A former police chief for a tiny northwest Georgia town, his wife and the couple’s son-in-law have been acquitted in a racketeering case, a Bartow County attorney said.
David King, former chief of the White Police Department; his wife Jane Richards, who served as the city’s clerk of municipal court and city manager; and Blake Scheff, who previously served under his father-in-law as the city’s only full-time officer, were accused of profiting from fines for city citations.
As the city’s profits increased, so did the family’s salaries, prosecutors previously contended. But attorney Lester Tate, who represented King, said there was no evidence of the allegations.
“The audits never showed any money was missing,” Tate told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
On Monday, a Bartow judge ruled there was no evidence King had committed a crime, Tate said. Richards and Scheff were both acquitted last month in a directed ruling by Judge D. Scott Smith.
In March 2016, King and Scheff were arrested on charges of false imprisonment, extortion and violating oaths of public office. King and Scheff, who were both fired, were arrested after the GBI and FBI executed search warrants at the White Police Department and White City Hall.
The GBI had accused King and Scheff of arresting individuals on fabricated charges and reducing the criminal charges to a citation, thereby collecting fines, between December 2011 and April 2015. More than 3½ years later, King, Scheff and Richards were all indicted in the case.
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