(Cleveland) – A White County Grand Jury has indicted a former Georgia Department of Corrections officer for violating his oath of office and theft by taking.
Jurors indicted 24-year-old Levi Jehu Franklin of Morganton on Jan. 29. He was arrested and charged last year after he was accused of taking old water meters from the City of Cleveland Shop and selling them for scrap metal.
Franklin worked as a corrections officer with the Colwell Correctional Center in Blairsville at the time. He was supervising an inmate work detail in the city of Cleveland when the alleged crime occurred. An inmate on the detail tipped off officials.
Cleveland Police Chief John Foster said the inmate told a city shop employee that Franklin was putting the old water meters in 5-gallon buckets and placing them in the Department of Corrections van. After he was notified, Chief Foster said he followed the inmate van in an unmarked car back to the correctional center in Blairsville. There he observed Officer Franklin unload the meters from the van into the trunk of his personal car.
Investigators with GDC’s Office of Professional Standards arrested Franklin several days later, on May 28, 2019, when he arrived for work at the corrections facility.
He was transported to Cleveland where he was booked into the White County Detention Center.
WRWH News contributed to this report
