Peachtree City Mayor Harold Logsdon may have taken over the supervision of the police department, but it hasn’t had any effect on police operations, officials said.

“I can say that nothing here has changed,” Police Chief James Murray said Wednesday afternoon. “Everything at the police department is continuing like it has been. The mayor told me if I needed anything to call him.”

Logsdon has taken over the supervision of the police department from City Manager Bernie McMullen, who was arrested June 3 for DUI, possession of an open container and possession of alcohol in a city park after attempting to drive a golf cart away following a concert at the amphitheater. McMullen remains on the job as the city has taken no adverse action against him relative to the incident; the City Council has not yet voted to take police supervision away from McMullen nor to officially give that authority to Logsdon. Logsdon said he anticipated such a vote coming at last night’s meeting of the City Council, which occurred after The Citizen was printed.

Logsdon said he doesn’t anticipate getting very involved with the police operations, and he considers the situation temporary.

“It’s just an administrative thing,” Logsdon said. “I’m not going to do it forever. ... The chief told me he would call me when there is something he would normally need to advise, just like he had been doing with Bernie.”

Murray said it would be fairly rare for him to contact McMullen about a police matter anyway.

“That’s an uncommon occurrence most of the time anyway,” Murray said.

Historically the city manager rarely gets involved in police affairs, officials said. Murray said it’s important to have one person at the city to contact in case some information needs to be disseminated with citizens, for example.

The extent of Logsdon’s work supervising the police department has been to attend Monday’s police staff meeting and make sure that everybody was on the same page, he said.

Logsdon said Wednesday that he expected the City Council to officially vote to give him the supervisory powers over the police department — thus officially removing McMullen from those duties — after Council meets in executive (closed) session Thursday night. Although Council discussed the general issues revolved around McMullen’s arrest, Logsdon and City Attorney Ted Meeker have insisted the council did not violate Georgia’s open meetings laws.

Instead, Logsdon said he got the permission of each individual council member one-on-one to assume supervisory powers over the police department in McMullen’s stead. City Attorney Ted Meeker contends that the city charter and ordinances allow the mayor to take over those tasks when necessary.

Logsdon said the entire situation was “unfortunate, but we’ll get past it.”

“We are certainly supportive of our police department equally with Bernie as we get through this difficult situation,” Logsdon said.