About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 20, 2018)
L2J OUR REGION Shannon Casas | Editor in Chief 770-718-3417 | news@gainesvilletimes.com The Times, Gainesville, Georgia Thursday, December 20, 2018 Officers rebuked for badminton game Dawson deputies left streets unpatrolled while playing BY ALLIE DEAN adean@dawsonnews.com Five Dawson County Sheriffs Office patrol officers have been reprimanded after video surveil lance from the local middle school showed all of the officers engaged in a late-night game of badminton in the school gym, leaving no offi cers on the streets. The game occupied two of the officers for a little over an hour as the group waited for everyone to arrive at the school at Ga. High way 9 and Dawson Forest Road for training, and lasted approximately 35 minutes after the fifth and final officer arrived. Sheriff Jeff Johnson said Mon day, Dec. 17, that shift supervisor Sgt. Donna Bennett was demoted from her probationary status as sergeant to a corporal position after the incident. Cpl. Casey Honea, Cpl. Chad Mobley, Deputy Richard Martin and Deputy Cory Gearin each received a disciplinary notice and their pay is being docked for the time spent playing badminton. Surveillance video shows two patrol officers entering the gym around 1:45 a.m. Dec. 12 and strik ing up a game at 1:54 a.m. The other three officers slowly filter in over the course of an hour and join in the game. The game lasted until 3:03 a.m. when the officers walk off screen, presumably to put their rackets away. The group can be seen walk ing out of the gym at 3:08 a.m. after a brief huddle, and at 3:25 a.m. one of the officers re-enters the gym to retrieve a jacket that had been left. Johnson said Dec. 12 that he had received a report of inappropriate behavior by patrol officers who were on duty early that morning, and that the patrol shift met at the school to conduct building clearing exercises. Though Johnson could provide no documentation of a planned training, other video surveillance from the rest of the school shows the officers conducting a building clearing training upon leaving the gym at 3:09 a.m. Though the footage is dark, it shows what appears to be train ing activity until around 3:30 a.m. There is no more visible activity until the officers appear to leave the school around 4:30 a.m. Johnson acknowledged that the badminton game was inappropri ate behavior for officers on duty, but has not addressed the more serious issue of all five of Dawson County’s on-duty patrol officers being pulled from their assigned zones at the same time. Patrol officers are assigned to specific zones throughout the county, which they can leave to assist other officers when calls come in. The expectation, how ever, is that there will always be at least one patrol officer covering each zone in the county. “As your sheriff, I apologize to our community for this occur rence. We strive to build trust within our community and unfor tunately incidents such as this serve to undermine that trust,” Johnson said Dec. 12. “I am very disappointed in this behavior as I know it is not indicative of our staff as a whole. I want to reassure our community that we truly have exceptional professionals serving our county.” Officers are able to access school buildings at any time with electronic key cards in case of emergency. Johnson said Dec. 13 that officers are encouraged to learn the layout of the schools, even if they are assigned the night shift. School Superintendent Damon Gibbs previously said he had no comment on the incident. FLORES ■ Continued from 1A AUSTIN STEELE I The Times Attendees watch as the hearse carrying Flores’ remains leaves Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Flowery Branch on Wednesday, Dec. 19, following a memorial service for Edgar Flores, a DeKalb County officer killed in the line of duty. knowing that we were bringing him home ... Every intersec tion and overpass had not only citizens but public safety there showing his family the respect and honor that they deserve,” Black said. The memorial was only open to members of the church, fam ily, friends and law enforcement, but The Times spoke with several people who attended the service. “Officer Flores got up that morning. He came to work that evening to do an honest day’s work, so when these things hap pen, yes, it hurts,” Johnson said. Black said he did not know much about Flores or his Haber sham roots before speaking with those in the community such as Echols. “This kid was really every thing they say about him, almost one in a million, graduating top of his class,” Black said. The 24-year-old Flores took gunfire Dec. 13 while pursuing a man who ran from a traffic stop on Candler Road in DeKalb, according to police. He was shot multiple times and pronounced dead at Grady Memorial Hospi tal in Atlanta. He is survived by family in Cornelia and Baldwin. “You could tell the heart- wrenching emotion that they were giving, telling stories about his smile and their interactions with Officer Flores as a friend and a family member,” Flowery Branch Mayor Mike Miller said of the eulogies. The service was a traditional mass performed in Spanish. “(The priest’s) homily was in Spanish, but then he switched to English to speak directly to the rest of the officers and to tell them to each day ask God to go to work with them, that when they got home at night to thank him for being with them throughout the day,” said Marie Jones, who attends Prince of Peace along with Jeanne Bleecker. With dozens of cars flashing their blue lights amid roaring motorcycle engines, a proces sion of law enforcement officers escorted Flores’ body back to Demorest following the funeral. Officers from Hall, Athens- Clarke, Banks and Clayton coun ties joined the line of vehicles exiting the church before 1 p.m. Wednesday. “It’s awe-inspiring to see how they look out for their own ... They didn’t know him, but that could have been any one of our officers,” Miller said. “It’s heart breaking. It’s also warming to know that so many people care about someone they didn’t even know.” \>WmkLl r fll "A 1 [yFTTI i viffi/r SAFETY ■ Continued from 1A While the report doesn’t encourage schools to arm teachers or staff, it says they’re allowed to, and it points them to a Justice Department grant that can be used for training. Still, the group underscored that having a police officer who works in the school is the best option to respond to violence. Among its other proposals, the commission urged states to adopt laws allowing “extreme risk protection orders,” or court orders that temporarily restrict access to firearms for people who are found to pose risks to themselves or others. The group recommended against raising the minimum age to buy a firearm, generally 18 in most states, say ing there’s no evidence it would reduce killings. Meanwhile, the Georgia Senate School Safety Study Committee released its recom mendations in November after a series of public meetings across the state in the summer and fall. In its report, the committee said it explored “possible pro grams, solutions and safeguards to strengthen school safety in three key areas: the prevention of emergencies at or attacks on our schools from occurring in the first place; the physical secu rity of school buildings, facilities, and buses themselves in the case of an actual emergency; and the responses of school authorities, state and local law enforcement and emergency services person nel, students, teachers and staff to active emergencies should they occur on campus.” The committee recommends increased state mental health counselors and allowing local school systems to use special purpose local option sales tax revenues to fund the hiring of additional social workers or counselors (SPLOST funds are restricted to facilities improve ments and other capital develop ment projects). The committee also calls for a “data-sharing system by which Georgia’s schools, social services, and law enforcement agencies are able to coordinate together to create, share, and curate secure individual student profiles throughout a student’s educational career.” Hall County Schools has allo cated about $700,000 in new funding for school safety mea sures since the deadly shooting in Florida last February. This includes a new silent alarm network and other emer gency communication systems added to all schools after a suc cessful pilot project in the spring, and new stun guns for school resource officers. It also includes an infusion of $215,000 in state funding to con vert the district’s bus radios to digital and expand com munications coverage to 99 percent of the county. Officials with Gaines ville City Schools, mean while, said in July they are working closely with local police, fire and emergency responders to implement more fre quent evacuation drills on school campuses and conduct full evaluations of site-specific safety needs for schools. The Board of Education is also considering recommendations that include adding safety-related signage on campuses; providing more training for school resource officers; and continually revising emergency preparedness plans. Gainesville City Schools will receive about $81,000 in grant funding from the state to help pay for security improvements at school facilities. Miller said it’s important to allow local school districts to determine what their security needs are and how best to imple ment safety measures even while “state and federal oversight is appropriate.” “Local school boards and (gov ernments) should be empow ered to put in place proactive mechanisms to ensure the most vulnerable, our kids, are properly protected,” he added. “I’ve always been a proponent of Second Amendment rights, but child safety is critical.” Rep. Emory Duna- hoo, R-Gainesville, said the study committee’s recommendations are a starting point for discus sions in the legislature. The House also launched a school security study committee this year, but has not yet released a report or recommendations from its four public meetings. Dunahoo said the legislature will be looking at the “big pic ture” in 2019. “I think it’s a going to be a big part of what we do in the House,” he added. The Associated Press contributed to this report Dunahoo Driver in serious condition after head-on collision One person is in serious condition after a head-on collision Wednesday, Dec. 19, on Morningside Drive near Riverside Drive in Gainesville. The driver of a full-size SUV was trav eling northbound when the vehicle “for unknown reason crossed the center line and struck a minivan head-on,” Gaines ville Police Department spokesman Kevin Holbrook said in an email. The SUV driver was taken to Northeast Georgia Medical Center. The wreck happened about noon. Other details, including names of driv ers, weren’t immediately known. Jeff Gill INDUSTRIAL ■ Continued from 1A “I can’t say this development would be bad for Hall County, but it will be bad for us,” Simpson Road resident David Edwards told the commission. “We’ll have to leave.” The property was rezoned from “fairly intense” planned residential development and planned commercial development to planned industrial development, said Brian Rochester, a Gainesville engineer repre senting the developer. The development at 3240 Chiplan Drive could consist of up to 130,000 square feet of retail at the front of the property, which is north of White Sulphur Road and across from Gateway Industrial Centre. Industrial development on the site could be up to 2 million square feet, Rochester said. “On the back side of the property, we have a research and development center that would be developed between 100,000 and 500,000 square feet,” he said. The total developable space on the prop erty is 2.6 million square feet, Rochester said. “We’ve got some prospects, nothing finalized yet, but there’s certainly a lot of activity,” Collins said. “I definitely believe the announcement about the inland port is driving some momentum at the moment.” State officials, including Gov. Nathan Deal, touted the inland port during a Dec. 3 gathering of area business and government officials. The Northeast Georgia Inland Port, which will be in Gateway Industrial Centre, will serve as a regional terminal for cargo heading from the Port of Savannah to area companies. It could open in 2021. Collins said in an earlier interview he believed “there is a lot of activity for larger industrial space — certainly, you’re seeing that in Jackson County, Jefferson and North Gwinnett County.” “Hall County has been extremely suc cessful in recruiting large industrial com panies ... and available properties are at a real premium,” he added. “There’s not a lot of those, if any, at this point. ” A 1 million-square-foot single user “would be nothing like (what is in) Hall County today, but we feel like that with the economy and the market, there’s a poten tial for that in the next few years,” Collins said. SCHOOL ■ Continued from 1A Superintendent Jeremy Wil liams said at a meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 19. Board member Heather Ramsey said the 344-acre Westside TAD should focus on ren ovating dilapidated shopping centers rather than residen tial areas. “We just need to be careful that there’s a balance between the avail able funds and the amount of (new) students,” she said, adding that city officials need to be aware of potential consequences and challenges for the school sys tem produced by new resi dential growth. TADs are ostensibly designed to spur redevel opment and raise property values. After establishing a base line of property taxes owed, any increments resulting from an increase in property value is pumped into the TAD account and reinvested in improvements. According to the city’s website, “In simple terms, the increased property taxes that would be generated by a development’s improvements are temporarily used to fund those improve ments. Once the improvements are paid for, a develop ment’s taxes are then distributed traditionally.” The Westside TAD includes 170 parcels, or about 3 percent of the city’s tax digest, such as Lakeshore Mall, stretches along Browns Bridge Road, Atlanta High way and Pearl Nix Parkway. But board member Willie Mitchell, who cast the lone dissent against the TAD, said calls for redevelopment in Gainesville’s minority and lower-income neighborhoods have contributed to an afford able housing shortage. The Westside TAD bound aries include several home less shelters and public housing units, as well as small mom-and-pop businesses that could be pushed out one day. “I really don’t trust it,” Mitchell said of TADs, adding that the “devastation” he saw in midtown when the former Atlanta Street public housing complex was redeveloped became apparent when the school system saw a dra matic uptick in the number of homeless students. “That’s the thing that’s scary about it,” Mitchell said. The multi-family guide lines was just one of seven considerations the board approved to direct its stake in the expansion of tax districts across Gainesville. “What we are trying to do is get ahead of it,” Board Chairman John Filson said. These kinds of tax abate ments, such as what funded Atlantic Station in midtown Atlanta, which was officially opened in 2005, can exist for decades before local govern ments begin to break even or see a return on investment. That length of time caused some consternation for school board member Andy Stewart. “Atlantic Station is fully developed,” he said, “but the TAD is not closed out.” Other guidelines approved by the board, including a call to abolish a TAD that over lays midtown Gainesville before considering the imple mentation of a new tax dis trict, will give new oversight to the process, as well. For instance, this provi sion will ensure the school system is able to “collect tax revenue before future TADs are added,” Filson said. Stewart agreed that with the Westside TAD now in place, it is imperative that city officials close out the midtown TAD before any new tax districts are created. Stewart said he had spo ken about the impact TADs have on schools with mem bers of the Atlanta Public Schools system, and that he was advised to ensure the board of education has prin ciples in place to guide its decision-making. The Board of Educa tion has three seats on the TAD committee, which also includes city management and planners, Hall County officials, and representatives from the Greater Hall Cham ber of Commerce. “Hopefully, this allows us to do that,” Stewart said of the conditions the board approved. The board also called for a historical accounting of prior TAD approvals, including requestor, proj ect amount and TAD funds awarded; a comprehensive and historical review of tax digest exemptions, including entity, initial year of exemp tion, category and current exemption amount; that the city partner with the school system to identify new school sites; the exploration of new police precincts near future or existing Gainesville City School campuses; and a commitment to collabora tion to align city priorities and workforce development opportunities with Gaines ville High School. Filson said he hopes the guidelines the board approved will also direct the decisions of future city coun cil and education leaders when it comes to financing TAD projects.
