Posted on 11/30/2001 6:20:08 AM PST by lugsoul
Former DeKalb sheriff charged in sheriff-elect's murder
By Erin McClam, The Associated Press
A former DeKalb County sheriff was arrested Friday in the slaying of a sheriff-elect who was gunned down in his driveway just days before he was to take office.
Former Sheriff Sidney Dorsey and two other men were jailed before dawn and each charged with murder in the shooting death of Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown last December, DeKalb police chief E.J. Moody said.
Brown beat Dorsey in a bitter runoff election just months before the shooting, promising to clean up a sheriff's department plagued by years of corruption. Dorsey had repeatedly denied involvement in the sheriff-elect's killing.
Also arrested were Melvin D. Walker, a former DeKalb sheriff's deputy, and David Isaiah Ramsey, whom authorities said Dorsey once tried to recruit as a sheriff's deputy.
The arrests were announced by Moody and DeKalb District Attorney J. Tom Morgan at a predawn news conference in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur.
Authorities declined to say whether they believed any of the men pulled the trigger Dec. 15, 2000. Brown was shot 11 times in front of his home in what the sheriff's department called an assassination.
"This has been a long 11 months," Moody told reporters. "It's been a long haul. It's been a long time getting here."
All three men were arrested without incident, Moody said. Dorsey surrendered himself at police headquarters, and the other two men were arrested at their homes, he said.
The men were scheduled to appear before a judge later in the day.
Authorities awoke Brown's widow, Phyllis, to tell her about the arrests.
"I just want it to be over," she told WSB-TV. "The sad thing is, nothing will bring my Derwin back."
Dorsey was under investigation for allegedly using on-duty deputies to work for his private security company and for letting jail inmates work in a home repair program run by his wife.
Brown told 38 department employees they would be fired when he took office Jan. 1.
Dorsey's wife, Sherry, was defeated earlier this month in a race to keep her seat on the Atlanta City Council.
In interviews in the weeks after the slaying, Dorsey repeatedly denied any involvement. In one television appearance, he said the people responsible "should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And I mean capital punishment."
Walker and Ramsey both were charged in March with lying to investigators probing the Brown slaying. Ramsey applied for a job in the DeKalb sheriff's office but was rejected for falsifying his employment history.
As recently as August, the district attorney said the investigation into Brown's murder had stalled, with no fresh evidence collected in months. Morgan had characterized the case as "dead in the water."
But a break in the investigation apparently came earlier this week, when a former sheriff's deputy won a plea deal from prosecutors for his role in a deadly shootout in DeKalb County in March.
Patrick Cuffy, who had been charged with murder, was allowed to plead guilty to assault Wednesday.
Authorities have said they believe the March shootout and the Brown murder are somehow related.
Recent other scandals: in the township surrounding my village several years of political back-stabbing, officers working more than full-time in off-duty business. Another town, officers protecting a really scummy informant and filing charges of perjury against a stripper in his club who charged him with running prostitutes. Can't think of any murders lately. We did have an officer committing bank robberies a few years back. Ahh, yankee rectitude
That's pretty bad, but cold-blooded murder makes me think this guy probably had a piece fo the drug trade he was protecting also. Free labor doesn't seem sufficient motive.
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