Sheriff vs. Chief: No trust in Monroe

MONROE, Ga. -
When longtime Monroe public safety director Keith Glass decided to run for sheriff this year, he knew it could be an emotional campaign. After all, he was running against a man he's known and worked with for years. Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman wound up beating Glass badly in the Republican primary this past May, winning 76 percent of the vote.

The two men did not see eye to eye then. They sure don't now.

Since the primary, Sheriff Chapman required all municipal police departments to deactivate their body cameras before they enter his jail.

The ban originally covered only Monroe cops, but Chapman said he reluctantly had to extend it to everyone.

"One bad apple is spoiling the whole bunch," he complained. "And I hate that. I hate that."

That "bad apple" Chapman claimed, is chief Glass. Chapman said he caught one Monroe police officer taking pictures with his cell phone inside the jail. The picture wound up on Facebook showing, ironically enough, that same no-camera memo.

"Coming in and recording and taking photographs inside the jail and posting them on Facebook and making derogatory comments, I don't agree with that." Chapman stressed.

The decision clearly bothered Monroe police officers. One senior officer told me there was only one thing worse than a sore loser, and that's a sore winner.

"And they think you're a sore winner," I pointed out to the sheriff.

"I'm a happy winner," he replied. "Not sore about anything. I don't like some of the things that he did."

Much of it stemmed from chief Glass' close friendship with the Wingo family, the people behind Angel Food Ministries. The Monroe-based charity helped provide food and jobs to needy people both in Walton County and ultimately across the country.

"That ministry did give people who couldn't get jobs some jobs," Glass explained. "And it give them a second chance."

But the sheriff remembered Angel Food Ministries in a different way.

"It was an albatross around the neck of Walton County for some time," he said.

Several years ago Angel Food Ministries attracted the attention of the FBI, amid allegations the family that started the ministry spent donation money on themselves, buying a plane and a classic automobile. Sheriff Chapman said he arranged for chief Glass to meet with federal agents in Athens.

"The FBI called me after he had left that meeting and said he wasn't truthful with them," Chapman told me. "And I asked, well, does he get a second chance? And they said sure. So I called Keith and he went back. And that's all I know of that."

Glass doesn't dispute the sheriff's recollection, but insisted he never lied to the FBI.

Joe and Andy Wingo would eventually plead guilty to money laundering, be sentenced to seven years in prison and forced to pay back millions of dollars.

Only after their arrest did the Wingos learn chief Glass had worked as an FBI informant, secretly recording hours of conversations with family members, including founder Joe Wingo:

Wingo: I ain't never asked you to fix nothing for my ass.
Glass; No.
Wingo: And I ain't going to ask you to fix this. All I want is that... remember now is I got God's name involved in this thing because we're still a ministry.

Sheriff Chapman said he got the recordings from the Wingo family who obtained them during the trial. He provided them to the FOX 5 I-Team after we made a request. We analyzed several hours worth. We heard nothing that implicated the chief in any wrongdoing.

Some of the recordings surfaced during the sheriff's race. Sheriff Chapman told us they didn't come from him.

"What I done, I done as a cop," Glass insisted. "At no time have I ever been looked at and told I was under investigation. Or I was going to prison if I didn't do something."

But Chapman still doesn't buy that explanation.

"I don't believe that at all."

"Why do you think he was doing it?" I asked.

"To save his own skin."

Last year that lack of trust surfaced right in the heart of downtown Monroe. Georgia revenue agents raided a popular Monroe store and charged the owners with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales tax money. The sheriff made sure the Monroe police department got no advance notice, even though police headquarters is right next door. That case has yet to go to trial.

It was an embarrassing moment for Glass who had to learn about the raid along with the rest of the city. Now he's been having to explain how a veteran cop became a government informant.

"Do you kind of wish chief that you'd never run for sheriff?" I asked.

"Frankly Randy, it was hard," he explained. "But the more you see and understand, it was right."

So when the county's top lawman can't trust the city's top lawman, where does this wind up?

"What's the saying?" asked the sheriff. "This too shall pass?"

"Can it pass?"

"It's going to have to pass," he answered.

"With both of you holding the same positions?"

"What's the other option?"

Indeed. The sheriff lobbied Monroe city council to fire Glass, but the effort only generated one vote.

Chapman will soon begin serving another four-year term.