Possible Suspects Abound in Killing of Crusading Sheriff-Elect in Georgia

ATLANTA, Dec. 24 - The obstacle to solving the assassination of Derwin Brown, who was gunned down in his driveway only three days before he was to be sworn in as the DeKalb County sheriff, is that there are so many potential suspects.

Mr. Brown, a 46-year-old Long Island native and father of five, had vowed during and after his upstart campaign that he would clean house in a sheriff's department where corruption had been entrenched for three decades. Deadwood would be eliminated, he pledged. Investigations would be opened. Audits would be conducted. Contracts would be reviewed.

Passionate about overhauling the department, Mr. Brown was admired by his friends as an agitator and a rabble-rouser. He was making a lot of noise, a little too much, some thought, for a man who had yet to take office.

"Derwin had said he was going to clean the place up," said Liane Levetan, the departing chief executive officer of the county, which includes a sliver of Atlanta and a wide swath of the city's eastern suburbs. "He obviously stepped on the toes of a lot of people, people who know a lot."

The list of those who might have felt threatened by Mr. Brown's emergence is long, including employees he planned to fire, contractors and vendors and the incumbent sheriff he defeated in last summer's election. And so, nine days after the killing, the authorities caution that they were not close to cracking the case because of the number of people to be interviewed and leads to be followed.

"Everyone is being interviewed who could have been affected by Derwin taking office," said J.Tom Morgan, the DeKalb district attorney. "It's just a wide-open investigation at this point. And we've got a very long way to go."

Richard J. Kolko, a special agent with the Atlanta office of the F.B.I., which is helping the state and county police, called the case "your classic gumshoe investigation."

"There are a whole lot of people working on this, a lot of people to be interviewed, and a lot of leads to run down." Mr. Kolko said.

Historically, such things have simply not happened in DeKalb County. With nearly 600,000 people, it is the second-largest county in Georgia, home to Emory University and Stone Mountain. But despite its size and proximity to Atlanta, the county is more suburban than urban, and the notion of a "professional hit" on a public official, which is how Mr. Morgan has described the shooting, was unthinkable until the night of Dec. 15.

That Friday night, Mr. Brown and his family had been at a local restaurant celebrating his graduation from the sheriff's orientation course. His wife and several of his children had driven home ahead of Mr. Brown, who arrived alone about 11:40 p.m. He parked on the street, according to law enforcement officials, and began walking up the driveway, carrying a bouquet of roses for his wife's birthday. Inside the house, his family heard the ambush, and his 17-year-old son, standing in a doorway, watched Mr. Brown fall, the officials said. Family members are now under police protection.

There were 16 shots in all, and 11 hit Mr. Brown, who died at the scene. The authorities have said little about ballistics, except that at least one large-caliber weapon was used. They have not said whether the shots came from more than one gun, whether they suspect more than one person fired or whether they believe the killer was hired.

"It's absolutely not domestic or robbery related," Mr. Morgan said. "It was certainly someone familiar with using weapons. It's someone who wanted Derwin dead and wanted him dead badly." The shooting has horrified and bewildered DeKalb because of the nature of the attack and the hope that Mr. Brown had encouraged. Several county officials, who asked not to be named, said they were stunned that the problems in sheriff's department could be nefarious enough to inspire a murder.

Then again, some of the officials speculated, perhaps the killing had nothing to do with Mr. Brown's new position. Perhaps he made enemies in his previous job as a DeKalb narcotics investigator, they said.

Unlike in most Georgia counties, the DeKalb sheriff is not the chief law enforcement officer. The county has a separate police department, and the sheriff is responsible for managing a jail, serving warrants, and protecting the courts. The department has 650 employees and a nearly $50 million budget. Among those being interviewed by investigators are 38 sheriff's department employees, some of them recently promoted by the departing sheriff, Sidney Dorsey, who had been notified by Mr. Brown that they would be laid off. Some had appealed to Mr. Brown and had been told he might reconsider, said his brother Ron.

But Ron said he found it absurd to think that his brother was killed by a disgruntled worker. "You don't go out and kill somebody because you're not going to have a job," he said. It is more logical, he said, to assume that those responsible stood to be harmed by Mr. Brown's pledge to investigate his own department.

Apparently, there was plenty to examine. Mr. Brown's predecessor, Mr. Dorsey, was already under investigation, accused of using on-duty deputies to staff his private security firm and assigning inmates to work on houses owned by supporters of his wife, Councilwoman Sherry Dorsey of Atlanta.

Mr. Dorsey, who was elected in 1996 despite revelations that he had been arrested for domestic abuse and was once charged with manslaughter, could not be reached for comment. But he said in several interviews last week that he had nothing to do with the killing.

Mr. Dorsey, who lost to Mr. Brown in a Democratic primary runoff, is the latest in a long line of DeKalb sheriffs accused or convicted of corruption in office. His predecessor, Pat Jarvis, was convicted on federal mail fraud charges stemming from a kickback scheme involving jail vendors. Mr. Jarvis's predecessor, Ray Bonner, was indicted by a federal grand jury, accused of misrepresenting a fund-raising company, but the charges were later dropped. Mr Bonner's predecessor, J. Lamar Martin, was convicted in 1972 on state bribery charges for taking payment from a bail bondsman.

Mr. Brown had vowed to be different. A graduate of Malverne High School and C.W. Post campus of Long Island University, he moved to Atlanta in 1977 and joined the DeKalb sheriff's department as a deputy. After two years, he joined the county police department and quickly began to make waves as an outspoken advocate for his colleagues.

He joined a lawsuit that led to a federal court order to increase the number and rank of African-Americans in the department, and two years ago he led an effort to unionize the force. He also hosted a cable television talk show, wrote a column in a weekly community newspaper and led a variety of youth programs.

"He didn't just hang his hat up at the end of his shift," said Gale Walldorff, a DeKalb County commissioner. "He was serious about using his position to be a mentor."

Six weeks ago, Ms. Walldorff had breakfast with Brown to discuss his plans as sheriff.

"He just seemed very intent to me on making things right," she said. "He was going to go and put things in order. I said, 'Derwin, if you go in there and run a clean shop, you can be sheriff forever.' He seemed to think that was a good plan."


New York Times article: Journalist is Kevin Sack