Newspaper Page Text
Jack Lumpkin - Toccoa's Top Cop
By Rick Dunn
When the City of Athens
and Clarke County governments were
unified three years ago, many
African-Americans thought the
change would bring with it a greater
opportunity for black leadership in the
operation of the new government.
A segment of government
blacks really felt one of their own had
a chance to head was the police
department. After all, the assistant
chief of police in the now former
Athens Police Department was an
articulate, street wise, educated, black
native son, who had 20 years of
police experience. And, if all jobs
were going to be open to all qualified
persons then he had as good a chance
as any to be selected.
But, hurt and dismay swept
through the black community when
the newly appointed manager for the
unified government said the man felt
to be the leading black candidate
would be neither considered or
interviewed for the job.
The black Athens-Clarke
County community was outraged by
the perceived insult, and charges of racism
flew around meetings with the new Chief
Elected Officer and government manager.
But, while the black community
fumed, the man at the center of the storm,
Joseph Lumpkin, Sr., went about his new
job of Bureau Chief of the Athens-Clarke
County Police Department with
professionalism, a smile on his face and
the confidence that one day his chance to
head a police department would come.
That day came this past
December when Lumpkin became chief of
police for the City of Toccoa, a town of
9,500 north of Athens,leaving behind a
police department still struggling to find
its way through unification and a legion
of blacks and whites who still contend he
should be head of law enforcement in his
hometown.
To this day, Lumpkin says he
understood the dilemma facing Russ
Crider, manager of the unified
government, who also had to chose
between two men that held the title of
chief of police before the governments
became one. And, in what may be a shock
to his supporters, Lumpkin said,"I
wouldn't have turned the job down, but I
didn't seek, nor did I necessarily desire to
be the first chief of police of Athens-
Clarke County."
But, Lumpkin also said he had
the desire to be chief of police
somewhere. "1 need to make the ultimate
decision," he confidently said. "The buck
needs to stop with me."
Since spuming the opportunity to
make the "buck stop with" him in Athens,
Lumpkin applied to be the top cop in four
cities - Ft.Myers, Fla.; Augusta, Ga.;
Myrtle Beach, S.C.; and Toccoa.
He was the among the top five
finalist in all four cities, and the Myrtle
Beach job was offered but his wife,
Sandra, felt the environment was not
conducive to raising their children (two
daughters age 16 and 3, and a 21-year-old
son).
"I couldn't take a job
without my wife's permission," he
laughed.
The 44 year-old Lumpkin
was bom and raised in an old black
farming section of Clarke County'
known as Johnstown. It is now the
site of Sandy Creek Nature Center.
By working that farm, and
in the family owned Mack and
Payne Funeral Home (Lumpkin is a
licensed funeral director), he learned
the value of hard work and
developed an aptitude for service
oriented occupations.
He feels that police
departments should be run like
service oriented businesses which
are designed to be cost effective,
please their clients and welcome
customer input.
"Government tends to tell
people what the problem is and this
is the solution. Business ask what
the problem is. Government is afraid
to allow others to identity’ the
problem, so government winds up
treating only the symptoms of the
problem and not the cause. Only the
people who have the problem truly know
what it is," he said.
Somewhere along the line he also
learned the value of doing your best, of
not running from challenges, and being
motivated by opportunities denied
It w'as a challenge that first got
Lumpkin into law enforcement back in
1970. The challenge was issued by then
Athens Mayor Julius Bishop as a result of
complaints from the African-American
community over police handling of black
demonstrations during the desegregation
of schools.
Believing that the best way to
bring about change is by becoming apart
of what needs changing, Lumpkin joined
the Athens police as a non-sw'om officer
on the Community Relations squad. He
said that he never intended to make a
career out of policing, but 21 years later
he was still a member of the APD and
had held every rank with the exception of