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Page 2A LOCAL The Champion, Thursday, Jan. 1 - 7, 2015 NEWS BRIEFS Ethics board clears Commissioner Larry Johnson The DeKalb County Board of Ethics dis missed charges against DeKalb County Com missioner Larry Johnson which involved several payments to the Porter Sanford III Per forming Arts & Community Center. “The arts support the education of our chil dren and provide wholesome entertainment for families of all ages,” said Johnson, in a state ment. “All of my expenditures have been for a public purpose and this is no different. I will continue to support this type of programming in District 3 to the extent I am able.” The complaint, filed in May by resident Rhea Johnson, claimed misuse of the commis sioner s purchasing card. Johnsons attorney, Mawuli Mel Davis, said the ethics complaint was frivolous and should never have taken so long to resolve. “It’s those kinds of wild allegations that will cause people to lose faith in their public ser vants,” Davis said. GBI ends investigation of 2013 death of jail academy recruit Following DeKalb County Sheriff Jeffrey Mann’s request in November for an indepen dent review, the Georgia Bureau of Investiga tions (GBI) has released its report on the cir cumstances surrounding the death of recruit George Ward. The GBI does not plan to take any further action on the case, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Ward was a detention officer recruit who died unexpectedly in May 2013 during the sec ond day of the jail academy training program. “We understand that Mr. Wards family continues to grieve his loss, and they have our sympathies,” Mann said. “After reviewing the report, however, I remain confident that this agency acted responsibly with regard to his tragic death and to our training program during retired Sheriff Thomas Brown’s administration. We continue to do so today. When Mr. Ward became ill while training, we responded swiftly, professionally and appropriately.” According to initial reports by the DeKalb Medical Examiner, Ward was a victim of seri ous pre-existing medical conditions. This was reconfirmed by the GBI Medical Examiner as part of its review. Mann referred to the DeKalb Sheriff’s Of fice training program as a “textbook” for law enforcement agencies and he said it is managed by experienced officers who share recruits’ de sires to succeed. “Given the nature of the detention officers’ job, it is critical that all our officers are well- trained physically, emotionally and mentally,” Mann said. “They must be able to function effectively in the life-or-death situations that occur inside the jail. While hundreds of offi cers have successfully graduated from our jail academy, those few who found it to be too chal lenging were either released or left the program voluntarily.” DeKalb Police awarded $68,300 grant The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety has announced that the DeKalb County Police Department is one of 17 law enforcement agen cies in Georgia to receive a Highway Enforce ment of Aggressive Traffic grant for the 2015 grant season. Referred to as a H.E.A.T. grant, the DeKalb County Police Department’s award totals $68,300. The goal of the H.E.A.T. program is to com bat crashes, injuries and fatalities caused by im paired driving and speeding, while also increas ing seatbelt use and educating the public about traffic safety and the dangers of DUI. The DeKalb County Police Department H.E.A.T Unit will use the grant from GOHS to develop and implement strategies to reduce lo cal traffic crashes due to aggressive and danger ous driving behaviors. “Agencies like the DeKalb County Police Department receive this H.E.A.T. grants be cause they have showed a particular dedication to protecting their citizens from impaired driv ers,” said GOHS Director Harris Blackwood. “This dedication is crucial because alcohol- related crash deaths still account for 25 percent of traffic fatalities in Georgia. We are grateful to Chief [James] Conroy and his staff for their continued hard work.” Totaling $3.2 million for 2015, H.E.A.T. See Briefs on page 20A Charity flows from Decatur to Haiti by Kathy Mitchell Decatur lawyer Ed Buckley said he’s astonished at how what he started 11 years ago as a small project to provide fresh water to a village in Haiti has bal looned into a series of water systems that now serve be tween 350,000 and 450,000 residents of the small island nation. Buckley and those who volunteer with him have now built more than 300 wells and other water sys tems worth more than $1 million. “I sort of fell backwards into this,” Buckley explained. “I was reading about people building small fresh water systems in Africa that were making a big difference in the quality of life for people in the areas where the sys tems were built. I started looking into how I could get involved in something like that.” Buckley researched nonprofits involved in such work and selected Food For The Poor as the one that best met his needs. Ear lier this year, Food For The Poor’s Executive Director Angel Aloma named Buck- ley and two other Atlanta- area residents Ambassadors For The Poor at the charity’s seventh annual Dreams Across The Sea event. Buckley, managing partner at The Buckley Law Firm, was recognized along with the Rev. William Thomas Deneke, an Episco pal priest from Decatur; and Amanda Farahany, a part ner at Barrett & Farahany in Atlanta. “The great thing about this organization is that it has people in Haiti who understand how things are done there and cut through the red tape so projects can be completed quickly and cost effectively,” Buckley said. He takes a small group, usually four five people, ap proximately twice a year to Haiti, where they look at areas that need water. The groups work with engineers to help determine the feasi bility of building a system. “Most of the systems we build are in rural areas, so we have to look at whether it can be done and what it will take to do it. From there we can figure out how much money the project will take so we have a fundraising goal when we go back to the United States,” Buckley ex plained. Some of the proceeds from the Dreams Across the Sea event will further the mission that got Buckley involved with the charity. They will be used to bring clean, safe drinking water to Dalon, Haiti, through the in stallation of a 10,000-gallon concrete cistern and water kiosks. Currently, residents walk more than a mile to reach the local spring, and because of the heavy reli ance on this resource, resi dents usually have to wait 45 minutes to collect water, according to Food For The Poor. Proceeds from the event also will help fund com ponents for a water proj ect at the Baptist Hospital in Quartier Morin, Haiti. “There is no piped water in Quartier Morin,” a state ment from the charity notes. “The several shallow, hand- dug wells at the Baptist Hos pital are inefficient because they are susceptible to the region’s dry spells, as they are replenished by rainfall. When necessary, water is pumped by hand and de livered in wheelbarrows to the hospital from the nearby children’s home. That well was generously installed in 2012 by Ed Buckley and members of Leadership At lanta.” Buckley called the need for clean drinking water “the most fundamental of human rights.” He added, “Without clean drinking wa ter we cannot fully exercise our other God-given rights. For example, a child can’t enjoy her right to education with parasites roiling in her belly because she does not have clean drinking water. A woman can’t engage in com merce if she has to spend five hours a day hunting for clean water and bringing a five-gallon bucket back to her home, only to repeat the same thing the next day.” He said his appreciation of the need to serve oth ers increased during what he termed “a recent health scare,” which he credits Decatur nurse Susan Parry with helping him through. “She brought me back to the land of the living. I feel a huge debt of gratitude to her,” Buckley said. Earlier this year, during a trip to Haiti Buckley and his group honored Parry through the inauguration of a new water well and cistern at Bernard Mevs Hospital in Port-au- Prince.