Please help me get my dad back.
Walker County Sheriff’s department is illegally holding my dad for a ‘crime’ they have no evidence of.
On May 5th my dad, a Clarke County resident, was picked up by the Walker County Sheriff’s dept. The Clarke County jail claims he was never even booked into their jail which means Walker broke protocol. Walker County is basing jurisdiction on the fact he maintains a bank account in Walker even though the account states his home address is In Clarke and he has not lived in Walker for two years. The listed ‘crime’ is second degree theft but the fact of the matter is my dad runs an engineering and repair service for radio station equipment. A man in Maryland shipped him a transmitter module that he claimed needed repairs all the while quite literaly bragging about the last repair company he had ripped off for repairs. As such my dad told him that it would put him on a payment first basis which the man agreed to. He also agreed to the mechanic’s lein that was to be included in case he did not pay within 90 days after the repairs were completed. Once the repairs were completed however and payment was due he refused to pay and threatened to list it as stolen if it was not shipped back for free and the $53 shipping was to be out of my dad’s pocket. The man did list it as stolen but Clarke County would not act on the warrant since the module had been shipped to my dad and the repairs had been done.
Meanwhile, as all of this was going on someone (one of our admins) on the Walker County Area News page (a Facebook news page) posted a video of Sheriff Underwood (Walker County Sheriff) making contradictory statements about what he did or did not know about how to do his job. The first half was from last election where he said he knew all about how to do his job and the second half was right after the Great Peanut Butter Escape of 2017 (you can really just google that phrase and find it) where he claimed he knew nothing of how the jail was run and it was all up to the duputies on how it operated in a day to day basis. It should be noted that it is now election season again for the next Sheriff. My dad is the known main administrator of the news page given he is a former Walker county resident but there are others. He is also well known as the main operator and engineer for my LPFM radio station WQJJ.
On May 1st my younger sister caught two men in our garage in our locked radio room. They had broken into the room, turned off our transmitter (a federal crime), and when she confronted them did not identify themselves as law enforcement of any sort. They were wearing black polo shirts and the only way she knew they were law enforcement was because one of the shirts had a small emblem embroidered onto it. They approached her and immediately started asking questions and asking if they could search the house. They did not produce a warrant despite being asked and deflected any questions such as who they were, what they were there for, and how long they had been in our garage. We contacted dispatch and dispatch said they had sent no one over. The pictures of the unmarked vehicles they arrived in garnered some attention on the news page and people were quick to point out the lights in the grill.
Not long after, the Sheriff’s department posted our house address on Facebook and claimed we had made the story up and they were looking for our dad and they had a warrant but felt that producing it to my sister might let him know they were looking for him. Of course they dragged in the ‘well if you have nothing to hide’ tactic that is a blatant manipulation in an attempt to get someone to waive away their Fourth Amendment Right on their own and started asking people to come in and file more warrants on him. ‘If you have any complaints against him come on in and file them or post them in the comments.’
Despite not being able to produce a warrant because they were ‘scared it might tip him off’ they were very public about the ongoing ‘case’ on their page.
They arrested him on the 5th when a tip came in from someone that he was a Clarke County resident. They went down to Clarke County late at night and raided the home he was staying in and arrested one of his friends as well for putting up a fight when a bunch of officers came barreling in the door as they were sleeping. They seized all of his electronics and the module in question but somehow all of the 'evidence’ (the module is the only real evidence but the electronics too) was left behind in the custody of a Clarke County investigator who has family/friend ties in Walker while my dad was transported up to Walker County and booked into the jail.
Since then an investigator has harassed family members in the South end of the state and another investigator has contacted all of our advertisers and advised them to not do business with us. All of our advertisers have fled. None will pay and it has effectively killed our business as we have now been off the air for nearly the entire month of May. We have been sitting without power the entire time because we were unable to pay our bill due to this and for some reason less than two days after our power was cut our account was pennied out and the money needed to pay to get the power back on more than tripled.
Dad meanwhile still sits in the jail even though there is no evidence and the Clarke County Sheriff has since relieved the Clarke county investigator of the electronics and equipment that had been seized. The electronics were returned to dad’s business partner down in Clarke county but the module remains in custody with the Sheriff down there and the reason the he gives is for 'safe keeping because I know it wasn’t stolen.’ My dad went to a bail hearing on May the 7th and bail was set at an astounding and upayable $25,000 cash only bond with an ankle monitor should he manage to make bail. Which we have been notified by several bond agencies that it is an incredibly high bond given the charge. I have contacted SBI who at first told me they need to be invited to look into this and then on a separate occasion said that now that he has had a bail hearing they can’t touch this even though it is a blatant abuse of the law.
Since he is seemingly stuck there until his court date on June 27th we attempted to find him an attorney. I have contacted three who claim to do pro bono work and indeed they sound interested- up until they hear the name of the man they would be trying to free. Immediately after they hear his name they back out. As such we seem to be stuck with the public defender who we have been warned by many will accept the guilty plea for his client without consulting them and whether they are in the court or not. We have also been warned that the judge who will be presiding over this is aware of this and allows it. The public defender has only contacted my dad once despite numerous attempts on behalf his behalf and by dad himself. The one form of contact was a letter sent detailing to him what will happen after he accepts the guilty plea. My dad does not wish to plead guilty given that he did not actually commit a crime.
Now I may need to be corrected on this but should his preliminary hearing be on the 7th of June given he has a right to demand a hearing within 30 days of his arrest?
Overall aside from breaking and entering, a search and interrogation without a warrant or at least without providing one, leaving jurisdiction, unlawfully arresting a man and detaining him without evidence, setting an excessive seeming bail, breaking federal law by turning off a broadcasting transmitter, harrassing family and friends as well as clients, allowing an attorney to break the law by pleading guilty for his clients without their permission, and probably other laws they have broken.
It should be said that dad has a bit of a habit of tipping off the authorities when he sees corruption. That’s part of the reason he’s in jail now. He’d been vocal about the number of African American and Hispanic arrests versus white in the past as well as the number of hangings (all listed as suicides and we’re up to 5 already since January). He also made several pointed comments about where the taxpayers’ money is going if the department is still always asking for more to be donated. He’s always been vocal about calling this sort of stuff out and has always deemed it his right and his duty as an American citizen. It has never served him well. Quite the opposite really. In fact, one of the comments on the donations site by a 'Linda Smith’ is from a former landlord he caught peeking into my sister’s window at night. I also feel the need to apologize for the tone of his donations page. He wrote it shortly before being arrested and he was not happy at all about any of this which is understandable. The lawyer he mentions on the page has since then backed away from this entire thing.
Everything aside we have managed to find one new lawyer who will touch this who is not the public defender but she requires a $2,500 retainer fee to start on anything and we can’t even afford that at the moment. Any donations would be extremely appreciated. Please someone help me get my dad back!
https://gogetfunding.com/radio-station-manager-falsely-accused-of-theft-prosecuted-by-most-corrupt-county-in-america-which-doesnt-even-have-jurisdiction/
