorough review was done, and that was what was provided.
“And we’re looking forward to implementing those recommendations.”
Rothwell Confidential Services performed the administrative review of the department’s promotion practices, internal investigations and disciplinary policies, along with other operations.
The City Council requested the probe in July, four days after the lawsuits were filed. The review began in November and concluded in late January.
The city placed then-Chief Keith Meadows on leave, beginning Aug. 5. He resigned in January, Gumbs said.
“The city is on a new path and we’re ready to move it forward,” the mayor said. “I wish the chief well. He was very instrumental in setting up our police department, but it’s a new era.”
Credit: Natrice Miller
Credit: Natrice Miller
Since August, the department has been led by Cedric Alexander, a former DeKalb County police chief and public safety director, who is serving under contract as South Fulton’s interim public safety director.
On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff announced the delivery of $405,000 in funding to strengthen public safety in South Fulton. The federal resources will allow the police department to establish a new law enforcement team to conduct traffic enforcement and provide data analysis on accident locations, the senator’s office said.
Meanwhile, the city will be conducting a search to replace Meadows, Gumbs said.
The allegations against Meadows in the two lawsuits include abuse of authority, retaliation, influencing polygraph tests and allowing a relative to avoid criminal charges.
South Fulton’s police department was established in March 2018, the year after the city was incorporated. The agency initially was made up of 85 former Fulton County Police officers, according to the report. It has grown to more than 219 sworn employees and 39 civilian staff.
The review found many of the department’s policies outdated, and recommended it conduct “a thorough revision of all policies to align them with the nature and demands of the current agency and discontinue operating under a jumble of legacy policies.”
The probe found the volume of internal affairs investigations was high for an agency of its size, indicating too much reliance on formal investigations for issues that could be addressed through supervisory actions, coaching or early intervention.
“Although an early warning system exists, it is not actively used,” the report says, “and IA cases are tracked manually rather than through a modern case management system.”
Some of those interviewed for the report believed department leaders used the internal affairs process to “purge former employees of the Fulton County Police Department.”
In interviews, people said the former chief did not follow disciplinary recommendations made by the internal affairs unit.
Last summer, a corporal was investigated for several policy violations including untruthfulness, the report says. She admitted to investigators she had lied, but the former chief “changed the sustained untruthfulness finding to ‘not sustained.’”
The report also mentioned a command-level officer’s involvement in a “bar brawl.” The officer was disciplined but later promoted, even though involvement in violent altercations could disqualify someone from promotion under department policy.
Additionally, a lieutenant was fired for donating unwanted beverages left over from an agency event. “A classification of ‘destroying evidence’ was used to justify his firing,” the report says.
The report’s recommendations include creation of a dedicated policy for internal affairs procedures, analysis of internal affairs data to spot misconduct patterns, and establishment of thresholds designating when employee misconduct should be handled within the chain of command or referred to internal affairs for investigation.
The report also recommends making employees ineligible for promotion if they have recently committed serious misconduct, unless such a promotion is “explicitly justified following a command-level review process.”
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
Recommendations for promotional practices include making sure the department’s general orders include criteria for objective selection, scoring methods that are transparent and a clear appeals mechanism.
“Since the agency’s founding, promotions to all ranks appear to have been arbitrary and at the will of the former chief of police,” the report states.
Members of the review team included Reneé Hall, former chief of the Dallas, Texas, police department; Billy Grogan, former chief of the Dunwoody Police Department; and Rodney Bryant, a retired chief of the Atlanta Police Department.
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