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By Editor Becky Watts
GRIFFIN - It was supposed to be a discussion about simple rezoning for an overflow parking at a Spalding County Commission meeting in December. But the discussion turned ugly with a comment made by a commissioner against a former business owner and Spalding County citizen who wasn’t even a part of the agenda or present at the meeting.
[Note from the Editor: This business does advertise with Pike County Times, but that is not the reason that I covered this incident. I have attended city and county commission meetings in many places for many years and never heard anything like this. Over the years, I have repeatedly put out a call for elected representatives to act in a manner that is above reproach. This article will be a continuation of that call for ethical behavior and good public representation by elected representatives.]
Pike County Times asked some questions and followed this situation from December through January. In the beginning, there were questions about terroristic threats and whether the GBI would be called in to investigate. However, things seem to be stable at this point at the beginning of February.
What happened? How did we get from there to here? Has this happened before? And is this something that citizens might see again?
The December 2021 Meeting
On Monday, December 6, 2021, the owners of Cherokee Rose requested to rezone approximately 25 acres into an overflow parking area to accommodate future events. Cherokee Rose is a gun club in Griffin located by Sun City Peachtree.
After the meeting, Pike County Times received information that District 1 Commissioner Gwen Flowers-Taylor might have threatened to shoot the owner of Full Blown Firearms, Brad Ward, who was not even at the meeting and was not a part of the Cherokee Rose rezoning discussion.
Pike County Times requested a copy of the video and audio recordings of the meeting and was advised that the meeting was not on video. However, the post agenda matches the audio recording of the meeting in which, Commissioner Flowers-Taylor said the following when she brought in the topic of Full Blown Firearms and land disturbance at this place of business.
Here is what was said in the open meeting directly from the minutes in which there was a full house in attendance including the Spalding County Sheriff: “…if she saw him (the owner of Full Blown Firearms) today that she probably wouldn’t know him, but if she did, she would probably shoot him…” along with the final vote which was 3-2 in favor of approving the rezoning application for the purposes of using it as an overflow parking lot for no more than six events per year.
Full Blown Firearms has been closed since 2018. Brad Ward surrendered his Spalding County business license and moved to another county in order to operate his place of business. This case is still in litigation at this time.
Readers can click here to read the Open Records Request that was received in regard to this incident by clicking here.
Georgia Law and Terroristic Threats
The first contact with Pike County Times did not mention the word “if” that was actually said in the meeting with the phrase, “…if she saw him (the owner of Full Blown Firearms) today that she probably wouldn’t know him, but if she did, she would probably shoot him…
According to GA Code § 16-11-37 (2019), “A person commits the offense of a terroristic threat when he or she threatens to commit any crime of violence” and defines the offense as a misdemeanor unless “the threat suggested the death of the threatened individual, the person convicted shall be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by a fine of not more than $1,000.00, imprisonment for not less than one nor more than five years, or both.” https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2019/title-16/chapter-11/article-2/section-16-11-37/
A look back at the exact wording from the previous paragraph shows that the commissioner did in fact use the word “if” not once but twice in her sentence of how she might treat this Spalding County citizen so the offense of terroristic threats does NOT apply. However, the question can be asked whether it was in good taste to say this as a representative of Spalding County.
But more on the past before moving to the present. Have there been incidents in the past?
May 7, 2018 Spalding County Board of Commissioners Meeting
Gwen Flowers-Taylor is currently serving her fifth term as a Spalding County Commission. She has been serving since January 1, 2005, and her current term expires on December 31, 2024.
During the May 7, 2018 Board of Commissioners meeting, a complaint was filed against Commissioner Flowers-Taylor for following a citizen into the parking lot and confronting him after he spoke at a commission meeting. A discussion had been held during the meeting in which commissioners discussed the regulation of firearms on private property in Spalding County.
According to the minutes from the meeting, Commissioner Flowers-Tayler advised that the situation began when people were concerned about “loud shooting noises right next door to their homes and individuals shooting in the direction of their homes.” Commissioner Raymond Ray, who brought the matter up for debate, later agreed that the matter had been discussed with no complaints in his district for 30 days and voted with the majority of the Commission to deny the ordinance.
Commissioner Flowers-Taylor disagreed from the majority of the Commission and said that the problem would come back before commissioners again at a later date and wanted to be sure that those who came to speak to commissioners were allowed to voice their concerns.
Several of the speakers declined to speak because their concerns had already been addressed, but Bobby Peurifoy is one of many who spoke during the meeting. At some point after Peurifoy spoke, a break was called and Commissioner Flowers-Taylor followed him into the parking lot where there was a verbal confrontation between the two that was captured on video and posted to social media where Fox 5 Atlanta saw it and did a newscast about it.
According to the Fox 5 newscast, Commissioner Flowers-Taylor said that she followed this citizen out into the parking because she felt like he had verbally attacked her in the meeting. She told Fox 5 that she didn’t respond in the meeting but that she was trying to respond to the things that he said after she followed him into the parking lot.
Readers can watch the video newscast from Fox 5 by clicking here.
A complaint was filed on May 11, 2018 with the Spalding County Commission by Stanley Washington of Griffin alleging that Commissioner Flowers-Taylor violated her oath and ethics by “causing the confrontation, by acting in an unprofessional and argumentative manner, stating the Constitution was not written for her, creating a confrontation in a public area, using profanity and accusing Mr. Peurifoy of being a racist.” He also stated that she confronted Mr. Peurifoy in the hallway and followed him into the parking lot shouting at him.
The complaint was based on Sec. 2-1013 Decorum and says, “All Commissioners should conduct themselves in a professional and courteous manner.” The complaint is also based on Sec 2-12003 Text of Ethical Considerations and says that commissioners are called to “Uphold the Constitution, Laws and Regulations of the United States, the State of Georgia and all governments therein and never be party to their evasion” with Section 10 specifically saying that, “Each covered official shall take an oath of office and shall covenant and agree to agree to adhere to the provisions of this ethics ordinance.” (Click here to read this.)
The Spalding County Board of Commissioners held a Special Called Meeting on May 24, 2018 to review the procedures regarding how Ethics Complaints are handled. Four ethics complaints were handled at the meeting that night. One against Commissioner Flowers-Taylor, and the remaining three complaints were against then Commissioner Don Hawbaker.
The first was Mr. Washington’s complaint referenced above. County Attorney Jim Fortune advised that the Spalding County Code of Ordinances lays out how to handle this complaint with the remaining commissioners reviewing the allegation along the same lines of a Grand Jury presentment with no determination of guilt or innocence, just a determination of whether that alleged violation would meet the qualifications of a violation of the Ethics Ordinance. A vote was taken after each complaint. All four complaints were turned over to the Ethics Review Board.
The Ethics Review Board was then charged with conducting a public hearing on each complaint in which the person accused of committing the violation would be given the opportunity to confront their accuser and present evidence on their own behalf. The penalty for violation the Ethics Ordinance was a written reprimand or public censure to be published in the Griffin Daily News and posted in the Courthouse and Courthouse Annex as well as the possibility of a fine in an amount not to exceed $1,000.
The May 24, 2018 minutes laid out the protocol for naming members of the Ethics Board. Each commissioner had designated three citizens from the district to sit on a review board when commissioners were at the beginning of their term of office. Commissioners were instructed to ensure that none of their designees had moved from their district, and these names were then placed in a pool with two names from the three designees being drawn to represent each district. The first individual drawn by lot would actually sit on the board and the second would be the alternate in case the first individual couldn’t serve. Five people would be on the board.
On July 23, 2018, Jesse B. Maddox Jr. submitted a letter to the Members of the Ethics Board which advised that he attended the May 7, 2018 meeting but stayed in the hallway because the meeting was a packed house with no room. He advised that he spoke to Mr. Peurifoy in the hallway because “we have been friends for years” and that he also spoke to Commissioner Flowers-Taylor in the hallway during the break before she went into the parking lot to confront Mr. Peurifoy. He said that there was no contact between the two individuals until they were both in the parking lot.
The Ethics Hearing was held on Wednesday, July 25 at 9 a.m. According to the minutes from the meeting, it was the consensus of the Ethics Review Board in a 5-0 vote that there was no violation of the Ethics Ordinance by Commissioner Flowers-Taylor. On a side note, the same determination was made on the Hawbaker complaints.
Readers can click here to read the Open Records Request that was received in regard to this incident by clicking here.
[Note from the Editor: On a side note, home addresses were redacted by Pike County despite the fact that these addresses are part of the record for Spalding County and sent as a part of their minutes. I am not uploading home addresses on my website simply because they spoke at a county commission meeting because that would be a deterrent for some to speak at a meeting in my opinion. Deleting personal information like this has been standard practice since I began my website in 2006.]
2012 Incident at the Spalding County Board of Commissioners Meeting
There was also an incident from 2012 in which a citizen complained that then Chairman Gwen Flowers-Taylor attacked her verbally on social media. Griffin resident Connie Pounds filed a complaint on November 8, 2012 regarding a November 6, 2012 incident on Facebook.
The complaint said that Chairman Flowers-Taylor had “broken the conduct code of ethics as an elected official” and had “written slanderous accusations against me.” She also attached a form that showed where Chairman Flowers-Taylor had unpaid monies to the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission.
County Clerk Ricky L. Clark, Jr. then sent a letter to the commissioners with regard to the “Alleged Ethics Violation” which advised that the Spalding County Code of Ordinances, Part II, Government & Administration, Section 2-1204, subsection b, says that if a complaint is received which makes a prima facie allegation (legal term meaning at first glance it appears to be) of a violation of the code of ethics by a commissioner, the remaining commissioners shall review the allegations and determine whether an independent board should investigate the possible violation. A special called meeting was then set for this discussion.
The original post and all the responses are show in the open records request that will be linked at the end of this section. Ms. Pounds’ post was a rant to Democrats that were rejoicing (after winning the election) and for them to let her know how they feel in a few weeks when she starts getting a free phone, applying for government assistance, checking into section 8 housing for her house, and getting steak and lobster as soon as she gets her EBT card. She also made a derogatory comment about the president.
Commissioner Gwen Flowers-Taylor responded from her personal Facebook account and made three separate posts saying: 1) “you are a stupid biatch” (sic), 2) "print it where you like. i am an american citizen and have aright to call it like i see it. if you and yior girls cant take the heat stop sending me your trash….conservative racist queen" (sic all), 3) "all yall (sic) stupid."
On December 5, 2012, a special called meeting was conducted to determine whether there was enough evidence of a possible violation of the Spalding County Board of Ethics to convene the Ethics Review Board.
During the public hearing, Ms. Pounds stated that she felt that “sworn officials should be held to a higher standard that regular citizens,” that emotions were running high on election night but that “everyone has feelings,” and that “when you put something on social media, you are presenting it to the world.” She went on to say that she felt like Chairman Flowers-Taylor had “attacked her as a Christian and as a person.”
Chairman Gwen Flowers-Taylor responded by saying that she is “a citizen of the United States and practices her freedom of speech” and noted that she was at home on her own personal device when the comment was made so she did not do this as a member of the Spalding County Board of Commissioners and did not do this on county property. She also said that there is a “line of demarcation” where your rights as a citizen end and your rights as a commissioner begin.
Commissioner Bob Gilreath then asked if she used the word “biatch,” what it meant, and whether it was derogatory. She advised that she did and that it could mean different things to different groups of people and that it depended on how it was used.
Commissioner Raymond Ray said that the code of ethics states that commissioners should never engage in any conduct that is unbecoming for a public official and questioned whether Chairman Flowers-Taylor thought that she had engaged in conduct unbecoming. She said that she didn’t feel that it had come close to that, but that she “may have let some people down.” He asked if she had any regrets, and she replied that she regretted hurting anyone’s feelings but “this is what humans do.” She also pointed out that Ms. Pounds’ comments were “just as offensive to those people on her page.” She then assured members of the board that she would not by making comments on Facebook anymore.
There were two issues noted in the meeting that needed to be discussed. The first was the unpaid filing fees that more than one of the members of that board had experienced due to problems with the system, etc. The board did not address that matter any further.
The second was the accusation of conduct unbecoming. Commissioner Ray noted that “two wrongs don’t make a right” and that the Presidential Election was emotional with both of these private citizens speaking their minds and “fishing for comments.” Commissioner Ray advised however that he had spoken with Chairman Flowers-Taylor and that she had expressed regret over the situation.
Attorney Jim Fortune then read Section 2-1201 of the Spalding County Code: “The purpose of this code of ethics is to establish ethical standards of conduct for all covered officials of Spalding County by identifying acts or actions that are incompatible with the best interests of the community and the organization and by requiring disclosure by such covered officials of private financial, or other interests, in matters affecting the county. Those covered officials are bound to observe in their official acts the highest standards of behavior and to faithfully discharge the duties and responsibilities of their office, regardless of personal considerations, recognizing that public interest must be their primary concern. Covered officials shall not exceed their authority or breach the law or ask others to do so. They shall work in full cooperation with other public officials and unless prohibited from so doing by law or by the officially recognized confidentiality of their work.”
The commissioners then voted on whether there was enough evidence to forward the alleged violation of the ethics ordinance to an Ethics Review Board. The board voted 4-0 (Chairman Flowers did not vote) and agreed that a prima facie violation of the ethics ordinance had possibly been committed on conduct unbecoming and for the Ethics Review Board to review the behavior allegation but voted 4-0 that there was no prima facie violation on the unpaid filing fees. And when the complaint on conduct unbecoming went before the Ethics Review Board on December 17, 2012, the Ethics Board voted that there was not a violation of the ethics ordinance.
Readers can access current code for Spalding County by clicking here, but this section of code was revised in 2013 and does not match the exact numbers listed in this article.
Click here to read the open records request in its entirety minus the home address of anyone involved in this case.
Which brings readers back to the current situation from December of 2021.
Will the GBI Be Called to Investigate?
Pike County Times contacted Sheriff Darrell Dix in mid-January to ask whether the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) would be contacted to investigate this situation. He advised as follows:
“I have been in contact with Mr. Ward, we have discussed this issue, and I did attend the meeting the night the statement was made. As of right now, there has been no incident report filed by Mr. Ward regarding the statement. I do know that he has retained legal counsel and they are exploring all options. If Mr. Ward and his counsel decide to move forward with a criminal complaint, I will contact the GBI and request that they conduct the investigation. It has been my practice since I became Sheriff of Spalding County to request their assistance if there is a criminal allegation made against an elected or appointed official while acting in their official compacity. This avoids any claim of conflict of interest or influence regarding the investigation. By law and current case law, the validity of a terroristic threat does include whether the statement is qualified in terms of “if / then” in determining if it is in fact a violation of the law and can be prosecuted.”
A Call for Civility and a Public Statement of Regret
Brad Ward, the owner of Full Blown Firearms and resident of Spalding County, is represented by Finch McCranie, LLP out of Atlanta. This attorney’s office reached out to Commissioner Flowers-Taylor through her county email on December 21, 2021. The email reads as follows:
“Dear Commissioner Flowers-Taylor,
I represent Bradly Ward, the owner of Full-Blown Firearms and a resident of Spalding County.
Mr. Ward received numerous reports that, during a Board of Commissioners meeting on Monday, December 6, 2021, you threatened to “shoot him.”
We have obtained the official recording of the meeting through an Open Records Request to Spalding County. In it, you are heard to say, “If I see him, I wouldn’t know him, but if I did I would probably shoot him.”
Seriously? A public official threatening to shoot one of her constituents? And on the record during a Board of Commissioners meeting?
Think of the example set by public official such as yourself threatening to shoot someone, when we have so many episodes of young people shooting each other, and rival political factions threatening or actually committing violence against each other.
Many if not most citizens of Spalding County receiving such a threat of violence would simply file a criminal complaint for terroristic threats. As an alternative, I think this may be an opportunity to show leadership and respect for the rule of law.
I suggest that a prompt, public statement by you disavowing violence and expressing regret and an apology for threatening to shoot anyone would be appropriate, to be made on the record at the next Board of Commissioners meeting. This is what leadership is and looks like in these troubled times.
There is no better time to take a step back from advocating “shooting” someone, and instead standing up for the rule of law as a way to resolve our differences.
I look forward to hearing from you.”
Signed, Michael A. Sullivan
According to the minutes from the January 10, 2022 meeting, Commissioner Gwen Flowers-Taylor said nothing about the December incident.
According to an open records request from Pike County Times to Spalding County, there has been no response from Commissioner Flowers-Taylor to Mr. Sullivan.
Closing
Pike County Times has been attending county and city meetings for 25 years and never heard anything like this in a meeting. However, there has been other instances where public representatives have behaved badly, and the now editor of Pike County Times put out a public call for civility as well as a retraction/apology and a request to behave in a manner that was above reproach.
Some have responded. Others have not.
At this point, there has been no public acknowledgement that a hasty word was spoken or that a mistake might have been made. Without that acknowledgement, is there hope that this will be the last of what some would call conduct unbecoming of an elected representative?
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