Stalking claims lead to temporary protective order against Fulton manager
A Fulton County judge issued a temporary protective order against County Manager Dick Anderson after a neighborhood HOA dispute boiled over into allegations that Anderson stalked, intimidated and harassed his neighbors.
Superior Court Judge Alex Manning issued the order June 15 prohibiting the county’s top administrator from getting close to Amit Mehrotra, a neighbor in the Ellard subdivision in Roswell, and from harassing or intimidating Mehrotra or his family.
Neighbors allege Anderson’s behavior toward members of the homeowners association’s board has been bizarre and alarming since the board unanimously asked Anderson’s wife, Maureen, to resign from it in April 2025.
After she resigned, Dick Anderson started surveilling and harassing Mehrotra and other HOA board members and their families, including driving past Mehrotra’s yard and recording videos of him, his wife and children in their front yard, according to Mehrotra’s petition for a protective order.
Mehrotra, the HOA’s president and treasurer, made similar allegations against Anderson in an earlier complaint to the Fulton County Board of Ethics.
Two other neighbors, Matt and Laurel Nelson, also filed an ethics complaint, alleging Anderson exerted improper influence over law enforcement officers who were handling a report by Anderson’s wife that the Nelsons’ two Doberman pinschers were running loose on the Andersons’ property.
Anderson’s attorney, Chuck Boring, says his client has done nothing wrong.
On Tuesday, Boring called the protective order “another act of harassment” against Anderson by Mehrotra. He added that Mehrotra has asked the Fulton Board of Commissioners to suspend the county manager.
The commission has not suspended Anderson.
“Each time he doesn’t get the result he wants, he escalates and expands his obsession with my client,” Boring told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “He has now further escalated an HOA dispute among neighbors by abusing the system designed to protect victims of domestic violence and stalking to wrongly advance his own interests in a petty neighborhood squabble.”
Mehrotra’s attorney declined to comment.
Boring said the temporary protective order lasts until a hearing Thursday, during which the judge is expected to hear evidence and decide whether to impose a 12-month protective order.
Boring said he looks forward to questioning Mehrotra at the hearing and presenting video evidence allegedly showing Mehrotra has been the aggressor all along — including footage that Boring says shows Mehrotra yelling at Anderson while he was in his own driveway “as recently as March.”
Attached to Mehrotra’s court petition are affidavits from Peter Taylor, chair of the HOA’s landscaping committee, and April Rener, the HOA’s social chair.
Taylor alleges on Oct. 25 he and others were planting bulbs in the subdivision when Anderson drove slowly by, photographing them. It says Anderson has driven by Taylor’s house several times and “repeatedly honked his horn,” prompting Taylor to submit a “formal complaint” to the HOA.
Boring said the honking was because someone had parked illegally, adding that the petition has somehow turned that “into an issue of stalking, which is insane.”
In her affidavit, Rener said she “observed Dick stalking and photographing Amit Mehrotra” and other members of the community on several occasions.
On March 28, Rener alleges, she was driving in the neighborhood and waved at Mehrotra. After that, Anderson, who also was driving, swerved toward Rener “and made gestures inside of his car, acting as if he was turning his steering wheel into me as if to run me off the road or hit me.”
“This was not funny to me, and I was frightened,” the affidavit says.
A notice in the protective order warns Anderson that violating it could result in his arrest and prosecution on a felony charge of aggravated stalking, which can carry a prison term and a fine of up to $10,000.
As for the ethics complaints against Anderson by Mehrotra and the Nelsons, 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.
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.
They are set for July 16.
A county employee found to have intentionally violated the Code of Ethics can be fined up to $1,000 and receive a public reprimand.