Several members of the Dunwoody City Council pushed back on a request by Police Chief Billy Grogan to fund a street crimes unit using American Rescue Act Plan funds.
During a discussion regarding the request at the Feb. 12 meeting, Grogan said the unit would consist of three patrol officers and a sergeant who would focus on clandestine transactions and larger drug organizations operating in the city.
In a report to the council, Grogan outlined several drug arrests that demonstrated the need for a special unit to specifically handle street crimes.
“Two separate DEA investigations led to the arrest of the suspects and seizure of four kilos of cocaine and 90 pounds of methamphetamine,” the report said. “Our detectives worked with the U.S. Postal Inspectors to break up a significant illegal pill operation. In other investigations, 44 kilos of cocaine were recovered and 10 kilos of heroin.”
The $1 million expenditure would be funded with ARPA funds for 2024 and 2025 but would have to be folded into the police department budget in subsequent years, Grogan said.
Councilmen John Heneghan and Joe Seconder questioned the timing and the need for the unit, considering that the department still has six open positions in the patrol division and the recommendations of the recent BerryDunn study that listed the establishment of the unit as a medium priority.
“The main critical need in the BerryDunn study was putting cops on the street,” Heneghan said. “The report then goes into talking about the street crimes unit and it was a medium, non-urgent ask. I’m just trying to understand why we would not follow the BerryDunn report that you brought to us.”
Grogan downplayed the study’s recommendation, saying, “BerryDunn did a great job, but they are not in our department, and they don’t see what we see every single day.”
“I’m not going to belabor this, but I am seeing a big disagreement between what the…
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