Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat is working to pay the $1.4 million his office owes to a former security contractor who threatened to file criminal charges against him for unpaid services.
The sheriff’s office said on Tuesday its finance team had found a way to finally pay the outstanding balance from within its existing budget.
“As a part of the FCSO end-of-year close-out process and by demonstrating efficient resource management, we are able to satisfy the obligation, although we are still not adequately funded for an agency of this size with the mandates required,” the sheriff’s office stated. “This is an issue that our team has been actively addressing with Fulton County government officials since 2021.”
The payment comes after Strategic Security Corporation CEO Joseph Sordi terminated their contract at the beleaguered Fulton County Jail and asked dozens of contract employees to walk off the job in August, because they were not getting paid.
Earlier this month, Sordi also said that the company had filed a mechanics lien against Fulton County for the unpaid services and was pursuing criminal charges, including fraud, grand larceny and theft of service, against Labat in his official and personal capacity.
Sordi cited Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts, who told the Associated Press in an interview that “the sheriff’s office signed the contract to provide staffing for watchtowers within the jail without the involvement of the county purchasing department,” allegedly showing procedural impropriety in the contract’s execution.
The sheriff’s office said Strategic Security is set to receive the payment electronically on Friday, Dec. 13.
It follows recent votes by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to give the sheriff’s office $2.1 million for overtime pay it also owed its employees and $643,275.46 for an unpaid bill with LEO Technologies, which provides phone monitoring services at the jail.
While Labat continues to claim his office is underfunded, county data shows its funding increased 66% over the past five years.
Still, commissioners did vote to take back over $2 million in emergency funding for the jail that was being used to install technology that used wristbands to monitor the health of inmates last year because they were taking too long to roll out.
Commissioners later discovered Talitrix, the company hired to do the job, did not go through a normal bidding process and donated to Labat’s campaign for sheriff. Talitrix then sued him over the unpaid contract.
In 2023, commissioners also voted to abolish the jail’s inmate welfare fund after discovering that millions of dollars earmarked for inmate care were instead spent on flowers, gift cards for staff and a bounce house. The money was moved into the county’s general fund — though some commissioners disagreed about that being the right move.
“If we just eliminate it, I know they sent us some information about some unintended consequences around contracts and things of that nature,” Commissioner Dana Barrett said at the time.
She was one of three who voted against the move to abolish the fund. Four commissioners voted in favor.
