New Clarke jail commander appointed

Clarke County Sheriff Ira Edwards has appointed a new jail commander, six months after he abruptly fired the former commander amid allegations deputies at the jail were recruiting prisoners into a controversial religious sect.

The new commander, Chief Deputy Sheriff Jack Mitchell, a 34-year law enforcement veteran, became interim jail commander not long after Edwards fired Brett Hart as jail commander in April.

Edwards never has explained why he fired Hart, other than to say he decided it was time for a change in management at the 338-bed facility off Lexington Road.

In a statement Monday, Edwards said he picked Mitchell to run the jail because in Mitchell’s more than three decades in law enforcement, 27 of those years have been in mid-level management positions.

“Mitchell has done a fine job serving as the interim chief deputy. He has a common-sense approach to management, and his people skills will play a major role in moving our jail section in the right direction as we continue to service the citizens of Athens-Clarke County,” the sheriff said.

Chief Deputy Sheriff Gene Mays initially was appointed interim jail commander when Hart was fired, but Mitchell replaced him when Mays, a member of the Air Force Reserve, was activated for duty in Iraq.

Mitchell, a 55-year-old Athens resident, became a Clarke County deputy in 1972, but moved to the Athens Police Department two years later. He remained with the department for 26 years, did a stint as a detective and as lieutenant served as shift commander in the patrol, criminal investigations and administration divisions. He also was the department’s chief internal affairs officer.

Mitchell left the police department in 2000 to take the position of captain in the administration section of the sheriff’s office.

His appointment as chief deputy sheriff in charge of the jail took effect Sunday.

Mitchell faces several immediate problems, including a badly overcrowded inmate population and a high turnover of deputies at the jail.

“I am convinced that we will continue to succeed in these areas with our new hiring/incentive program, our multiyear plan to further reduce inmate overcrowding, more timely repairs to the building and equipment and other improvements that we determine are needed,” Mitchell said Monday.

“We should also continue to identify and implement inmate programs that could reduce violence and change behaviors.”

Mitchell said that an internal investigation into prisoner recruitment that Hart launched before he was fired still is continuing, but that he was unable to talk about it.

Hart alleged that several deputies belonged to the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, which he described as a black supremacist religious sect that was recruiting prisoners.

“As always, we have no comment about the specifics of ongoing investigations,” Mitchell said. “However, no final actions have yet been taken.”

The internal jail probe began in March after Hart was notified by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons that a letter from a Clarke deputy to the Nuwaubians’ spiritual leader, Dwight “Malachi” York, was intercepted at a federal maximum security prison in Colorado, where York is serving a 135-year sentence on child molestation, racketeering and other convictions. Hart has said it was a violation of jail policy for deputies to correspond with convicted felons, and was even possibly criminal.

Several deputies belonging to the sect remain on administrative leave after being suspended with pay in July.

That same month, a Clarke County grand jury filed a report stating it had looked into allegations of possible wrongdoing by Nuwaubian jailers, recommending that the matter be further investigated by an independent body.

Also in July, Hart filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission alleging his firing was racially motivated because he had pressed the internal investigation into the black supremacist’s sect’s influence at the jail.

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