Doing what he does better than almost anyone out in the Atlanta news-sphere, Jim Walls of Atlanta Unfiltered digs into Commissioner Sharon Barnes Sutton’s past and unveils all kinds of financial weirdness.

Here’s a sampling of a few of the strange details uncovered by Walls…

• During her campaign for county commissioner, Sutton somehow managed to loan herself $69,000, even though she had a history of unpaid debts and made just $43,000 a year in the DeKalb County School system.
• While Sutton told the AJC that the root of her financial difficulties stemmed from a dispute with a contractor and her mortgage company, Walls notes that two cases Sutton brought against the aforementioned parties were dismissed by the Fulton County Court System for “lack of prosecution.”

Also, make sure you check out Walls’ excellent time-line of Sutton’s legal problems – which stretch back to 1995 – at the bottom of his article.

AJC: I hope you can use Walls’ new info to go back to the commissioner and demand some ACTUAL answers to your questions.  It also would be nice to give Walls props for his efforts with a mention AND a link!

A probe into why DeKalb Police let County Commissioner Sharon Barnes Sutton leave the scene of an accident after it was discovered she had four outstanding warrants, determined yesterday that three county police officers didn’t follow departmental policy.

“The policy is they should have contacted Gwinnett,” said Shelia Edwards, a spokeswoman for the county CEO. “Essentially they should have not let her go. They should have called to Gwinnett to verify the warrant is valid.”

Under department policy, Assistant Chief F. J. Kliesrath, Capt. T. S. Dedrick and Lt. C. T. Whittington received written counseling for violating department policy, since it was their first offense, Edwards said.

As for what compelled the officers to commit this offense…

Whittington decided not to notify Gwinnett and told the patrol officer to release the commissioner. His decision was based on the facts that the warrants were old, for a nonviolent offense, Sutton was not a flight risk and she “is an elected official in DeKalb County and Lt. Whittington did not want to bring any embarrassment or discredit to her,” according to Miller.

Well, at least there’s some honesty in that statement.  More than I can say for the commissioner.

Lots of bad checks and a moldy house? I don’t even know what to do with that!
Stone Mountain, are you seeing this!?

h/t: DeKalb Officers

UPDATE: Another interesting development.  The DeKalb Officers blog calls out the AJC and GBI and defends their department.

Everybody starts jumping on the bandwagon accusing Whittington and others of making the wrong decisions and showing favoritism toward Commissioner Sutton. Un-informed buffoons from the GBI and the Gwinnett Sheriff’s Office (click here for AJC article “GBI, sheriff question DeKalb handling of wanted commissioner”) jump in and give their two cents worth.

Small problem though. See, the warrants were issued on January 8, 2008. According to O.C.G.A. 17-3-1 (2009), there’s this little ole sentence that reads: “Prosecution for misdemeanors must be commenced within two years after the commission of the crime.” So, if Commissioner Sutton had been arrested, then that could have caused big problems for all involved. (Also see Pickens v Hollowell and Opinion of Thurbet E Baker, Georgia Attorney General).

This story continues to develop in truly odd ways, so it felt appropriate to give it a new post.

The AJC reports the story of the DeKalb Commissioner with four outstanding warrants NOT being arrested by DeKalb Police after a traffic accident has now attracted the attention of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who says they might want “to look at [DeKalb’s] procedures and process to see if there were extenuating circumstances or retraining was needed for the officer.”

And that’s the latest piece of the “Why didn’t the police arrest DeKalb Commissioner Sharon Barnes Sutton?” puzzle.

But what about the “Why did the judge recall warrants?” question?  In this latest article, Gwinnett majistrate judge Gene Cantrell told the AJC that the merchant [Costco] asked for the charges to be dropped and that they didn’t know “who is person was.”  So why was Costco so eager to recall warrants that sat open for years?  Still no answer on that front.

Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE III: The only new piece of info I can find in this morning’s hard-copy iteration of this story is this…

Other DeKalb County commissioners said they were unaware of the warrants and could not comment.

UPDATE II: Weirder still!  The AJC updates the article for a third time and NOW the lawyer’s claim of identity fraud is gone.  Instead we have this statement from Sutton…

Sutton said she paid Costco the outstanding money late Thursday and her attorney had the warrants dropped.

“We paid them all the money that is due,” Sutton said. “This is just very unfortunate and embarrassing. This is a reminder that we all need to pay very close attention to your banking transactions because this could happen to anyone.”

Uh yeah, thanks for the tip.  Still no explanation as to why the Gwinnett judge recalled the warrants.  Hopefully the AJC won’t let this drop.

UPDATE: The story just got a lot weirder.  Sutton’s lawyer is now claiming identity fraud is to blame for 4 bounced checks to CostCo and the charges were cleared by a Gwinnett judge this afternoon.  How Sutton was able to prove identity fraud so quickly, we don’t know.  Also, Sutton has a bit of a history and I’m a bit unclear how she wouldn’t be aware of this issue.

After the warrants were issued last year, the Gwinnett deputies contacted Sutton via mail. They then forwarded the information to DeKalb law enforcement, which is the normal procedure when a warrant is for a suspect outside Gwinnett, Powell said.

Court records show Sutton also had previous problems with bad checks. In 1996, she pleaded no contest in Gwinnett to writing bad checks to West Building Supply in Stone Mountain.

Sutton said the 1996 charges happened after she “accidentally” overdrew her account.

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