HOA beefs, online name-calling spill into ethics complaints against official
A neighborhood HOA dispute that involved name-calling over social media has spilled into a pair of ethics complaints filed against Fulton County Manager Dick Anderson.
The complaints allege the county’s top administrator exerted improper influence over law enforcement officers and used his authority to harass and intimidate his neighbors in the Ellard subdivision, a gated Roswell community.
One of the ethics complaints says Anderson had Fulton County Police conduct a follow-up investigation into his wife’s report of a neighbor’s dogs running loose on their property.
The complaint says Anderson did so because he was unhappy with the animal control officer’s initial report, which said the two Doberman pinschers were “friendly and trained” and “did not fit the description” of being aggressive.
That initial report was forwarded to Fulton County Police Chief Wade Yates from then-Capt. Nikki Dwyer a couple of days after it was written, in an email containing only the words: Dick’s report. Less than an hour later, the chief forwarded the report to Anderson.
The next day, on Nov. 4, police went out to interview Anderson’s wife, Maureen.
“Before we leave, we’re going to rewrite and fix the report,” Dwyer tells the animal control officer moments before the Maureen Anderson interview, according to police bodycam video reviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Dwyer, who oversees animal control for the police department, then tells Maureen Anderson during the interview that the report will be rewritten and “I’ll get Dick a copy of the new report,” the bodycam video shows.
The revised police report for the loose dog investigation gives a fuller account of Maureen Anderson’s version of events and her video evidence and says the dog owners were given a “verbal warning.”
There was no mention of a warning in the initial police report, though it did say the animal control officer “advised” the dog owner to leash his dogs when walking them.
Dick Anderson referred questions from the AJC to his attorney, Chuck Boring. Maureen Anderson did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment from her.
Boring said the Andersons were afraid of the neighbor’s dogs, which he said were roaming unleashed in the Andersons’ yard, given that a woman was killed in a horrific dog mauling a couple of months earlier in Union City.
“We look forward to providing overwhelming evidence that Mr. Anderson did absolutely nothing wrong, and in fact sought advice and counsel from other county officials before even doing what any citizen should be able to do — protect their family and community,” Boring said in a statement.
The dogs, Legend and Lilac, are owned by Matt and Laurel Nelson. Matt Nelson is a member of the neighborhood HOA and took a seat on the board a few months before Maureen Anderson stepped down and lost influence on the board, Laurel Nelson said.
At one point in November, a different attorney representing the Andersons demanded that Nelson resign from the HOA board and “cease and desist” trespassing on the Andersons’ property.
The attorney also alleged that the Nelsons had made defamatory statements about the Andersons, including calling them “Mr. and Mrs. Voldemort” in a Facebook post, a reference to an evil character in the Harry Potter book series.
Laurel Nelson told the AJC in an interview that Maureen Anderson was “trying to fabricate” a story about her dogs.
“Nobody should send county police after their neighbors just because they feel like it,” Laurel Nelson said. “Neighbors are actually freaked out about this.”
Police Chief Yates told the AJC in an interview that officers interviewed Maureen Anderson after filing an initial report because a supervisor realized they had neglected to speak to her, and she filed the complaint.
Yates also said his department was closely scrutinizing animal control officers at the time of the Anderson complaint, and the department was in the process of taking over animal control operations from a nonprofit organization.
“That’s very normal,” Yates said. “Police reports get changed, especially when new information is found.
“Dick Anderson did not, in this case, attempt to sway anything about the police department, nor has he ever. I have complete control of this police department with no interference.”
A second complaint
Dick Anderson has been county manager in Fulton since 2015 and oversees about 4,500 employees — including those with the Fulton County Police Department.
A second complaint against Anderson alleges he threatened to involve law enforcement in a dispute with HOA president and treasurer Amit Mehrotra.
Mehrotra’s complaint says Dick Anderson “engaged in a sustained pattern” of harassment and intimidation toward him and his family from February 2025 to October. It cites an email from Dick Anderson “explicitly stating he will engage law enforcement in the context of a purely private HOA dispute.”
Anderson’s email to Mehrotra also says “you are not going to continue to bully, harass and contact (Maureen Anderson) after you have been expressly asked not to do so,” according to the ethics complaint.
Boring said in an email that Dick Anderson had told Mehrotra that if he didn’t stop contacting his wife, he would report the harassment to police — which would be the Roswell Police Department, which “is in no way part of Fulton County government.”
In combination, the complaints allege that Anderson undermined public trust with his actions and used county authority for personal purposes.
The county’s Ethics Commission initially voted, in January, to send both complaints to a formal hearing after concluding “substantial evidence exists to support a reasonable belief” that the county’s Code of Ethics had been violated. The vote to send the dog complaint case to a formal hearing was unanimous.
A formal ethics hearing is an administrative proceeding that functions similarly to a trial — witnesses are typically called, and evidence is presented. Both sides can be represented by attorneys.
But the ethics board has since ruled that it will instead redo the preliminary hearings because Anderson did not receive sufficient notice of them.
The new preliminary hearings had been set for June 18, but Boring said they are being rescheduled for reasons that were not immediately clear on Thursday night. Boring added that neither he nor his client requested a new date.
A county employee found to have intentionally violated the Code of Ethics can be fined up to $1,000 and receive a public reprimand.
About the Author
Reed Williams is an enterprise reporter on the Local team at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
