Word: sheriffs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
DeKalb is one of those rare counties in which law enforcement is handled by two separate agencies. The sheriff oversees the jail, serves warrants and provides courthouse security, while a countywide police agency conducts criminal investigations, writes traffic tickets and makes arrests. Brown came up through the police department, where for 22 years he was a popular but controversial crusader. He grew up in Lakeview, a suburb on Long Island, N.Y. His father George was a probation-officer training specialist in Nassau County. His mother Burvena was an executive secretary who quit working to raise kids. They encouraged their four...
...fire storms. Not long after joining the police force, he helped lead efforts to add more black officers to the ranks. Then, two decades later, he helped the push to unionize the department. In the 1990s, his wife and family say he became increasingly critical of the sheriff, Pat Jarvis, a retired Atlanta Braves pitcher, who eventually pleaded guilty to accepting kickbacks in a deal that sent him to jail for 15 months...
...while, Derwin had political aspirations. Some thought it was merely for the school board, but in 1996, he ran in a special election to replace the sheriff. He fared poorly at the polls. Four months later, he tried again and got only a fraction of the votes, losing to Sidney Dorsey, an Atlanta homicide detective who became the county's first black sheriff. The two men had a cordial relationship, but that turned when Derwin announced he was again running for sheriff. The moment television-news cameras caught jail inmates working on projects for Dorsey's wife, Derwin went...
...family and friends, Derwin wanted to be sheriff for reasons grander than ousting Sid Dorsey or cleaning up corruption. As Derwin saw it, jails are part of a prison-industrial complex for young black men. More than once, his brother Ron heard him describe prisons as a big business in which the mostly black inmates became "raw materials" in a heartless system set up only to bring in even more bodies. Says Ron Brown: "He saw the prison system as a modern form of slavery...
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...