BARROW COUNTY, Ga. — Police body camera video shows a traffic stop involving a Barrow County School Board member and her son.
The board is calling for her resignation, saying she used her position to try and get her son out of that ticket.
Channel 2’s Tyisha Fernandes was live in Auburn, where the officer made the traffic stop.
This intersection doesn’t look like one where officers would be posted up - looking for drivers running this stop sign in a residential area. But according to police, they do sit here because neighbors complain about drivers rolling through here without stopping.
“I’m not gonna have court on the side of the road. You’re able to go to court, OK,” the Auburn police officer who issued a ticket is heard saying.
She issued a ticket to the son of Barrow County School Board member Beverly Kelley for running a stop sign back in December.
“Ya know, I do know the mayor and city council here,” Kelly is heard on camera saying.
“That’s perfectly fine, ma’am. That’s perfectly fine,” the officer says.
“He did stop,” Kelley said.
“Yeah, I thought I stopped, but OK,” the son says.
“He did. I saw him,” Kelley said.
“I saw him, too. You slowed down but you didn’t stop,” the officer said.
“I’m calling Chief Hodges right now,” Kelley said.
And Police Chief Chris Hodge said in this letter to the Barrow County School Board that Kelley did call him that day. And when he didn’t pick up, she sent a text message, accusing the officer of lying.
Hodge said, he watched this entire body cam video, and his officer never lied.
However, he said when Kelley and her son showed up in court to appeal the ticket in January, “Ms. Kelley appeared to be attempting to use her position as a school board member to influence the outcome of her son’s case.”
He said - she did that by accusing the officer of personal retribution because the officer’s daughter was injured in the Apalachee school shooting, the same county Kelley serves on the school board
Hodge went on to say that Kelley has every right to appeal the ticket, “But invoking a deeply traumatic event — namely, the injury of Officer Garcia’s child — and accusing her of acting out of personal retribution without any evidence is, in my view, beyond the pale. Such conduct is not befitting of someone entrusted with making sound judgments for the children of our school system.”
Kelley says the video we have isn’t the whole video.
She said she’s not resigning like the board demanded, and she’ll continue to appeal the ticket.
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