When Billy Grogan was hired to be Dunwoody’s first police chief in December 2008, he had multiple sleepless nights as he worked to build a new department from scratch by April 2009.

The first hurdle: hiring enough officers.

“It’s really a big challenge. It was for us in Dunwoody,” Grogan said.

Dunwoody sought to provide good salaries and benefits that would attract officers to leave their departments and come work there, Grogan said, noting that recruiting has only gotten more difficult as law enforcement agencies nationwide compete for staff.

Grogan said he felt it took them a couple of months to get settled and build out the department to the vision residents had when they approved the creation of it shortly after Dunwoody became an incorporated city.

A group of Tucker residents and business owners are trying to answer the question themselves: Should our city have its own police department?

The Tucker-Northlake Community Improvement District commissioned a feasibility study through the Georgia Association of Police Chiefs to find out. It prompted the DeKalb County Police Department, which currently has jurisdiction of the incorporated city, and the county to respond in an open forum in November.

County leadership touted their investments in law enforcement and committed to working together with Tucker to provide effective law enforcement to the city’s residents and businesses.

Matthew Lee, executive director of the Tucker-Northlake CID, said the goal was to see simply if it would be possible to do, not to advocate for a police department. Business owners began to have concerns about slow response times and an increase in crimes, he said.

Lee said some businesses were no longer calling 911 and had given up calling except in the most extreme situations, which means shoplifting, threats, vandalism, trespassing and drug sales were “going unchecked because they couldn’t get a response.”

“This was not done as an attack against the county in any way. We know that there’s been a lot of struggles for a long time for a variety of reasons,” Lee said, adding they made sure to make county and city officials aware the study was being conducted.

Hotels in the area interviewed for the study said they had been repeatedly victimized with car break-ins, leading to disgruntled guests who get tired of waiting for police to arrive. Instead, they express their displeasure online, which affects guests choosing their hotels.

When DeKalb CEO Lorraine Cochran-Johnson came into office in January, Lee said she made great changes to public safety.

“We look forward to collaborating with the city of Tucker," DeKalb County CEO Lorraine Cochran-Johnson said. (Natrice Miller/AJC 2025)

In a forum where county officials responded to the study, Cochran-Johnson said they have invested $30 million in public safety over a nine month span, including $8 million to improve E-911 efforts; $2 million on a new crime center in Tucker; and $18.9 million on a digital surveillance program with Flock Safety, a license plate reader company that allows law enforcement to track drivers and share data with other departments.

“We look forward to collaborating with the city of Tucker. We look forward to helping you, honestly, fight crime in the most efficient manner possible and providing real time solutions for the entire community,” Cochran-Johnson told a group of Tucker residents.

Data provided by DeKalb County show total incidents from January to July in Tucker increased to 1,131 in 2025 from 1,075 in 2024. However, most of the crime incidents in 2024 were nonviolent offenses, like auto theft, burglary and car break-ins, which accounted for 610 incidents, or 86% of total reported crime in 2024.

Homicides in Tucker have increased to eight by Aug. 31, 2025, up from only one in 2024, according to data from the county. However, the whole county saw an overall decrease of 29%, from 129 homicides in 2024 to 91.

Grogan said he faced a series of challenges when building out his department, including that officers he recruited had to be sworn officers, meaning those who wouldn’t require six months to a year of training to get certified.

He also had to consider everything from what patch would represent the department, what uniforms they were going to wear, what vehicle they were going to drive and what kind of gun officers were going to carry.

“When you start a police department from scratch, nothing is there, zero,” Grogan said. “It was an exciting time. I was very excited about it, but I also was a little nervous because I’d never started a police department before.”

Thaddeus Johnson, an associate professor of criminal justice and criminology at Georgia State, said newly created departments also struggle in finding ways to build out the leadership of their department.

Johnson, a former law enforcement ranking official in Memphis, said supervisors in already well-established agencies might think twice about taking a risk and joining a newly created department.

“You have to really think about that as an officer, going to those departments,” he said. “Perhaps it would be attractive to supervisors or officials who may have the opportunity to be in a higher ranking position (in a smaller or new departments).”

Detective P.D. Harrington (right) confers with analyst Chirley Shealey as they monitor camera feeds from around DeKalb County in January at the Real Time Crime Center in Tucker, which opened in December 2025. (Hyosub Shin/AJC)

For years, Tucker business owners have been funding off-duty DeKalb County police officers to conduct supplemental patrols in the city’s business district. Lee said they have also funded license plate readers, more cameras and more patrols.

But he said they feel they are not seeing enough action from DeKalb County police to warrant continuing paying $15.9 million in property taxes for law enforcement services.

“We’d rather have officers who are committed to stay in the city for faster response time,” Lee said, than wait for an army of police officers to show up if something wild happens.

The study estimated the cost to implement a new police department in Tucker would be $10.7 million, which accounts for salaries and benefits, equipment, vehicles, report management and computer-aided dispatch technologies. The estimated amount was based on current average being spent in neighboring law enforcement agencies but did not include the cost of a police headquarters facility or 911 services.

A total of 53 sworn officers, including a police chief, two majors and 40 uniform patrol officers, along with 10 nonsworn or civilian employees were accounted for as part of the study.

County officials questioned the $10.7 million estimate, stating the study didn’t account for retirement and pension costs or any specialized training that officers in DeKalb County undergo on a regular basis. Officials estimated the actual cost to launch a new police department is $47.6 million.

Officials also touted the number of specialized units DeKalb police have that wouldn’t be affordable or available for a newly created police department.

“I support whatever decision the city of Tucker wants to make as it relates to its future in policing because I want to see the best outcome for everyone,” Cochran-Johnson said.

The study was never intended to be a side-by-side comparison of every possible service a city police department could offer, Lee said. The focus was simply on keeping businesses and residents safe, deterring crime and ensuring officers are on patrol within the city limits.

“With the county collecting approximately $15.9 million for the police services budget last year, there’s plenty of wiggle room within those dollars for Tucker to figure out what it wants to do in addition to that core cost in year one, year two, year three,” Lee said.

Tucker, through residential and commercial property taxes, is giving the county more money for the public safety budget than Dunwoody and Brookhaven spend to fund their own departments, Lee said. According to the study, Dunwoody Police Department has a $14.2 million budget, while Brookhaven has a $15 million one.

Of the last 11 incorporated cities in Georgia, only six have their own police department, with the latest being South Fulton. Mulberry, Mableton, Stonecrest and Peachtree Corners all fall under the jurisdiction of their county’s police department, like Tucker currently does.

Among five metro counties — Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton — there are more than 70 law enforcement departments, including sheriff’s offices, police departments, and school and university police departments.

Tucker resident and former mayoral candidate Beverly Williams recently attended a town hall hosted by DeKalb police in their Tucker precinct to highlight the work and provide information of programs available for residents. Williams asked Chief Greg Padrick about how much is in the department’s budget, and he said it was more than $150 million.

She turned around and told the residents there: “We can’t have a police force, because we can’t afford it, because we don’t have that type of money in our budget.”

Williams said she was concerned when she began to hear rumblings about some Tucker residents looking into the possibility of a city police force. She said these discussions should have been had in the first couple of years of annexation.

Traffic makes it way down Main Street in front of Tucker High School in January. (Hyosub Shin/AJC)

“Right now, Tucker doesn’t have the capability, or the money or the finance to do it,” Williams said.

She gave credit to Cochran-Johnson for the work she has done in trying to make public safety a priority.

“Let’s give her the opportunity to get the police department up, running and growing and then, if she falls short, then let’s have that conversation,” she said.

Outgoing Tucker Mayor Frank Auman said if the city wants to create its own police department, it will look into every aspect before moving forward.

“If we’re not convinced and confident going in that we’re going to reduce crime by doing, we’re just not going to do it,” Auman said at the forum.

Lee said they’ve already talked to incoming Mayor Anne Lerner about the study. CID also launched a survey asking residents, visitors and business owners about their experience with crime in Tucker and not directly if they want a city police department.

Johnson said he understands why Tucker locals are looking into the possibility, but there are a lot of things to consider and really think about before it becomes a reality. He acknowledged that some cities, like Dunwoody and South Fulton, have done it successfully.

“I get it, you want somebody who is dedicated to you and your community. You want to be able to hold your particular police department accountable; you want to have a sheriff that’s appointed by your mayor and city council,” Johnson said. “You want to have those things where you feel it’s more personalized.”

For residents, having their own police department allows them to get more personal service, and response times tend to be shorter, Grogan said. Johnson said building that trust between a police department and its community takes time.