Every full-time police officer in Milner, Georgia, is walking off the job, and the city manager is going with them, after Police Chief Lamar Bunn says he found an unauthorized tracking device on his own truck. The small Lamar County town of roughly 800 residents is about to lose its entire five-officer department at the end of the month, leaving county deputies to pick up the slack.
The resignations became public at a Milner City Council meeting on October 19, when City Manager Tausha Grose announced that the full-time police department was stepping down before revealing her own departure, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. Bunn, who resigned October 16, accused Mayor Craig Timmons of placing a tracking device on his personal truck without authorization and of monitoring him through City Hall's cameras, the station reported. He also denied rumors of an affair with Grose and said he no longer trusts elected officials to keep the city's best interests in mind.
Bunn's resignation letter and the device at the center of it involved his official municipal vehicle, described as a black unmarked police pickup truck, according to 11Alive. Councilman Ryan Lewis told the council that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is now looking into the allegations surrounding the device, according to Barnesville.com. When reporters asked Timmons directly whether he installed the tracker, he declined to confirm or deny it, saying only that he had questions and that “there are things that can't be said.”
A Second Set of Eyes on City Hall
The surveillance allegations didn't stop with Bunn's truck. Resignations among city personnel were further fueled by the discovery of an unauthorized surveillance camera aimed directly at City Hall, city officials reported, per the same Barnesville.com account. Grose's own resignation letter, obtained by local media, cited Timmons's “lack of respect for my position” as the reason she could no longer serve effectively, 11Alive reported.
Grose had led the city for six years before submitting her resignation this month, according to Barnesville.com's reporting. Both Bunn and Grose said the department's internal policy disputes were not what drove them out, FOX 5 Atlanta reported, even as those disputes simmered in the background of the council meeting.
Vehicle Policy Fight Added to the Friction
Those policy disputes included an executive session, from which Bunn was barred, where officials passed a ban on officers using city vehicles for off-duty part-time work, the Barnesville.com report noted. The council meeting also included discussions over overtime and the proposal to restrict vehicle use during outside jobs, per FOX 5 Atlanta's account of the meeting. For a small-town department, off-duty security work often supplements officer pay, making the new restriction a sore point even if it wasn't, by the officers' own account, the breaking point.
Timmons told FOX 5 Atlanta he hates to see the resignations happen and hopes there are still avenues to fix the situation, though he and Grose did not respond to the station's interview requests beyond that comment. Bunn is considering legal action against Timmons, according to the FOX 5 Atlanta reporter covering the story.
County Deputies Will Step In
Milner's resigning officers will remain on duty through October 28, and Grose will leave her city manager position on October 30, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. Once the departures take effect, law enforcement and emergency call coverage in the municipality will default to the Lamar County Sheriff's Office, 11Alive reported, a common arrangement when small-town departments dissolve.
City officials have not yet confirmed how Milner will handle either public safety or day-to-day administrative duties once the police force and city manager are both gone, per FOX 5 Atlanta. Georgia Code § 16-11-62 does not generally prohibit secretly installing a tracking device without consent; its GPS provision is limited to specified circumstances, while other provisions address privacy invasions such as private conversations and activities in private places, according to Justia. Whether the GBI's review leads to charges, and whether the council can broker any resolution before the resignations take effect, remains unresolved.
