By Kristen Wyatt, The Associated Press
A county jail so dangerous it was taken over by the federal government. A sheriff who diverted millions in public money into money-losing investments. An escape by an inmate while a rapper was making a music video behind bars.
And now, a horror far worse than even the strongest critics of Atlanta’s Fulton County Sheriff’s Department could have predicted: A man on trial for rape is accused of overpowering a courthouse deputy, taking her gun and going on a rampage that leaves four people dead, including a judge.
The bloodbath last week has law enforcement agencies across the nation tightening courthouse security and experts talking about the complexities of securing courtrooms. This kind of violence could happen elsewhere, too, the thinking seems to go.
But the people who follow or work with the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jail and is responsible for security at the county courthouse, suggest there is a reason it happened here and not someplace else. They talk about a department prone to security lapses and long bloated with poorly trained deputies.
“If it could happen anywhere, why hasn’t it?” said J. Danny Stephens, a longtime Atlanta homicide detective who made an unsuccessful bid for sheriff last year. “The sheriff’s department has been in trouble for umpteen years. This is a story of total, total mismanagement.”
Sheriff Myron Freeman has clearly been staggered by the courthouse violence. At news conferences, he repeatedly mentioned that he has been on the job just two months. He could not answer questions about how courthouse deputies are trained, or why a 51-year-old, 5-foot female deputy was left alone with an uncuffed, 6-foot-1, 200-pound former college linebacker on trial for rape.
To questions about the many troubles faced by the 995-member department, Freeman said simply, “We’re reassessing and re-evaluating.”
Freeman, who He was Georgia’s first black state trooper and once guarded then-Gov. Jimmy Carter, took office in January, replacing Sheriff Jackie Barrett, who was suspended after sinking $7.2 million in taxpayer dollars in a money-losing investment fund and accepting campaign contributions from businessmen who stood to benefit from those investments.
The worst problems, though, appeared to be at the county jail, which was monitored by the federal government for six months last year because of security lapses and squalid conditions.
Among the troubles: a series of escapes or accidental releases; overcrowding; inadequate health care; an air conditioning system prone to breakdowns; plumbing so bad that sewage sometimes gushed on the first floor; and a near-riot in 2003 when deputies tried to turn off an Atlanta Falcons football game before it was over.
“The conditions were absolutely abysmal _ nasty, smelly, dirty, just disgusting,” said Atlanta defense attorney B.J. Bernstein.
Last summer, rapper Clifford Harris, known as T.I., was allowed to use a maximum-security cell, guards and inmates as props and extras for a music video. That same night, a female inmate dressed in medical scrubs escaped. Other inmates have escaped the old-fashioned way: tying bed sheets together and climbing out windows.
“It had become total chaos,” said Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which sued over jail conditions. “They were failing in the most fundamental thing they were supposed to do ... keep people who were supposed to be in custody.”
A jail monitor brought in from the New York Department of Corrections summed the jail up in one word: “Scary.”
When Freeman took office, his top priority was cleaning up the jail. Critics say he should have been making big changes all over.
“He kept the same people in place who were there before. When you keep the status quo, you have the same problems,” said Stephens, who lost to Freeman in a runoff.
The problems may have extended beyond the jail. Security cameras recorded Brian Nichols’ alleged attack on the deputy, but apparently no was watching the screens before the shooter killed a judge and a court reporter, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Then the gunman walked down seven flights of stairs and was out of the courthouse before anyone stopped him. A deputy caught up with the gunman on the sidewalk, and was shot and killed.
The rampage also occurred after the judge who was killed requested increased security surrounding Nichols. Two days earlier, deputies found shanks fashioned from door knobs in both of Nichols’ shoes at the end of a day of testimony in his trial.
Freeman, who did not respond to interview requests for this story, has conceded that big changes need to be made. In a statement Tuesday, he vowed: “We will do everything in our power to keep such a tragedy from ever occurring again.”
“He inherited such an immediate, incredible problem with that jail and that department,” Bernstein said. “It would take anybody some time to even know where all the problems were coming from.”