A drive through north Atlanta with retired police Sgt. Barry Miller becomes a litany of headlong chases with dodgy and often dangerous characters.
“I ran one through the yard there, a young guy,” he says, pointing to a great big house on Peachtree Battle Avenue. “It was like a mule chasing a race horse.”
Unfortunately for the race horse, the mule had a radio and the suspect got lassoed by one of Miller’s partners.
Driving by Bobby Jones Golf Course, Miller pauses to say, “I went across that bridge in my car chasing a burglar once.”
He helped catch the infamous Buckhead Rapist. He’s been stabbed, run over, even shot. That was the time a guy leaned out of a getaway vehicle and sprayed Miller with shotgun pellets as he closed in on his motorcycle.
Miller, like most veteran street cops, has a million stories, but perhaps his most striking tale is how he created a cottage industry that has allowed countless cops to send their kids to orthodontists and colleges while also providing security for residents. He is credited with creating the first security patrol in metro Atlanta that used off-duty cops, a business model now replicated in scores of neighborhoods across the region.
He retired from APD at 49. He will retire again later this month from his second career at 66, a street cop who became a savvy businessman. His outfit deploys 60 off-duty officers who guard 21 neighborhoods.
“Northwest Atlanta is mostly mine,” he said with a glint of pride. (Incidentally, retired Atlanta officers can keep their badges, uniforms and arrest powers if they become volunteer officers, giving the city 120 hours of free service a year — which allows them to make a good living as rent-a-cops.)
Miller drove me around Wednesday in his white Ford Explorer, which has magnetic door signs signifying that he’s a real police officer. He said he’ll miss the gig that has him often working 18-hour days, as he did on this day. He spends those hours patrolling slowly through well-heeled neighborhoods, jiggling door knobs, shining lights in bushes and carrying in the mail of residents who are out of town.
But he wants to live a little bit.
“This is a young man’s job. I’ve worked most Thanksgivings and Christmases,” he said.
There’s this consideration, too: “I don’t want to die with my uniform on.”
Miller’s good fortune started in 1979 with a random event, a traffic roadblock. Emory neurologist Dr. Linton Hopkins (father of the big-shot chef of the same name) was late for work and not in the mood for the delay when the motorcycle cop strode to his car window.
As it turned out, the doctor’s driver’s license was out of date, as was his insurance. Miller wrote him a ticket, but Hopkins was struck by the officer’s polite, professional presence and quiet confidence.
The doctor and his wife had recently been awakened by an intruder rifling through a dresser in their bedroom. He asked whether Miller could moonlight for a couple months in his neighborhood, Brookwood Hills, which had been victimized by numerous other break-ins.
Miller had never heard of a cop working off-duty to patrol a neighborhood. But he had a wife, four kids and a ton of bills, so he got inventive and lined up a two-month deal to keep an eye on Hopkins and his neighbors. One night in the course of those months he pulled over a shady looking guy driving a beater. The man had a long arrest record with numerous burglaries. He turned out to be Brookwoods’ busy burglar.
And, as Miller puts it, “that two months turned into 35 years.”
Miller’s easy-going manner and prodigious work ethic won over residents. He’d take neighborhood kids for rides on his motorcycle (clearly a time before liability lawyers put their claws into life) and he small-talked neighborhood ladies. He called people back and gave them answers.
Miller enjoyed the give-and-take with people. Normally, police see people during trying times — after crimes or during arguments.
“Before that, I never met a citizen unless it was a call to their house or writing them a ticket,” he said. “You felt no one liked you. Then I saw people don’t hate us.”
“He’s become a de-facto member of the family,” said Reagan Floyd, a resident of the Adams Crossing neighborhood up the road from Georgia Tech, an area that saw a pronounced drop in crime after bringing Miller and his troops to their community.
Word about Brookwood’s sentinel spread to one neighborhood after another. To keep up with demand, Miller had to share his good fortune with others on the force. Cops are always searching for second (or third) jobs.
“They’ll never have anything if they just live on city pay,” he said. “They’ll scrounge all their lives.”
Miller avoided getting promoted because a higher rank would pull him off his motorcycle and make it tough to have the time to work his growing side gig. As the business expanded, he got a piece of the action from the work of his growing army by doing the administrative deeds as he continued to patrol.
“Oh, it’s become a big business, a big business and a good living,” Miller said. “I make a really good living for a policeman. I own three houses in Rabun County. We drive nice cars. We take nice vacations. This has changed my life.”
Who would have known that a working-class lad from Atlanta’s south side might one day be visiting the Leaning Tower of Pisa, as he did last year.
Miller isn’t sure what’s next. He’s a folk artist in the vein of Howard Finster, although he calls his style, “Early American White Trash.”
Home is now a 110-year-old farmhouse in Tiger, population 314, up in the state’s northeast corner. He lives with his second wife, a local girl who liked the movie “An Officer and a Gentleman.” He walked into her office one day wearing his best dress blues and carried her away to the applause of co-workers, a la Richard Gere.
Luckily for him, perhaps, he doesn’t think the area needs a neighborhood patrol.
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