Former Powder Springs Police Chief L. Rick Richardson has dropped his five-month fight to keep the job he had held for the past 17 years.
But questions surrounding exactly what happened and why may never be answered.
"All we know is that at least three city vehicles that were supposed to be sold at auction weren't," said Powder Springs City Manager Rick Eckert. "What all was behind this might never be known."
Richardson was suspended in November when it was learned that in 2007 he sold a 2002 Crown Victoria city police car to then Braswell Police Chief Robert R. Lucas for about $1,500.
It later came out that Richardson also facilitated the 2007 sale of two other used city vehicles, also Crown Vics, for about $1,500 each to the Rockmart Police Department and to a private company called Code 7 Supplies in Powder Springs.
The City Council had ordered those vehicles, along with nine others, be sold at a public auction to the highest bidder. The rest of the vehicles went for more than twice what the chief sold the three cars for, according to city records.
The irregularities in the sales didn't come to light until last year, when there was an unrelated flap in Braswell, a town of about 100 people 30 miles northwest of Powder Springs.
In January 2008, when Lucas asked to be reimbursed for the police car he bought with his own money from Powder Springs, court records say the Braswell City Manager told him it was considered a donation from him to the city.
When he wasn't reimbursed, Lucas quit and took the car home with him.
Neither Lucas, the mayor nor the city manager of Braswell returned calls from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution seeking comment.
Court records show that after Lucas quit his post leading the Braswell force of four officers, an arrest warrant was sought against him for stealing city property. Lucas was arrested and briefly jailed. But he was able to produce a title and bill of sale showing that he was the lawful owner of the car, so the case was dropped.
Lucas then sued the city for malicious prosecution and after a weeklong civil trial in December he reached a $1 million settlement with Braswell, according to his attorney, Bill Atkins.
It was during the investigation of Lucas' suit against Braswell that Richardson and the city of Powder Springs became involved, Eckert said.
Richardson, who had led the 30-officer police force with a budget of about $3.1 million since the mid-1990s, gave sworn testimony that he didn't have anything to do with the sale of the vehicles. But other testimony and sale records showed that to be false.
Eckert suspended Richardson in mid-November. The Cobb County Sheriff's Office investigated Richardson's actions for possible criminal charges, but said it didn't find any criminal intent on his part, and no charges were filed.
Richardson was fired in early February for disobedience of the City Council and failure to maintain proper inventory control of city property in his care. He appealed his firing, but then dropped his appeal last week, just hours before a city hearing on the matter.
Powder Springs Mayor Pat Vaughn wouldn't comment on whether criminal charges should have been filed. But she said it was clear the Powder Springs taxpayers didn't get all the money they were due.
"He was never authorized to make private sales, and the city didn't get all the money that it should have," she said. "We voted for the property to be sold, and we expected that it would have been done properly."
"It was a hard lesson for us," she said. "We have to trust, but verify."
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