An Atlanta police officer who was arrested in July on a murder charge in Cobb County has been investigated six times by the department's internal affairs unit for various allegations since he joined the force in April 2002.

In five of those investigations, the police department determined that Officer John Kevin Freeman had violated department policies, according to Freeman's disciplinary files, reviewed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution through an Open Records Act request.

Cobb County police arrested Freeman, 36, on July 5 on charges that he fatally shot his apartment complex's security guard, Xavier Mallett, after the guard barged into the officer's apartment. Freeman's attorney has said the guard tried to sexually assault Freeman's wife.

Freeman is still being held in the Cobb County jail on a felony murder charge, but he has not yet been indicted, said his defense attorney, Bruce Harvey.

When reached by phone Friday, Harvey said the internal investigations "bear little or no relevance to the pending charges. Any internal investigation doesn't change the facts that his house was broken into and his wife was sexually threatened."

Two of the internal police investigations into Freeman revolved around property belonging to people whom Freeman arrested that later turned up missing.

He got a written reprimand for losing track of a suspect's methadone pills during a March 2007 arrest. Freeman said he left the pills on a table in a police precinct, and that someone accidentally threw them away, police records show.

In the other incident, a man accused Freeman and another officer of numerous violations, including claims that Freeman made disparaging remarks about the man being gay.

The only accusation that the department determined to be true was that the man's cell phone turned up missing and Freeman, whether he handled the phone or not, was responsible for it because he was the arresting officer, records show.

The three other internal probes involved court hearings in 2006 that Freeman failed to attend — the last of which resulted in a one-day suspension without pay. In two of those investigations, Freeman told internal affairs investigators that he missed court because his daughter was sick, documents show.