Fulton County commissioners voted on Wednesday to allocate additional funding to staff Sheriff Patrick Labat’s office, following a scathing November U.S. Department of Justice report that cited understaffing as a cause of rampant, unchecked violence at Fulton County Jail.
Vice Chair Bob Ellis introduced the resolution, which will support the hiring and retention of new deputies and fund overtime pay for current deputies. It passed during the May 7 Fulton County commissioners’ meeting with five “yes” votes and zero “no” votes.
Commission Chair Robb Pitts was absent from the meeting. Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. abstained.
“Given the hiring and retention issues that we have seen and the operational and supervisory issues that we’ve seen within the DOJ investigative report and that we’ve read about on our own, we realize that some stop-gap measures do need to be applied,” Ellis said.
As of March, there were 144 vacancies in the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, mostly in detention services positions. Last year’s 97-page DOJ report indicated that a lack of protection from violence was one of multiple reasons that conditions in the jail violated the constitutional and human rights of detainees, who are predominantly Black.
This legislation will allow Fulton County to keep the promises it made in a consent decree with the Justice Department to address chronic understaffing.
Though the resolution passed, Commissioners Dana Barrett and Arrington Jr. — both allies of Labat — took issue with how the legislation noted 28 instances of sheriff’s deputies being arrested in the last two years, primarily for bringing contraband into the jail.
“I would love to just do the numbers and do the budget without all of the finger-pointing,” Arrington said. “Even if we point the finger at the other person, we still have to write the check.”
The commission will set aside $1.8 million per quarter for the Detention Services Incentive Fund, which the county’s human resources department will monitor. They will decide each quarter whether to continue the funding.
Before the funds are spent, the legislation also requires the sheriff’s office to provide the commissioners with names and job titles of employees they intend to pay through the fund.
The money has been allocated for employees who are working in Fulton County Jail facilities, which include the Rice Street jail, the Alpharetta jail, and the South Annex jail in Union City.
Fulton County also has contracts with Cobb, Forsyth, and Oconee Counties, and the City of Atlanta to house detainees.
After the meeting ended, Labat criticized the language in the resolution and accused Ellis of “intentionally and falsely mischaracterizing” the sheriff’s office. He also disputed Ellis’ statement that the sheriff’s office had received a 52.5% annual funding increase from 2021 and 2024, claiming that his office’s budget has only increased by 14% in that time period.
In a statement to Capital B Atlanta, a spokesperson for Fulton County said Ellis’ statements were correct and reflected the total funding allocated for the sheriff’s office, the jail, and other line items in the budget.
