DeKalb County Sheriff Tom Brown said his deputies will disciplined for their over-aggressive actions and abusive language when serving a warrant last month.
The officers’ behavior was brought to light by a family video that has gone viral on the Internet.
“I’m sure the officers were teed off because the family kept them outside for a (half) hour and told them they had the wrong address,” said Brown, who is considering running for Congress. “But the behavior of my officers was totally unacceptable and it will not be tolerated. It will be addressed and addressed very quickly.
Donavan Hall and his younger brother shot the video on their cell phones on July 26. The edited 20-minute video shows the officers outside the family’s Ellenwood home at 1:30 a.m.
They had come there to arrest the boys’ mother, Natania Griffin, on a civil warrant.
The family, however, thought they heard the deputies give a different address and kept telling the officers they had the wrong address. Family members said they feared they were about to become crime victims.
Brown noted it was clear from the blue lights from a vehicle in the background and the fact that the officers were crowded outside and knocking on the door rather than crashing through it that they were legitimate law enforcement and not home invaders.
The family called 911, and the operators also told them to open the door. The family eventually complied.
That’s when the trouble for seven deputies and one sergeant started. The officers’ abusive and profane language is documented by the video.
Brown, an elected official, was not amused. The deputies, he said, should not have let their frustrations get the best of them.
Hall told Channel 2 Action News that the deputies’ loud banging woke up the family — his mother, his brother and his little sister. And, he said, when they finally opened the door, the deputies charged in and abused them.
“Once I get back here, I’m like, ‘Please stop.’ The officer’s gun butts me in the face and then I fall backwards,” Hall said.
The warrant said Griffin failed to pay a $1,000 fee. Griffin told Channel 2 the deputies’ action was overkill, considering her offense.
Deputies refused to answer the family’s queries about why the were at the house when they were knocking on the door, Griffin said.
“Fifteen (days) overdue, why would you come to my house with this unbelievable show of force?” Griffin said. “When they would not establish what they wanted, we believed that they were at the wrong house because we would never think they would come arrest me for a civil fee.”
Griffin has since paid the money she owed.
Brown did not say what action he will take against the deputies.
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