Atlanta, Georgia Local News
Super Tuesday: You Decide the next Fulton County Sheriff
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The Atlanta Voice interviewed all four candidates earlier this year at The Atlanta Voice office. Election Day is Tuesday, May 21
Fulton County resident Kirt Beasley officially announced her candidacy for Fulton County Sheriff. With over 23 years of law enforcement experience, Beasley said she is best for the position because she’s “homegrown”.
Beasley began her career with the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department where she served the entirety of her career rising through the ranks under several previous administrations, including under current Fulton County Sheriff Patrick LaBat as a contractor due to her experience.
“I was hired in 1994 by then Fulton County Sheriff Jacquelyn Harrison Barrett and I worked my entire career, basically at the jail. I started as a deputy and was promoted to the rank of sergeant, promoted to the rank of Lieutenant, then to the rank of captain, then the rank of major, and all the way up to the assistant chief jailer,” she said. “So, through all those years there, I learned the sheriff’s office and I know the job.
With an extensive law background, Beasley said she is choosing to run now simply because she cares, she said.
“I care about the employees that work at the sheriff’s office, I care about the people who are detained at the sheriff’s office, I care about the taxpayers of Fulton County, and I care about the people who have loved ones incarcerated at the jail,” she said.
Additionally, Beasley said she can hear the silent cries of the inmates who want many things changed, including an adequate number of staff at the jail to protect them.
“I can hear screams of the taxpayers because we don’t have enough staff, or there’s not enough staff at that jail, and you have inmates who are assaulted.
The Importance of Family
Family is very important, said Beasley, who is a wife, a mother of two daughters, and a grandmother of two. She has been married to her husband, Ken, for 19 years.
“He’s the best and he’s great. Our 19 years have been fine, we’re enjoying and have enjoyed those years, and we plan to enjoy life together,” she said.
Beasley said her two daughters are scientists in their own field of study.
“One, works in a study of cancer research, and the other does, organ transplantation,” she said. “Then, I have my heartbeats, a 12-year-old grandson, and my five-year-old granddaughter.”
Ken believes his wife is the best choice for the job.
“I feel great my wife is running for Sheriff in Fulton County. I think she’s best for the agency, the citizens, and taxpayers, point blank,” he said. “You couldn’t get a better candidate who knows that.”
Beasley’s response to the many issues at the county jail is rooted in action and care.
“You must have a share in an agency in place, ready to ensure the safety of the people detained at that jail. So, I believe this action speaks louder than words. You must put yourself into action,” she said. “The sheriff must know that the sheriff’s office is not to be used for his or her personal agenda. It’s all about the citizens of Fulton County.”
Beasley gave an example of this.
“The jail is the largest liability to the citizens of Fulton County, so if you see that’s your biggest problem, then you need to adjust staff and reallocate staff.”
Also, Beasley said she knows there are other duties of the sheriff’s office.
“I know we’re responsible for the courts securing the courts. I know we’re responsible for serving civil papers, executing warrants, and all the things that come with the sheriff’s office, but you must deal with your most pressing problem first to make a difference,” she said.
If elected, Beasley said she’s going to bring her knowledge and experience to the table.
“With that knowledge and experience, I’m going to bring some other knowledge and experience with me,” Beasley said. “I’m going to look for people with the same work ethics, values, and morals. I must come in there and put the county first and put the inmates first, the staff first. I’m going to have people working around me to make me better.”
She also said if elected, her priority will be to address the jail conditions like being overcrowded, understaffed, and ultimately unsafe. She also plans to prioritize funds for necessary facility improvements, while providing tax-paying citizens transparency and accountability in budget allocation.
Additionally, she said she will not be a sheriff who will not listen to what others have to say to her to make things better.
“In order to make any agency better or do anything better, you must surround yourself with people who are all working towards that one common goal. In this case, this common goal is to make the sheriff’s office better and to make Fulton County better as a whole,” she said.
The interview and subsequent story on Fulton County Sheriff’s candidate Kurt Beasley was conducted and written by Isaiah Singleton.
Fulton County Sheriff candidate James “JT” Brown has a plan. In fact, the now-retired veteran law enforcement officer has a three-step plan to return the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) to what he believed were its former lofty heights of respectability and efficiency. These days, you can Google the combination of “Fulton County Sheriff’s Office” and “Atlanta 2023” and a plethora of stories and posts on probes into the Fulton County Jail, detention officer arrests, and bad reviews on working at the jail.
On a Friday morning inside the offices of The Atlanta Voice Brown took his badge out of the breast pocket of his navy blue suit. He retired in December 2022 so these days his FCSO badge reads “retired”, but he still keeps it close. After 37 years with the department, the level of pride he once had in the badge has changed.
“My badge is tarnished,” said Brown, tapping the badge with his right index finger. “What’s going on in the jail, the atrocities, we are talking about a controlled environment. How are people dying in a controlled environment when you have an almost quarter-billion-dollar budget?”
The plan is simple, says Brown. It consists of the “Three D’s”, he explained. “Deaths, dollars, and diversion.” Regarding the multiple deaths that have taken place within the Fulton County Jail the past few years during current FCSO Sheriff Patrick Labat’s first term as sheriff, Brown said, “We are going to correct that problem.”
Last year Brown and other retired department members who were still on reserve helped with a shakedown at the jail. Having been gone for a year, he was surprised at how things looked inside the jail where he once worked. “We found 138 shanks on detainees that day,” he recalled. “I know the county can do better because I saw better.”
On the fiscal issues that have taken place, Brown said, “The fiscal management is shot over there, so we are going to correct that and make sure the budget is running efficiently and effectively.”
The final “D” in the plan calls for programs that will focus on the youngest offenders. Brown spent time in the FCSO warrant division and witnessed first-hand how an arrest can derail a young man’s life. “This is what I heard from the kids when we went to their house because their parents couldn’t handle them, ‘Officer I dropped out of school because I couldn’t read’,” said Brown, who believes the road to petty crimes and ultimately a trip to Rice Street oftentimes starts with not being in school.
“I told myself that if I ever got in charge I would create a reading program for the youth, and would work with community partners so we can bring the jail rate down.”
Brown has seen it all and then some during his career, which is entirely with the FCSO. As a member of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) he not only worked on the warrant division but also the extradition unit, and was elected to the Fulton County Grievance Board. During his career, he also received training from the National Association on Mental Illness (NAMI).
“I am a law enforcement CEO,” said Brown, a Detroit native who graduated from Morehouse College in 1985 before joining the FCSO in 1986, starting his nearly four-decade-long career. That career and the educational experiences that took place during that time are what Brown’s supporters are saying which makes him the candidate to choose.
“We have to start putting people in office who carry character. That’s the challenge,” said Brown’s wife of 19 years Monisha Brown. “My challenge to voters is to ask around the county about the reputations of all four candidates.”
One of those voters will be the couple’s 18-year-old son London. He will be voting for the first time by the time the May 12 primary election takes place. “I see myself as an average voter and not JT Brown’s son,” he said. “The way he has to convince everyone else to vote for him, he has to do the same for me.”
London remembered an exchange between the two when he asked his father what he was planning to do if elected and what he was planning to change.
“He wants to change the image of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office,” London recalled. “From what he told me I told him he had my vote. I don’t see myself voting for JT Brown, my father, I see myself as an average voter voting for the best candidate who I believe is going to do what he needs to do to fix the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office.”
Joyce Farmer, a candidate for Fulton County Sheriff, has two distinct memories embedded in her brain regarding why she is running for elected office for the first time in her life. In an interview inside The Atlanta Voice building earlier this week, she recalled both moments with vivid color.
Moment one: Farmer was in her East Point Police Department uniform when a mother and daughter approached her. Zoe, an eight-year-old girl, walked over to Farmer and asked her why she was running for sheriff. The girl recognized her from a campaign poster and asked her mother if they could meet the lady in uniform. Farmer, a mother of three adult children and grandmother of two, wanted to make sure she took a moment to answer the girl. “I told her the reason why I want to be sheriff is to protect little girls like her,” Farmer remembered.
Moment two: The death of Lashawn Thompson within the walls of the Fulton County Jail on Sept. 13, 2022. The 35-year-old was found dead inside his cell in the psychiatric wing of the jail covered in bed bugs. The thought of Thompson’s death still bothers Farmer. “Mental health is not a crime, it’s a sickness, just like someone with high blood pressure,” Farmer explained. “Part of my platform will be to educate the community because a lot of people deal with mental health issues in their family.”
Not having any political experience might help Farmer. She is coming into the primary election without having had dreams of becoming the sheriff of Atlanta’s largest county. “I prayed about it and asked God if he wanted me to do this please let me know,” she recalled.
She started campaigning in June 2023 and hasn’t looked back since. “I’m so grateful and I’m going to stay grounded,” said Farmer.
There’s a lot of fights in Farmer. She was a deputy for 15 years before she was finally promoted to the rank of sergeant by former three-term Fulton County Sheriff Jacquelyn Harrison Barrett, the first Black female sheriff in the United States, in 2003. Farmer was moved out of the jail and into the role of a trainer at the Public Safety Center, where she helped train incoming sheriff’s deputies.
Farmer says she has a plan to raise morale within the department. “The supervisors shouldn’t be so hard on the staff in the field doing the work,” she said.
The reason for creating those personal connections with the staff is simple, says Farmer. “It’s all about being real. I might not be that polished politician, but I want to be real and look out for each other.”
Born and raised in Macon, Farmer brings decades of experience to the polls. “As a deputy, we are there to protect the inmates from each other and themselves,” explained Farmer, a 34-year veteran of law enforcement, which includes 29 years with the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO). “Everybody is not in the [law enforcement] field for all the right reasons.”
When asked if she believes she can win the election Farmer said she did. “God already said I got it,” said Farmer. “I just need to trust him. Man doesn’t promote me, God does.”
Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat’s current term ends on New Year’s Eve, 2024. Long before the peach drops (not actually, since there isn’t an actual Peach Drop any longer) on a new year, there will be an even more important decision day to observe: election day. The general election for a number of high-ranking positions within Fulton County, the state’s largest and most populated county, will take place on Tuesday, May 21. That includes sheriff, a position Labat ran for and won in 2020.
This time around will be different from the 2020 election when Labat received all of the 427,266 votes. This time there are four other experienced law enforcement officers running against him.
Walking into The Atlanta Voice office on Tuesday, Mar. 12, Labat gives off the impression that he’s not worried about having to campaign for office again. Wearing his uniform and flanked by members of his staff and security team, he took a seat at a conference table and answered questions about why he believes he is not only doing a good job but should be re-elected as sheriff.
“We came into office after defeating a three-term incumbent with a spirit of change,” said Labat. “We came in at the height of COVID, 3,700 individuals, 600 of them were sleeping on the floor. So our first goal was to treat people humanely.”
The inmates are no longer sleeping on the floors of the jail due to overcrowding, according to Labat. Having spent ten years of his 35-year law enforcement career as chief of the Atlanta Department of Corrections, Labat understands that in order to effect even more change, including the culture at the jail, there are going to be some rough moments.
“Change is necessary, and people don’t like change,” he said. “In that environment, we focused on how we treat each other, and our goal was to focus on how we provide service for individuals.”
An example Labat gave where change was implemented upon his arrival was the changing of the department’s mission statement from a long paragraph to just one word: service.
“If we cannot provide service for you, we are not doing our jobs,” he says. “So ultimately, we are people first and service first.”
Asked what he offers voters who will be heading to the polls in just a couple of months to decide the next leader of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, Labat said, “I offer a continued vision people elected me for in the first place. Let’s fight together, and let’s continue to work together.”
During Labat’s time as sheriff there has been the creation of an inmate advocacy unit that assists inmates with their paperwork and identifying inmates that might get lost in the system and be spending more time in the jail than necessary, on a legal basis. During Labat’s time, the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office also created a free app that allows inmate welfare checks for families and friends to keep up with inmates.
“We have been very successful over the last three and a half years,” says Labat, who added he and his staff are in the “Embryonic stages of creating something that people can be proud of when they come to work.”
The Fulton County Sheriff has three main responsibilities: protect the courts, run the jail, which has 3,700 inmates, and be the chief law enforcement officer for Fulton County. Labat says potential voters may not have a complete grasp of all of the responsibilities of the job and the “challenges” that he faced when he took office in January 2021. He wants to be as transparent as possible about the job he and his staff are doing heading into his fourth year on the job.
There is also the issue of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office being understaffed, something that many law enforcement agencies across the country have experienced. Labat believes there’s a realistic answer to the age-old question of how to find good help these days. “We have to be the employer of choice, and that starts with having a Board of Commissioners who understands that we focus on people first,” Labat said.
Asked what he would say to the Fulton County voters if given the opportunity, Labat said he would ask for more time because what he is doing is working. “What I would ask the voters is, let’s fight together, let’s continue to finish. We’re just getting started.”
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