Former DeKalb County School Superintendent Crawford Lewis testified Thursday that Pat Reid, the district’s former chief operations officer, threatened to blackmail him about an extramarital affair he was having when she learned Lewis was trying to get her fired.
Lewis — testifying as part of a plea agreement — described Pat Reid, formerly Pat Pope, as the person who could save the district’s troubled construction program but said she soon became ruthless in protecting her $190,000-a-year job and her husband at the time, Tony Pope. Pope continued to get construction contracts even though that was prohibited as long as his wife was COO.
“I had lost confidence and faith in Mrs. Pope (Reid) as a result of the issues with the construction contracts we had talked about,” Lewis said. “And secondly, I felt that Mrs. Pope (Reid) had misled me and I was just angry. I was very, very upset about everything.”
Reid and Pope are on trial in DeKalb County on charges of racketeering and theft of services, accused of manipulating school construction contracts to benefit themselves. They face 65 and 30 years in prison, respectively, if they are convicted of all counts. Initially Lewis was also charged with racketeering and theft, but he pleaded guilty last month to misdemeanor obstruction. One of the conditions for the plea deal that will give him a much lighter punishment was that he testify for the prosecution.
When Reid was offered the job, the district made a one-time exception that allowed her architect husband to finish work on the one project he already had, renovations and improvements at Columbia High School.
Almost immediately after taking the job, Lewis said, she pushed through addendums to the contract with Pope and a contractor as expansions rather than new projects. Lewis signed off on it, but he testified that his practice was to sign those type documents without reading them if he had assurances that they had been vetted by others.
Reid fired one design firm and the contractor working at Columbia High School so the work would go to Pope and another builder. That decision led to a multimillion-dollar civil suit that is still pending.
The expanded project was worth $1.55 million with Pope getting $625,000.
Lewis said when Reid heard he was trying to fire her, she called for him to meet her at a Stone Mountain coffee shop on a Saturday morning in December 2008 and told him about her “black box,” where she kept secrets she could use against others.
“She told me … when she had worked at other places she always carried with her a little black box,” Lewis said. “First thing she said was I was in her black box as were other members of the Board of Education. She gave me two names (of board members) she knew to have had a personal relationship.
“I took it as a threat to me,” he said.
Lewis said he responded by telling her he would not stop the internal investigation of her so he could fire her. Then he drove home and called his wife downstairs for a conversation.
“I knew there was something I needed to tell my wife,” Lewis said. “I needed to tell my wife that I had been involved in an inappropriate relationship with a staff member.”
About the Author
