SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — The City of South Fulton City Council members spent much of a meeting Friday evening in executive session, discussing multiple civil lawsuits filed against the police chief.
Channel 2’s Tyisha Fernandes said the council voted unanimously to investigate through a third party investigator, but they didn’t suspend the police chief.
The decision comes as current and former officers have made serious allegations in at least three lawsuits filed against the city and the police chief over the last two weeks.
Attorney Mario Williams believes the city council met for so long Friday night because they can’t ignore the lawsuits filed against the city.
“As a city council person, you gotta respond to those facts. You gotta say, hey, at minimum we gotta do an investigation,” Williams told Channel 2’s Tyisha Fernandes.
The mayor and city council have known about some of the allegations in this lawsuit since last year because a former detective sent his internal affairs complaint to the council, which sparked a human resources investigation.
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“We’re not talking about he say, she say. We’re talking about verifiable facts,” Williams said.
Former detective Avery Bragg’s lawsuit accuses South Fulton Police Chief Keith Meadows of “abusing his authority to allow his nephew to escape criminal charges after leading detective Bragg on a dangerous chase.”
The lawsuit includes text messages between Bragg and Meadows.
“if I see text messages and one of them says we’re scaring him right now because …. and they’re putting LOL, we’re scaring him and telling him that we’re gonna have you take out warrants for his arrest just to scare him a little bit, well then you have to say wait a minute, that makes it more likely true because you’re joking about it,” Williams said.
The lawsuit also accuses Meadows of not paying overtime or on-call pay to more than 30 officers, and a former major he fired said, “Chief Meadows tries to tamper with and manipulate lie detector examinations to obtain the results he wants.”
“When you look at all that together, you gotta say, ‘Hey, is this the person that’s running the police department for our city?’” Williams said.
Fernandes reached out to Meadows and the city for comment on this story.
A spokesperson sent a statement on behalf of both, saying they can’t comment on pending litigation, but when they can, they will have plenty to say about what they’re calling defamatory and false allegations.
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