Decaturish: Nine candidates face off for DeKalb Sheriff

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I learned a lot – maybe more than I needed to know – about some of the ongoing issues with the DeKalb County (GA) Sheriff’s Office for this article for Decaturish.

If you are not from here, you may not realize the difficult history of this office and its reputation for entrenched corruption. Fortunately, it looks as though we have several highly qualified candidates who have expressed a dedication to cleaning up the office and the county.

I encourage everyone who lives here to go to one of the upcoming candidate forums. The DeKalb County Sheriff controls the county jail, is in charge of courthouse security and the office has a $77 million annual budget.

Endangered history in DeKalb

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Local people often say that Atlanta is terrible about preserving its history – particularly the history of African-American lives and contributions.

This can be particularly true of suburban Atlanta. Where the city was the birthplace of historically black colleges Morehouse and Spelman, and played a key role in the Civil Rights movement, suburban counties were the landing sites of white flight – often overtly hostile to their black communities.

headstone in Porter Road cemetery
Handcarved headstone in the cemetery along Porter Road in central DeKalb County, Georgia. Originally a plantation burial ground, the cemetery was given for use by Mount Pleasant Baptist Church by landowner Frank Porter in 1903.

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