ATLANTA — The Fulton County Board of County Commissioners held its first meeting of 2025 on Wednesday.
Before the commissioners were a mixture of new and old business items, including two related to issues at the Fulton County Jail.
The two items related to the Fulton County Jail were a request for funding by the sheriff’s office to pay certain contracts in 2025 and a resolution by Commissioner Marvin S. Arrington Jr. to declare a state of emergency related to the jail.
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On Dec. 18, commissioners voted down the request for funding, as Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat requested about $2.24 million to purchase supplies and equipment for jail inmate and detainee needs.
Those needs included purchasing items like toilet paper, trash bags, towels, laundry detergent and other cleaning items, uniforms for inmates, “shank free items,” nasal Narcan for jail officers, KN95 masks, and more.
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In the wake of the U.S. Department of Justice investigation into civil rights violations at the Fulton County Jail, FCSO entered into a consent decree to fix the issues inside.
At Wednesday’s commission meeting, discussion of Arrington’s resolution would be the first debate on declaring a state of emergency by members of the commission in a formal setting since the agreement was signed.
When presented at the meeting in December, Arrington’s resolution reflected the findings of the Nov. 14, 2024 report by the U.S. government, which found multiple instances of rights violations due to the jail’s conditions.
The resolution called for the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to “marshal all available resources for the mitigation of the alleged unsatisfactory conditions at the Jail,” which included provisions to protect the health and safety of inmates, employees and physical infrastructure of the facility.
Channel 2 Action News is keeping an eye on the meeting to learn the disposition of both jail-related items as they are brought up during the commission session for approval, or rejection.
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