In Tallahassee, a football player can get caught stealing, be cited for a misdemeanor, plead out, do some community service and be back on track with his life in a matter of days.
In Athens, the coaches can’t get through the disciplinary phase of the four kids who were arrested for theft by deception and charged with misdemeanors in March because… well, because Athens-Clarke County.
But there may be more to the hold-up than Richt looking for a strategic advantage against Clemson. The fact is, the players’ cases have yet to be adjudicated by the Athens-Clarke County court system. What happens there could have a bearing with what happens with football going forward.
Arraignments for the four players are expected to be set for the next session, June 3-5, according to Athens-Clarke County solicitor general C.R. Chisholm. The cases were originally scheduled to be heard April 17, but Chisholm said Monday he had to move them back simply because of the volume of documentation involved. He said investigators submitted a phone-book size file on the case. With all the other misdemeanor cases he has to prosecute, he simply hasn’t had time to review it all.
But Chisholm vows he’ll get to it soon.
A “phone-book size file on the case”? Good grief.
Get The Picture 
A-CC will always bring a gun to a knife fight.
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Just incredible. Athens/Clarke has turned into a police state.
~~~
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ACC… little Moscow on the Oconee. HUD is still looking for 3 very large spent on an affordable housing initiative. Non profit disappeared… pro Bono guys wrote off a million in fees and they say they can’t find them. Meanwhile the small non profits for such things as senior meals and prenatal care get squeezed as ACC makes it up to HUD. Now that pisses me off!
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“The Covers of This Book Are Too Far Apart”
A. Bierce and/or Others
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/30/apart/
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Unleash the flying monkeys!
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I think that it’s obvious…..ACC will go for the death penalty on this one.
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They’ve sent boys younger than these 4 to the gas chamber. They didn’t want to do it, but they felt they owed it to them.
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Now….how ’bout a Fresca?
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Do you want to be…..good?
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Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em
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Blindfolds first.
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Wow. We’ve even lost control of the solicitor general.
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This chaps my ass to no end. Athens is crawling with Mexican gang bangers, but the ACC won’t touch them for fear of upsetting the immigrant community, but they will damn sure get a pound of flesh from football players hooked up on the most chickenshit charge I’ve heard of in some time.
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Well, it’s not really a chicken-shit charge. The facts are that the kids got a meals check and double-dipped getting paid twice. On purpose. It’s a form of larceny, they did it intentionally and it shows a basic character flaw–dishonesty. That is the same type of dishonesty that got the now Auburn starting QB kicked off the Dawgs team. I’m not saying that the way the A-CC Solicitor is handling it is right but I am saying we don’t want to be Tallahassee either, do we?
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My point is that there is a sizeable, much more sinister criminal element in the ACC’s jurisdiction that they don’t seem particularly interested in confronting, instead focusing on low hanging fruit like this. It’s lazy law enforcement.
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I couldn’t agree more.
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Would I like to be a little more like Tallahassee when it comes to crab legs, sure…Do I want to be like them when it comes to QBs raping coeds, no I am fine where we stand on that issue.
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The UGAPD will at least realize who pays their salary when things get tight.
However in the ACCPD, there is nothing to temper their resentment for the “privileged” students in town.
This is revenge for them.
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CR Chisolm’s wife worked for the Athletic Dept for years so I doubt he has any axe to grind.
To be honest, I suspect he’d rather his office is prosecuting real criminals instead of wading through bank and phone records for nominal per diem checks.
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Thanks Mike. It is good to know there is a connection.
Unfortunately, I suspect the hard criminal cases won’t get near the media attention this petty case will get. Politically, they have no choice but to go all out on the evidence.
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It won’t get the media attention of a hard criminal case (unless it is particularly gruesome) because the Banner-Herald has never, ever been a good newspaper, and yet it has managed to find ways to go even farther downhill in the last decade or so. They have ceded covering the state legislature to news services, among other things, which was my last straw–that’s the place that only decides the budget allowances for our largest employer, the one that exists property tax-free in the state’s smallest of 159 counties.
At least the inaccuracies and typos that plagued them for nearly 200 years allow them to claim consistency.
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Some call it “The Banana Herald”
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There’s so much exaggeration here I wouldn’t know where to start…
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Since it’s going thru the Athens cops it must mean that Athens businesses are involved and pressing charges, otherwise it would be pressed by the state. Is that correct? This has nearly twice as much money involved than involved Jameis, but they both are misdemeanors. Cops (Sherf’s Dept) were called to Publix while the UGA players were discovered in audit of state funds and local cops were called by the UGA admin (why?). Both crimes are trickery thievery. Why couldn’t the UGA case be adjudicated by UGA for the state?
Don’t understand why the pathway to justice was handled thru local cops via UGA complaint. What gives gtp Mayor? Any barrister will do.
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Is this an all female investigative unit?
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???
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Cojones just woke up from his afternoon nap
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Bad-ass weed…is this an all female investigative unit?
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Reference the blog title for the female reference. And thanks for sharing your ganja.
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The athens business that is pressing charges is located in the Butts-Mehre Building.
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I am not a barrister but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Yes UGA could have handled this discipline internally, but remember $71.50 was at stake.
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If this was reserve funds that explains why UGA was so uptight about their actions.
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UGA policy requires them to report these thefts, no matter how small.
Every few years, a Professor, Secretary or someone in between will suffer the shame of a mug shot and perp walk for “mis-allocation of state resources” which usually involves petty cash or using the office debit card inappropriately. Not saying it’s right. But if a girl at a bank or the phone company pockets money for a birthday cake, she’ll get fired but not arrested. On campus, it is the inverse: she’ll be arrested but not fired (not immediately, at least).
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Interesting insight, Mike. Thanks.
I won’t say whether this policy makes sense, but it does explain why this was not handled internally.
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Yes, they have to report it, but I’ll wager part of the reason they report is so the NCAA won’t claim it’s an improper payment.
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Does UGA have a solicitor or DA? I think not. It sounds like Fla. law allows misdemeanors to be processed quickly. Some DAs in Ga. will take every misdemeanor to a grand jury. I wonder if our boys will plead.
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Delays are almost always good for the defendants. Probably true here too.
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I love Athens to death, but after visiting many other college towns in recent years (including moving to one several years ago), I have to admit that Athens just ‘feels’ more restrictive and police state esque than the other college towns I’ve visited or lived in.
My wife and I are in our mid 30’s and quite conservative/low key, yet even these days we feel like we need to really mind our p’s and q’s when we visit friends or attend football games. During our last visit in fall ’12, my wife was drinking a root beer that she purchased from a convenience store downtown (one of those IBC type bottles), and a few moments later a cop approached us out of nowhere and immediately began scolding my wife about her open container and drinking in public while starting his typical procedures. When he realized it was root beer and not beer, instead of apologizing or at least admitting his mistake, he instead told us we weren’t using good judgement walking around in public with something that looked like a beer bottle, whether we were actually drinking alcohol that day or not.
As much as I hate to say it, only in Athens does stuff like that happen. These days its a bit of a joke to us, as occasionally we’ll walk around downtown drinking a bottle of root beer to see if it attracts the same attention. Not surprisingly, as of yet it hasn’t.
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I have yet to figure out who it hurts for an adult to drink a beer in public.
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The pres holds beer summits to solve important disputes.
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And I often wonder whether it’s imported or domestic beer served at the WH. If imported, it means they are beer lovers and go for “that Belgium beer thingy” or maybe they just send out for Steven’s Point Beer or some other great tasting domestic that people in Chicago drink. Either way, I wonder if anyone gets loaded on that high alcohol imported stuff, wanders about the WH backyard and gives unintelligible advice to the Secret Service. That would be a hoot worthy of a Herbstreit comment.
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They home brew at the WH.
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I am still trying to figure out how Jameis Winston completed 20 hours of community service in less time than it takes to get Aaron Bonding to bond you out of a scooter violation in Athens.
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Five hours a day for four straight days. That was easy.
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/05/tallahassee-ymca-president-praises-jameis-winstons-community-service-skills
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You can get yourself clean, you can steal a good meal,
You can do whatever you feel…
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Hell, he didn’t even miss a start on the rotation.
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I liked the line about “… and he interacted with some of our members on the fitness floor,” – community service in the weight room. We need to get our O-linemen to steal some crab legs (in Tallahassee, of course)
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What I want to know is why Richland County, SC could get a ‘Peacemaker’ and Athens-Clarke County couldn’t?
http://reason.com/blog/2008/09/01/sheriff-lotts-new-toy
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Is GT now offering a degree in “Criminalogy”? How about Florida? South Carolina? These guys at ACC are coming from somewhere.
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