Pooler, Ga Police Department Exposed Part One

In December 2018, a month after being sexually assaulted I walked into a Dunkin Donuts. I had no idea that day would destroy my life. I ordered my coffee, as I always did. When I went to pay for it, I was told the person in front of me had paid for mine. Since I was going to get coffee anyway I paid for the man behind me. As I was leaving, he stopped me to thank me. I reluctantly let him near me because I wasn't at all inclined to speak to a stranger. He introduced himself and told me he was a police officer with the Pooler, Ga Police department and asked for my phone number to buy me a coffee in return. When he showed me his badge, I didn't think I had anything to fear. I was a juvenile probation officer and cops had always been my friends and colleagues. Thinking it would be nice to not hide behind the pain the sexual assault had created we became friends. He was something safe in my chaotic world.

Then things started happening that if I was not in the process of litigation and handling being sexually assaulted, I would have caught. I was on my way home from attempting to pay a speeding ticket in a neighboring town, Bloomingdale. When I went in to pay it even with the money in my checking account the Bloomingdale Court would not take my debit card, and told me to pay it online. Almost home I was pulled over by a Pooler PD SUV. My first question was why was I being pulled over- I wasn't speeding. The officer told me my license was suspended. I hadn't received any notice about it and was shocked. How could that officer think my license was suspended? He forced me to leave my car in an Olive Garden Parking lot and put me in handcuffs. I had never been arrested before ..for anything. As he sat me in the SUV, my license was on the screen of the SUV. He took my license and drove me to the police station. He took my fingerprints and drove me back to my apartment complex. Oddly enough he did not take me to jail as required. A neighbor picked up my car, I paid the speeding ticket, the court gave me a $100 fine, despite the officer leaving the courtroom before my case.

What I didn't realize was this was the beginning of a pattern of harassment that has been ignored even by the city attorney Steve Sheers, and Police Chief Ashley Brown started by my boyfriend to keep tabs on me. A few weeks later watching movies in his home I fell asleep, and as was a common occurrence had a nightmare about being raped, because in what little free time I had I was trying to gather the evidence to put Shawn, a tow truck driver in Brookhaven for R. Mayer towing in jail. When my boyfriend tried to wake me, I accidentally called him by my ex-boyfriend's name. In my dream, my former boyfriend a police officer with the Dalton PD was arresting the guy who raped me. I was woken up to being slapped across the face. I had never been hit by anyone in my life. Even with a decade in law enforcement myself, arresting children, assisting law enforcement with searches and warrants I had never been hit by anyone. Stunned doesn't even begin to cover my reaction. With the sexual assault having been so recent, my reaction was not what it normally would have been. Normally, my training would have kicked in and I would have defended myself. I didn't.

The following month his behavior had become far too possessive for me to handle and I ended the relationship. He would still "run into me" when I was out running errands or trying to muddle through the fog. In March of 2019, knowing I had to do something about the tow truck driver who raped me I drove 6 hours to Dalton, Ga. Despite not having seen my ex-boyfriend in a few years, I trusted him without question. He is the son of a GBI agent and the police officers on the force were adopted family. I had been told he was now an SRO in the high school. I drove to the apartment we had once played house in, knowing he had moved and needing some place with good memories to rest.

That night I went to a motel with my two cats and tried to figure out how to go into a high school and tell him I had been raped. While getting my things out of my car late at night, a Dalton Police officer likely doing paperwork sat in the parking lot next to the motel. I finally felt safe. The next morning, I decided not to go to him. I didn't want to be like his ex-wife and bother him at work, I had my animals with me and my lease was up and I had to move out of my apartment. So, I went back to Savannah. The moment I left Dalton everything began falling apart.

When I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment complex, my ex-boyfriend was there, in uniform. I had no idea why he was there. We weren't together and hadn't talked in months. Exhausted from the trip , I just wanted to get my animals inside the apartment, take a nap and finish packing. As I carried my animals- Jacob and Ella into the apartment he started demanding to know where I was, telling me he had driven by my apartment and I wasn't home. Very little scared me but in the state, I was in I was petrified. It didn't help he was armed and the month before I was sexually assaulted, Jennifer Davenport with the Chatham County Attorney's office and Van Johnson had made false allegations to Superior Court Judge Thomas Bass, who without a hearing had taken my firearm. (Despite Jennifer Davenport having had the Writ of Injunction dismissed, Judge Thomas Bass refused to return the Ruger SR9 and the over 200 rounds of ammunition that I had voluntarily surrender to the Chatham County Sheriff's department. Sadly, Judge Bass had violated the law, he did not have the jurisdiction to hear any matter related to the suit against Chatham County as the case was in the Ga Supreme Court, this firearm by the way still has not been returned.)

He was in uniform and armed, demanding to know where I had been. Trying to protect my animals I tried to reason with him. I have enough training to know I was in danger. I was able to get my animals in the door while he ranted and swore. My only thought was I had to get myself behind that door too. Then the moment that is seared in my brain. He punched me in the face, so hard I hit the unlatched door and all but fell into my apartment. As quick as I fell into the door, I closed it locked it and leaned against it as if I back working in a psych hospital, despite it being locked. My face burned with the pain as tears flooded down my face. My cats crying to be let out of their carriers and scared with the commotion. I moved them and me to my bathroom and sobbed. I had no idea for how long. Time was irrelevant. Knowing he was armed and having not heard splitting of the wood of the door and distinct "police knock" and demands to open the door I ventured out of the bathroom in search of ice, Tylenol and a cigarette. Shaking too hard to do anything I stepped out on to my screened porch and lit a cigarette. As I inhaled, I tried to pull myself together and then I saw him. Sitting in the parking lot with hi windows down. Just looking at me. I begged him from the porch to leave. He just stared. Frozen, scared and defenseless I was cemented to the porch. Then he got out of the car. I somehow managed to get myself back in my apartment, and in the bathroom. My cats were crying at a decimal that would have made anyone crazy. Then I looked in the mirror. A small trickle of blood running from my nose, the first shades of bruises forming. Hours passed. I finally ventured out of the bathroom and to the kitchen for something cold to put on my eye. Again, I creeped out the back door on the porch, he was still there. I couldn't even feel the pain. I was too scared. The tears silent tears started falling again. With all my training nothing had prepared me for this. Another hour passed. In a fog, I walked out onto the porch. He was gone.

Knowing that 1-800-Junk was coming the next day, I went into a packing frenzy. If I could get out of my apartment he wouldn't know where I was going. The next day, I applied layers of Kat Von D make up. I didn't want my former probationer and his mother to see the black eye that was still settling in. After I left the apartment, I knew I had to get to someone I knew, the problem was how. As I took care of my then friend, Lanna Henze , studied for my LSAT, I begged my father in Arizona to help me. He wouldn't. One night I was told by Lanna's brother, I was taking advantage of her and she told me to go sleep in the Love's gas station parking lot. I reluctantly drove into Pooler to put gas in my car, with a trunk full of evidence that would save me if I could get to someone I trusted. I got my cats to my vet in Savannah and tried to figure out what to do. When I picked my animals up in Savannah we were headed for somewhere safe. I stopped at my favorite Starbucks and one event that haunts me happened- the battery on my car died.

Things went from bad to worse. The department that employs my ex-boyfriend began a continuing nearly two-year attempt to prevent justice that no one will listen to, and that every police officer in Ga has ignored with the exception of a Sgt from the Richmond County Sheriff's department. To Sgt Albert Barazon .. Thank you. You are the only police officer in Georgia who would listen, when you didn't have to. If any other officer would care as much about someone you have never met and only knew on LinkedIn this would have been long over.

To Sgt Jason Saal, Thank You for being an officer who didn't have to listen and thought a simple assault was wrong.

To Doyle, Tim Rzasa, Tyler Steerman, Veronica Dunn.. You would be proud. I haven't given up yet.

This is Part One in the Series … My goal here is to hold accountable at least with words the people who refuse to investigate the complete lack of investigation of police officers who still are not being held accountable. Sadly that includes police chief’s all over the state of Georgia. They have had the opportunity to handle it through established protocols and don’t even believe domestic violence and animal murder is something that should be investigated. Rather than protect and serve they have left me to advocate for myself and without even the resources to do so- even my brothers and sisters in blue have turned their backs on me. If they would have simply returned an email, asked a question or would even acknowledge what their officers are doing this article would never be even being written. The truth is the truth even if no one wants to acknowledge it.