Barrett v. Sanders

Substantial evidence existed for the county personnel board to terminate the plaintiff's employment as a deputy sheriff where his two accomplices and several victims implicated him in a home invasion ring.

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Several witnesses and two alleged accomplices gave statements implicating Fulton County Deputy Sheriff Dexter Sanders in a high-profile series of home invasions and burglaries made by three individuals in sheriff’s uniforms who entered homes on the pretense of serving what ultimately proved to be fake warrants. Sanders was placed on indefinite suspension and was charged with felonies in three counties, but was never convicted. He later sought reinstatement as a deputy sheriff, but his employment was terminated. Sanders lost on appeal to the Fulton County Personnel Board, but prevailed on his petition for certiorari to the Fulton County Superior Court, and his employment was reinstated with back pay. Sheriff Jacquelyn Barrett now appeals. The record shows that in May of 1994, the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department began receiving complaints that three men dressed in sheriff’s office uniforms had entered several homes in the metro Atlanta area on the pretense of serving warrants. The men took valuables from several homes. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation began to look into the matter.

Fingerprints found in one of the homes led the GBI to Fulton County Deputy Reginald Jones, who, like Sanders, worked in the jail division of the sheriff’s department. Jones gave a detailed statement in which he stated that he, Sanders, and a man named Jerome Young engaged in a series of attempts to steal money and valuables from the homes of people that they thought were drug dealers by searching the homes under the apparent authority of sheriff’s uniforms and falsified search or arrest warrants. Jones said that the scheme was Sanders’s idea, that Sanders often carried a weapon, and that Sanders did most of the talking at each house.

Barrett v. Sanders

Substantial evidence existed for the county personnel board to terminate the plaintiff's employment as a deputy sheriff where his two accomplices and several victims implicated him in a home invasion ring.

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