Grand Jurors Take Georgia Court to Task for Lax Oversight
A grand jury report says a Georgia court plagued by a ticket-fixing scam suffers from “a leadership competency issue.”
The grand jurors criticized the DeKalb County Recorder’s Court for lax oversight of the traffic ticket system, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
“Clearly, no ‘check and balance’ system was in place at the time of the alleged criminal actions, and frankly, the grand jury finds it deleterious for the head of Recorder’s Court to fail to take any initiative, action, or corrective steps once her former employees were implicated,” the grand jurors wrote.
Chief Judge R. Joy Walker told the newspaper she has adopted reforms and disagrees with the findings.
A court employee and a woman accused of finding drivers willing to pay to get their tickets dismissed pleaded guilty in the ticket-fixing scheme last week, according to an earlier story in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. A total of eight people have been charged in the scheme.
Walker said court employees were able to get the tickets dismissed by falsely telling judges that the ticketing police officers had agreed to downgrade the fine to a warning. Walker’s new policy requires officers to show up in court or to put requests for a ticket downgrade in writing.
