Word: jaile
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Derwin Brown wound up winning the runoff election by a rate of 2 to 1. Not long afterward, J. Tom Morgan, the local district attorney, asked to meet him at the county courthouse. Morgan had been elected 10 years earlier on promises to rid the jail of corruption. The county has a long history, dating to the 1960s, of sheriffs being accused of fraud, bribery or cronyism. Now, he confided to Derwin, his office was targeting Dorsey...
There had been much foreboding during the campaign. With Brown campaigning so heavily on eliminating corruption and reforming the jail, his manager and several other volunteers--many of whom were off-duty cops--swore they were being followed. Late one night the candidate and another county official were shadowed by a mysterious man in a dark Ford Expedition as they stood on a sidewalk outside a Decatur restaurant and talked about the extent of the corruption, possibly involving bail bondsmen at the jail. Jack Stanford, a DeKalb police officer and close campaign aide, even suggested Derwin and the others begin...
From then on, Derwin and the district attorney met regularly, discussing the progress of the investigation and figuring out ways to get to the bottom of the mess awaiting the sheriff-elect. Derwin planned a top-to-bottom audit of the jail's contracts and a review of the seven bail bondsmen who had questionable connections to the jail. Derwin, who set up a transition team of campaign loyalists and career cops to run the sheriff's department, also had narrowed a list to 62 jail personnel whom he wanted to demote or fire...
Stanford, who had joined the transition team, was among advisers and friends cautioning Derwin against notifying jail employees that he planned to fire them, fearful they would destroy files or sabotage databases. "There's nothing they can do we can't fix," Derwin told him. His wife says he anguished over the firings, coming to her one night in early December to ask whether she thought people would rather know right away or wait until after the holidays to discover they were getting axed. "Derwin was not the bad guy. He was not firing people just to fire people," Phyllis...
Interim sheriff Tom Brown and others confirm that the investigation is now focusing primarily on the jail's finances. Forensic auditors are examining contracts and other records related to the private companies servicing the jail, which, with 3,750 inmates, is one of the largest east of the Mississippi. Among the most scrutinized are the companies holding contracts to provide health care, maintenance and food service at the jail...