The tale of Sid Dorsey: A political trailblazer and murderous sheriff
The death in prison this week of former DeKalb County Sheriff Sidney Dorsey had me think of a strange episode in his office long ago that spoke to his ego, vanity and tenuous grasp of reality.
I had been banging away at Dorsey with critical stories in late 1998, and convinced him to sit down for an interview to explain his actions. He had been pushing a medical contract for the jail that seemed fishy, and was carving out a lane as a political kingpin in the county.
Dorsey, elected in 1996 as DeKalb’s first Black sheriff, was hiring all sorts of politicos to jobs with vague duties. The DeKalb jail was turning into a political incubator — one with 700 employees, a $40 million budget and a sheriff who liked to do things his way, legality be damned.
After a tense, hourlong interview, we were finishing up and were both standing in his office when I asked him how tall he was. I ventured he was 5-foot-8.
Dorsey, who was known to wear lifts in his boots, bristled at my guess and said he was 5-11. I was standing 3 feet from him and was clearly 3 or 4 inches taller.
“Nah,” I said. “I’m 5-11.”
“No,” he responded. “You’re 6-2.”
He wasn’t joking.
It was classic Sid, a man who didn’t let reality or truth color his world view.
I could extrapolate that it was this mindset that led Dorsey to orchestrate the murder of Derwin Brown, the man who defeated him in the 2000 sheriff’s race, after he served just one term in office. In his twisted thinking, Dorsey somehow thought that killing Brown would force a special election and he’d win his job back.
The killing crew ambushed Brown in his driveway in December 2000 and shot him 12 times. Three members of that team had either worked at the jail or for Dorsey’s security company.
A backup gunman was there to kill anyone else who might have been with Brown in his car. As it turned out, Brown was alone.
The plot was cold-blooded and delusional. But that was Sid.
In 1998, Brown told me: “He’s the first African American sheriff in DeKalb, and the only person who can beat Sidney is Sidney.”
Brown was prophetic. And Sidney was up to that job.
Early in his career as sheriff, Dorsey carved out a narrative as a notable figure. He wore epaulettes on his shoulder and learned to overcome his fear of horses so he could ride atop a steed in parades.
But by the time Dorsey was up for reelection in 2000, he was roundly seen as a corrupt pol whose goal in office was to grab anything that wasn’t nailed down.
As the 2000 election neared, WSB-TV’s investigative reporter Dale Cardwell hammered away at Dorsey, showing that he used on-duty deputies for a private security company that he ran. (He even used deputies to deliver McDonald’s “Happy Meals” to his son at school.)
In fact, some of the dirt that Cardwell unearthed was later used by then-DeKalb District Attorney J. Tom Morgan in convicting Dorsey of ordering the murder.
Morgan told me: “Dale is the reason that Dorsey lost” the 2000 election. Morgan recently finished writing a book about the murder called “A Rainy Night in Georgia.” It is set for release in September.
Sidney Dorsey’s story, even absent the murder, is what you might call larger than life.
He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was hired to Atlanta’s police force in 1963, when the city was still segregated.
Dorsey later became a detective and worked the “missing and murdered” case, where 29 Black children and young adults were murdered between 1979 and 1981.
The story concerning Dorsey, one that he’d tell himself, was that he was a hard-nosed detective who used a network of contacts on the streets to solve cases. He was gregarious but employed an unsettling stare.
He was what you’d call a loose cannon.
In 1970, he killed a man in a fight while off duty. He struck the man in the head with a gun that discharged. He was charged with manslaughter but was not prosecuted.
In 1977, he went to then-Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, telling him that fellow cops had cheated on promotion exams. Nineteen men were either dismissed or demoted and the public safety commissioner later resigned.
Lou Arcangeli, a former Atlanta police deputy chief, worked with Dorsey as a detective and said he was overrated as an investigator.
“Sid was a complicated man who understood politics,” said Arcangeli, who had a run-in with Dorsey after reporting him for beating up a juvenile.
Arcangeli said he was renting a car one time and bumped into Dorsey at the rental agency. Dorsey was renting five vans and had a clipboard for teams to go around campaigning for the “Black slate.”
“You have to hand it to Sid,” he said. “He was master manipulator and people will follow charismatic leaders. Even if they are wrong.”
In 2005, I visited Dorsey in Reidsville prison. At the time, he was going along with Lou Graham, then DeKalb’s police chief, in insisting that Wayne Williams didn’t commit any of the “missing and murdered” killings. Williams was convicted in two of the slayings and was linked to 22 others.
At the time I noted Dorsey looked fit, the product of hundreds of pushups each day in his prison isolation cell. He complained about a dearth of visits and letters.
In Dorsey’s mind, he and Williams were two men framed for murder and in prison for life.
This week, Georgia prisoner 1148460 completed his life sentence at age 86.
About the Author
Bill Torpy continues to contribute columns to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution since retiring in 2025. The Chicago native started covering metro Atlanta for the AJC in 1990.
