UNCHECKED POWER

The Sheriff Lost Reelection. Then the Spending Spree Began.

Sheriff Blake Turman says that after he beat then-Sheriff Dennis Meeks at the polls, he found that thousands of dollars worth of military equipment was missing and public funds were wasted. Meeks’ response: “He’s full of shit.”

by Connor Sheets, AL.com June 28, 8 a.m. EDT

This article was produced in partnership with AL.com, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

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A jumble of electrical cables dangles from a hole punched through the ceiling in Sheriff Blake Turman’s brightly lit office in rural Covington County, Alabama, near the Florida Panhandle. ... A year ago, Turman’s predecessor, Dennis Meeks, used sheriff’s office funds to buy and install a security camera system, financial records show. But the equipment is no longer there.

“You see them wires hanging right there?” Turman asked during an interview in the office, which he took over in January, several months after beating Meeks in a runoff. ... “That’s where the closed-circuit camera system used to be. He spent $2,800 putting that in there — $2,800 out of discretionary funds, and it’s gone now.”

Turman says he has thoroughly searched the sheriff’s office building for the equipment and has not been able to find it. ... The missing video system is just one of a wide array of vagaries and shortfalls Turman says he has had to contend with since he replaced Meeks as sheriff on Jan. 14. Records were destroyed or removed, he said, while public accounts were depleted to buy a computer system that the office can’t use and ammunition for guns that sheriff’s deputies don’t carry. Turman also said tens of thousands of public dollars were missing from those same accounts and provided a reporter with internal sheriff’s office records that he says support his claims.

Nine sheriffs who took office this year across the state have alleged that their predecessors destroyed public property, wasted taxpayer money or took other steps that abused the public trust and undermined their offices, as AL.com and ProPublica first reported this month. A handful have asked the state to audit their offices. ... The situation Turman describes is perhaps the most extreme. He has enlisted the help of state law enforcement to inventory military equipment supplied by the U.S. Department of Defense and is calling on state authorities to explore potential criminal or civil sanctions against his predecessor.
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