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Probate Judge asks governor to investigate
Chattahoochee County Sheriff
Chattahoochee County Sheriff
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By RICHARD HARRIS
Another Chattahoochee County official has asked Governor Sonny Perdue to “initiate an investigation into the actions of Sheriff Glynn Cooper,” despite the fact that the governor declined such a request about 3 ½ months ago.
Once again, the sheriff says he has nothing to hide and that he would welcome an investigation. He was also recently quoted in the Ledger-Equirer as stating that he believes the complaint is an attempt to discredit him to justify the County Commission’s plan
Larry Dillard, chairman of the Commission of the Unified Government of Cusseta-Chattahoochee County, met with the governor’s lead attorney last November to discuss a complaint he had submitted about the sheriff and to request an investigation. This February, the governor informed Dillard that after reviewing the complaint he decided not to initiate an investigation, saying there was an “absence of any findings on our part of criminal activity.” While acknowledging that the sheriff had “failed to timely serve a number of misdemeanor warrants,” the governor added that he didn’t think the sheriff’s actions met the “necessarily high threshold that should exist” for him to initiate an investigation.
Now, Chattahoochee County Probate Judge Ken Van Horn has written a letter to the governor asking him to reconsider that decision. Van Horn’s revelation that Sheriff Cooper had failed to act on more than 100 probation violation warrants issued by his court over the last five years was one of the items mentioned in Dillard’s initial request for an investigation. However, the Sheriff’s Office then began entering the warrants into the Georgia Crime Information Center’s database and also executed some of the warrants. The governor said that showed the sheriff was taking steps to address the issue and that there was an “absence of a continuing willful disregard of the duties the law places upon him.”
However, Judge Van Horn says the statement that the sheriff is now executing warrants is specious (“specious” means “appearing to be true but really being false”). He says the number of active warrants issued by his court is currently almost 150 (as of Feb. 20).
“While it does appear that he entered the Probate Court warrants into GCIC, I can discern no clear pattern in my court at this time that he is exercising diligence in serving warrants,” Van Horn’s letter states.
He says there are ways to attempt to serve warrants even when they are for people who have left the area or even the state, and he doesn’t believe the sheriff is making a good-faith effort to execute warrants issued by his court. Van Horn also noted that numerous warrants have expired, adding that the sheriff could have “tolled” the warrants to nullify the expiration, but failed to do so.
Last October, Judge Van Horn told the chief judge of the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit that he planned to begin contempt proceedings against Sheriff Cooper over the issue of unserved warrants. In an interview last week, Van Horn declined to say if he still plans to begin contempt proceedings, but a statement he released about why he made the decision to ask the governor to investigate seems to make it clear that he still holds that as an option. The statement references a state law that states: “Any warrant for the arrest of a peace officer, law enforcement officer, teacher, or school administrator for any offense alleged to have been committed while in the performance of his or her duties may be issued only by a judge of a superior court, a judge of a state court, or a judge of a probate court.”
In addition to his allegation that Sheriff Cooper has not performed his duties adequately in terms of serving warrants, Van Horn’s letter to the governor includes several other allegations, and he says “the warrants are merely a symptom of a much deeper problem.”
Attached to Van Horn’s letter were two statements written by a former deputy. In one statement, the former deputy claims the sheriff told him he was making too many arrests of “the people that put him in office” and that he was told “not to mess with them.”
The same former deputy claims that this past Christmas day he responded to a call about a domestic dispute where a woman had a broken arm and he received signed statements from two witnesses
Van Horn’s letter also mentions another former deputy’s claim that the sheriff told him to stop making traffic arrests after the judge’s complaints about unserved warrants were made public.
Judge Van Horn also repeated his earlier statement that in October of 2005 a man appeared in his court on probation revocation charges and told him that the reason he had stopped reporting to his probation officer and making payments on his fines was because “his grandmother had worked out a deal with the sheriff.” He added that the warrant had a note on it that stated, “Do not put into system per 651A,” and that 651A is the sheriff’s badge number.
Van Horn also alleges that Sheriff Cooper once threatened to “punch me in the nose,” and that he once threatened to assault a Probate Court clerk for refusing to reduce the speed on a citation without the judge’s approval. In the last case, the sheriff wanted the speed reduced from 85 miles-per-hour to 69, to help the person keep his driver’s license. The request was eventually approved by Judge Van Horn.
Near the conclusion of his letter to the governor, Van Horn states, “Governor, I personally am pleading for your help. This is not a political problem. It is a serious law enforcement and security problem.”
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