When Piedmont College accused him and his officers of engaging in harassing, threatening behavior, Demorest Police Chief Robin Krockum went public with his side of the story.
The allegations, contained in a demand letter sent by the college to the City of Demorest on August 7, are laid out verbatim here, followed by Krockum’s response.
What Piedmont College claims:
Beginning in 2018, City Chief of Police, Robin Krockum, harassed and threatened Piedmont College police officers, under the direction of Mayor Austin and the City. The City and its officials asserted that the College’s officers did not have authority to act—Chief Krockum’s instructions were to confront the College’s officers on this claim. Chief Krockum threatened that non-compliant officers would be arrested for impersonating a police officer.
The City’s threat was an effort to force Piedmont to disband its campus police force in favor of contracting with City Police for its security needs, a fact made known to Piedmont Vice President Tom Estes. At the time, the City enjoyed a similar private security contract with the local hospital.
The City’s harassment of the College and its officers was an attempt to obtain property rights of the College in the form of tickets, fines, and contractual fees, Chief Krockum and the City were forced to abandon their attempted extortion of the College following confirmation from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that the College was duly authorized to operate a campus police department.
What Demorest Police Chief Robin Krockum says:
“We began having several issues with the Campus Police in 2018 that I felt would cause the college a huge amount of liability. We did speak to them about these issues but absolutely never harassed or threatened anyone. One of their officers created a 4th amendment waiver that they were using with students they found with misdemeanor marijuana. They would not charge the student in exchange for the student signing this waiver, which would waive their rights to search of their person, property, dorm room, or vehicle for two years.”
This waiver stated that Piedmont College Campus Police, Demorest Police, and Habersham County Sheriff’s Office could enforce this waiver.
This form is illegal and violated the 4th amendment rights of the students. A true 4th amendment waiver can only be ordered by a judge during court as a condition of their criminal sentence.
I contacted the Sheriff about the form and he requested that his name be removed from the form as well. We asked them to remove our name, as well as the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office, from the form and they refused. They accused us of harassing their Officers. Our City Attorney had to send a letter to the college requesting them to remove our name from their form.
Campus Police Officers were also stopping vehicles off their campus inside the city limits. Colleges that are part of the University System of Georgia are allowed under O.C.G.A 20-3-72 to make traffic stops and arrests within 500 yards of their property. There are only 26 schools that are part of the University System of Georgia. However, Piedmont College is a private college and is not a part of the University System of Georgia. They are only allowed to enforce laws on their campus property.
Piedmont College employs both certified officers and security. They all wear the same uniform and drive marked patrol cars. I suggested to them that they may want to use two different vehicles, one for security and one for Police, but they chose not to do that.
After continuing to have problems we asked about possibly contracting for police services on their campus. This was not an issue of ticket revenue as the complaint states. Our records indicated that we have only written 13 tickets to students of the college during my four years as Police Chief. We felt that contracting services would remove all liability from the college by having Demorest Officers responding to calls at the college.
The Mayor and I requested to have a meeting with President Mellichamp and Tom Estes, who had been hired on a temporary basis to help evaluate certain operations of the college. We discussed our issues with them and recommended that they evaluate their Officers as well as their hiring process. If they did not want to contract our services, I recommended that they hire Jim Andrews as their Police Chief. As a result of the meeting, three of the Officers left and they completely restructured the agency. We now have a great working relationship with the Campus Police Department. All of their Officers are sworn through our agency and we respond to the campus as needed.
