SANDY SPRINGS, Ga. — A police officer is in some trouble after a woman accused him of stalking and harassment.
A Sandy Springs police sergeant told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne that his department arrested Forest Park Police Officer James Kea after a sophisticated stalking scheme in which, among other things, his ex-girlfriend says Delta Air Lines told her that her account was used to send threats about a Delta flight, plus he had suspected cocaine on his person, in his car and at his apartment.
Winne was there inside the Fulton County Jail as Kea was brought in for questioning and ultimately arrested.
“I just want to get your side of the story. Are you Officer Kea? Are you with Forest Park?” Winne asked Kea, who just kept on walking without answering any of his questions.
“It’s a black eye to the profession,” Sgt. Leon Millholland of the Sandy Springs Police Department said. “At the end of the day, we have to treat the individual firmly and fairly just like anyone else.”
One might expect a police officer to drop off a prisoner at the Fulton County Jail, a Sandy Springs police sergeant said Sandy Springs police delivered Kea to the jail on five counts of computer invasion of privacy, three counts of computer trespass, two counts of id fraud, plus charges of forgery in the first degree, computer forgery, possession of cocaine and misdemeanor stalking.
Millholland said a woman contacted Sandy Springs police saying her ex-boyfriend was harassing her.
“If the allegations are true, this was a sophisticated stalking scheme?” Winne asked Millholland.
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“Yes sir. it went on over a period of several weeks,” Millholland said.
Chris Harvey, executive director of the Peace Officers Standards and Training Council, POST, said his agency, which sanctions officers who fail to live up to state standards, placed Kea on a year’s probation after he resigned under investigation from the Riverdale Police Department in 2014.
“He had to take ethics and professionalism training during the time his probation,” Harvey said.
An online POST record said Kea was the alleged subject of 9 disciplinary complaints, of which seven of them were sustained. He was placed on the Early Warning System. It said Kea received three additional complaints and that he was placed on administrative leave and later resigned while the complaints were still open.
“That would have been a red flag,” Harvey said.
Riverdale Police Chief Todd Spivey told Winne by phone on Tuesday that he was not chief when Kea resigned while under investigation in 2014 as a Riverdale officer, but the chief said his review of the file shows the complaints were for policy or professionalism issues, not for breaking the law.
Still, Spivey said the volume of complaints sustained against Kea would’ve been a red flag for him as one who hires police officers.
Forest Park Police Chief Brandon Criss said he is troubled by the new allegations against Kea and was still gathering information on his arrest by Sandy Springs police and is awaiting the case file for an internal investigation.
The chief said Kea has been placed on paid administrative leave. Criss said the thing that sold him on hiring Kea was that Kea told him that he was young and immature when he was at Riverdale police, and he had learned from his past mistakes.
Spivey said complaints against Kea back in the day ranged from a messy car and leaving his gun in the men’s locker room to recording a citizen in a wheelchair in a comedic manner and posting it to social media.
Harvey with POST said a felony arrest triggers a suspension of an officer’s certification to police in Georgia.
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