By Emily Crane
The mayor of a small Georgia town has axed its entire police force for upsetting his wife, who’d previously been accused of creating a “hostile work environment.”
Cohutta Mayor Ron Shinnick shut down the Cohutta Police Department and fired all 10 of its employees earlier this week after officers allegedly made “inappropriate comments” about his spouse on Facebook, WDEF reported.
“The PD has been dissolved, and all personnel have been terminated,” read a brutal sign on the department’s door first thing Wednesday.
It wasn’t immediately clear if cops were notified in advance or only found out they’d been fired when they showed up expecting to work.
“They’ll get a paycheck. We’re not that way, and I appreciate their service, okay? It is time for a change,” Shinnick said bluntly when asked about the controversy.
The petty saga erupted late last month when several officers lodged formal complaints about the town’s former clerk, Pam Shinnick — who is also the mayor’s wife — continuing to work for the town despite having been fired.
She was terminated last year for apparently creating a “hostile work environment” in the town of less than 1,000 people — but allegedly still had access to personal and classified information.
In the wake of the formal complaints, the mayor held a joint press conference with Police Chief Greg Fowler and town attorney Brian Rayburn to say they’d managed to resolve the dispute through “open dialogue and good-faith mediation.”
But roughly a week later, the cops were all fired anyway.
“This all comes to personal vendetta from the mayor — and I wholeheartedly believe that,” said one of the axed officers, Sgt. Jeremy May, adding that they’d been assured their jobs weren’t in jeopardy for lodging complaints about the mayor’s wife.
“Official response from the town attorney: Nobody’s jobs are in jeopardy,” May said. “Here we are, less than a week later, nobody has a job.”
“We took a stand for transparency, and in result, every one of them has lost their jobs,” he added.
The mayor, for his part, blamed the conflict on “inappropriate comments” posted on Facebook by the officers.
It wasn’t immediately clear what comments he was referring to.
For now, the fired officers have been ordered to return all department equipment.
The Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office is set to take over policing for the small town.