Brenton Garmon followed his dad into police work.

Now he will likely follow him into the federal prison system.

GBI (ENLARGE)

James Garmon, 54, of Cartersville. Garmon was a longtime special agent with the GBI until he resigned in March 2006 and later pleaded guilty to taking bribes from a pawn shop for arranging the sale of firearms that were seized by his son's narcotics unit.

BARTOW SHERIFF'S OFFICE (ENLARGE)

Brenton Garmon, son of James Garmon. Brenton, 35, was a captain with the Bartow County Sheriff's Office until his resigned under fire in January 2007.

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The father and son from Cartersville, while working for different law enforcement agencies, were charged with separate crimes of greed, one after another. Now they are getting an inside-out look at the criminal justice system with which they are so familiar.

The elder Garmon, James, got out of a federal satellite camp last fall after serving a one-year sentence, and the younger one will be sentenced in federal court in May.

James Garmon, 54, pleaded guilty in July 2006 to taking bribes from a pawnshop that bought firearms seized by his son's narcotics unit. About a year and a half later, in February, Brenton Garmon, 35, pleaded guilty to stealing $80,000 in cash that was also seized by his unit, in part to ward off foreclosure on his home.

The arrests of father and son, both of them well-known in Bartow County police circles, has created much chatter in their community.

"It was the topic of the day," Cartersville Police Chief Thomas Culpepper said. "It would be foolish to say otherwise."

Bartow County Sheriff Clark Millsap, who has known the Garmon family for years, said: "It knocked us all down up here. It floored every one of us."

Neither father nor son, when reached by phone, would talk about their criminal cases, both saying their attorneys advised against it.

The Garmons have walked the halls of the Bartow County Sheriff's Office for three generations. James Garmon's father worked there, and James Garmon started his police career there in June 1973 and returned later from 1977 to 1980. Brenton Garmon joined the force in March 1993, and his brother-in-law still works there.

James Garmon spent 20 years as a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

At the GBI, his personnel file is loaded with letters of praise from other police agencies, prosecutors and supervisors. He lugged heavy caseloads and often led his peers in chalking up arrests, according to documents obtained through an Open Records Act request.

Garmon was a natural in the interrogation room, coaxing information from suspects and witnesses of all backgrounds, once signing up for Spanish classes to communicate better with the Latino community. He wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty, either, sometimes combing through crime scenes on his own rather than passing the work off to a specialist.

But Garmon had a weak spot, too; he was not a gifted writer, GBI documents show.

"It wasn't 'War and Peace.' It wasn't Shakespeare," friend and former GBI colleague Jerry Scott said. "It was James Garmon."

Garmon's son was 20 years old and working at a marina when he applied for a job with the Bartow County Sheriff's Office in 1993.

"I have grown up in law enforcement," Brenton Garmon wrote in his job application. "My father and grandfather both made careers out of law enforcement."

The younger Garmon started out as a jail guard, but he shimmied up the ranks fast, becoming a captain in 2001 after making a name for himself as a shaggy-haired narcotics investigator who mastered the drug game.

"Brenton Garmon was probably one of the best drug investigators I've ever seen," Sheriff Millsap said. "He could work dope like the best of them."

His specialty was methamphetamine, and he was the force behind Bartow Against Meth, an organization created in 2005 to get residents involved in the county's battle against meth.

But Garmon also had trouble keeping his anger in check, lashing out at deputies and once getting in trouble for damaging a wall in the department's squad room "during a moment of anger," according to Millsap and a Sheriff's Office document. A supervisor recommended that Garmon take stress management classes.

"There is no excuse for my actions," Garmon wrote in the internal document. "All I can do is assure you it'll never happen again."

The elder Garmon's career tanked first.

Assigned to cover northwest Georgia, he had his own cubicle at the Bartow County Sheriff's Office.

He might have gotten too cozy. In 2004 and 2005, he arranged three sales of 81 firearms seized by his son's narcotics officers, and he collected $1,600 in cash from the pawnshop, federal authorities said.

The deal should never have happened; Georgia law requires firearms seized by a sheriff's office to be used by the department, destroyed or sold at auction, federal prosecutors said.

Garmon resigned in disgrace and pleaded guilty to the bribery charge and to having a sawed-off shotgun that was not properly documented. He was sent off for a year to a minimum-security camp in Marion, Ill., according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

With his father gone, it was Brenton Garmon's turn.

While in charge of the narcotics unit, Garmon was supposed to be putting money seized during drug busts into a safety deposit box.

Instead, he pocketed $80,493 for himself between 2004 and 2007, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Garmon had apparently been having money problems. He used some of the money to avoid foreclosure on his home after his monthly payments ballooned because of an adjustable-rate mortgage, prosecutors said.

He pleaded guilty to embezzlement in February.

James Garmon got out of federal camp on Oct. 24 and is now on probation and unemployed.

His son has found a job in management for an industrial services company but has four weeks before learning his fate in a federal courtroom in Rome.