Up until now I have been ordered not to speak or tell my side of what happened that led to multiple demotions and a $35,000 pay cut for me. I don’t expect to change many minds but it’s important to my family that I tell my side of the story. While I was forbidden to speak, members of the Sheriff’s Department have spoken many times about it and the stories have become very slanted.

The baseball story

The Fayette County bulldogs won the county championship for the 13/14-year-old league at Kiwanis Field. They were a county recreation team and my son was on that team. If he hadn’t been, this probably would not be an issue.

The team had advanced to the State Championship playoffs which, as it happens, was played here in Fayette County at Whitewater High School. The Bulldogs had advanced to the game which would determine who would be the state champions. We were waiting to see who we would play for that championship.

The night before the championship I received a call from a parent on our team who was concerned about the team we would be playing the following night. She described them as a very rough team who had been causing trouble. She asked if we could have some deputies hang around during some of the game. This was easy to do because the school resource officers were out for the summer and spending their days assisting detectives. I called the SRO supervisor and asked them to have two of his deputies work evening shift and hang around Whitewater High School.

I learned the night of the state championship this team, which was out of Riverdale, was a very rough, roguish team, who liked to portray themselves as “gang bangers” before and after the game.

During the game they weren’t much better. The only difference was the umpires made them tuck their shirts in and button them but their language and antics were the same on the field. I’ve never seen an AABC baseball team conduct themselves the way this team did.

The Fayette Bulldogs beat them badly, 19-3. They were not happy about it and towards the end of the game the first base coach said to a runner on base: “That’s okay, when they get to Tennessee they ain’t gone have these cops with ‘em and we’ll show ‘em who they been messing with.” After the game I heard many threats and obscenities being yelled across the ballfield and in the parking lot.

The Riverdale team had placed second in the state behind the Bulldogs and were going to move on to Tennessee for the Southeast regionals along with us.

When I told the detectives I work with what had happened, many of them volunteered to go with the team to Tennessee. Some of the parents on the Bulldogs expressed concern about the trouble the team might encounter with this team in Tennessee.

The coach went so far as to book our hotel 30 miles away from the games so that we would not find ourselves in the same motel with this team. I told the coach that several deputies volunteered to go to Tennessee to protect the Fayette County families. I told him that, if the sheriff approved it, it might be possible to have them go along.

When I spoke to the sheriff about the situation he was initially apprehensive about letting them go. He eventually agreed and stated, “You’ll probably need them up there with that Clayton County bunch. They’ll probably all be carrying 9-millimeters.” His only other instruction to me was: “Don’t pay them anything extra for going up there.”

We had sent deputies with youth groups to Washington, D.C., Savannah and other places when requested to keep Fayette County kids safe on trips. This being the county’s recreational league team, I didn’t see this as being much different than that. The difference, as I realize now, is that my son was on this team and that made the presence of those detectives appear improper.

I went back to my office and told my detectives I could take two to Tennessee but they could not be paid overtime for the trip. Two detectives volunteered to go with us.

One of them asked to draw advanced travel funds for meal and lodging so that they would not have to pay the expenses out of their pocket. I told him yes but also told him to tell Capt. (Michelle) Walker that those expenses would be reimbursed either by the baseball association or the team.

Without my knowledge a memo was issued requesting money from the Customs federal drug seizure account to pay for that advance travel. I have no idea why that was done. We were in the beginning of our budget year and our travel budget should have had ample funds for this travel advance.

The first I learned the drug money had been used for the deputies’ travel expenses was shortly after we returned from the trip when Channel 5 news began calling about how the expenses had been paid. That was when I first learned the drug money had been used.

When I request money from any of the federal accounts it requires my initials in the top left hand corner of the memo. Not only does the memo that requested those funds not contain my initials, my name is nowhere on the memo.

The check that was issued as a result of that memo does not contain my initials, signature or any type authorization from me that the money be issued from the drug money.

Whoever called Channel 5 News knew before I did that the money had been taken from the federal account. The memo did, however, state that the money was to be reimbursed by the baseball team.

Without any conversation between me and the sheriff on the matter, the sheriff called me in and demoted me three ranks and cut my pay an unprecedented 35 percent.

There is a reason that the 35 percent pay cut is unprecedented: It is in direct conflict with the sheriff’s written policy in the standard operations procedure manual.

In this policy and procedures manual, Chapter 6, Section 3, Paragraph 10 states: “An employee’s salary may be reduced from one pay step to a lower pay step for disciplinary purposes. The salary reduction does not constitute a demotion in pay grade. The salary reduction shall not be more than 10 percent of the employee’s salary at the time of the reduction.”

That same section addresses the need for progressive discipline. I spent 27 years with the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department and never received one single disciplinary action until this.

The fact that my salary reduction was completely in conflict with our departmental policy, and that I had no knowledge that the drug money check had ever been cut, were my main bases for appeal.

The sheriff refused to ever hear my appeal, which is also in conflict with our S.O.P. I’ve read various press reports on reasons the appeal has never been heard; “I’ve been out of town,” was one. The most confusing excuse I’ve read was “in light of the demotion” he hasn’t seen the need. The demotion is what I was appealing.

I know now that the sheriff knows I was not aware of a check being cut from the federal account because I know he had his attorney investigate the matter. That attorney was told by employees involved that I knew nothing about the memo being issued which caused the check to be cut or the fact that the check was ever cut.

The trips

About 75 percent of the trips listed in The Fayette Citizen were training and seminar trips. Once you have been in law enforcement more than 10 years you have had pretty much all of the training Georgia has to offer.

For over a decade we have used the federal drug seizure money to finance advanced training for our deputies out of state. The U.S. Department of Justice was fully aware of this.

Many of the trips were to enjoyable places. Anyone who ever attended a seminar or training conferences out of state knows the people that put these sessions on have them in attractive places to draw more attendees.

The other 25 percent of the trips were trips involving investigations, which is why my name appears very often on the list. The Carl Patton Jr. murders caused me to travel several times trying to find witnesses from 25 years ago. I also had to travel on the Charlie Mask murder.

Using the drug forfeiture fund for advanced training and to finance major investigations is a program that has gone on for around 12 years. The sheriff has always known that is one of the ways we used those funds.

The audit report that he signed every year contained the dollar amount being spent on training and he usually noticed if someone was gone for more than a couple of days and would ask where they were. To suggest that program went went on that long without his knowledge would be a very sad notion.

Special prosecutor

I look forward to someone from the outside coming in and looking at what has happened here. Unless people start changing their stories, I’m hoping he will get to the truth.

You have to admit it is a little ironic that our district attorney will drive all the way across the state to keep a child molester out of jail but will appoint a special prosecutor to look into my sending two deputies to protect 12 Fayette County families who had been threatened.

I suspect I became a political pawn who was sacrificed so the sheriff could smooth things over with the (county) commissioners. I gathered that from recent comments made by the sheriff in the paper.

There may be many people that agree with the sheriff “getting me out of the way,” but you have to consider that it sends a dangerous precedent to ignore your own departmental written policies in the name of politics.

Bloggers

Blog away. I quit reading them as soon as this went down because it was bad for my mental well-being. I’ve now convinced my daughter who is away at college to stop reading them as well. My sister still reads them to print certain things out for my attorney. She rarely tells me what is on there.

From what I’ve been told about half of them are disgruntled employees whom I’ve had to demote or transfer during the more than 20 years being the boss in a very volatile profession.

I take pride in the work that I’ve done for Fayette County over the past 27 years. I also take pride in the fact that I pursued law enforcement aggressively, took on those major cases and avoided never receiving a disciplinary action until this incident came along.

It was an incident for which I reimbursed the county as soon as I learned funds had been taken from the wrong account, and from which I received no personal benefit.

Bruce Jordan
Fayetteville, Ga.

Former Lt. Col. Jordan retired last month from the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department after 27 years’ service.