11/01/2024
Good morning Cobb County! If you were planning to early vote, then don’t forget today is the final day to do so. Make sure to cast your vote and be a part of what will be a record setting election year!
Now let me speak to the press release from the Cobb DNC attempting to smear my Chief Deputy. To start, Owens camp had their team of attorneys Open Records my personnel and Internal Affairs file back in April, and there’s nothing there for them to exploit. So what’s their next logical step, try to smear my Chief Deputy with events that occurred nearly TWO DECADES ago. And at least one of the incidents was exonerated. As it pertains to the other, Dondelinger took responsibility for his actions, accepted the discipline administered and went on to serve the agency and his community for another 15 plus years. Promoting to the rank of Captain which he retired at.
It’s important to note, that when Dondelinger was promoted to the rank of Captain (which is a Command Staff and Key Managerial position) it was Craig Owens himself that promoted him. Which begs the question of why he’s attempting to put the information out now as a smear campaign when he clearly was not concerned about it when he promoted him…. The answer to that question is simple too, he’s trying to get the spotlight off of himself, which is also not unusual for Owens.
The answer is because Owens is now on defense. He and a few others have spent the better part of the year making false complaints to internal affairs against me, and attempted to weaponize the county attorney’s office to get me out of the race and or fired. All of their attempts were poorly planned, poorly executed, and without merit.
And then there’s Whoppergate! Sheriff Owens made world coverage when he was exposed for how he acted over his burger with Mayo and not cut to his liking. The thing is, this type of behavior is not uncommon for him, it was just caught on video this time. When reporters reached out to him for comment, he refused to comment until his team formulated a press release defending his behavior. It took Owens 3 days to put together a story and speak to the press.
Now we’re days from Election Day and his last attempt is to smear Dondelinger, because he’s already put out a commercial inferring I’m a racist, I posted it so everyone could see his desperation.
Let me tell you the interesting thing about his Virtue Signaling about Dondelinger mistreating inmates. We’re in the process of suing Sheriff Owens for open records violations and guess what records he’s hiding?????? They’re records about an inmate being abused by one of his deputies and he’s refusing to release them because he did nothing about it. Owens talks a lot about transparency but provides very little.
In closing, I can’t promise you that nothing bad will happen when I’m your Sheriff. But I can promise you this, I will hold everyone in the agency accountable and abuse or mistreatment will not be tolerated. Transparency is more than a buzzword and the citizens of Cobb County deserve it.
