A longtime critic of Dunwoody and its police department has filed a lawsuit alleging violations in the city’s open records department.
Joe Hirsch, who identifies himself in the 226-page lawsuit as a journalist on X (formerly Twitter), named three city employees in his Oct. 31 lawsuit: Dunwoody City Clerk Sharon Lowery, Clerk Eric Shealy, and Information Technology Department Head Ginger LePage.
Hirsch’s lawsuit also names the city of Dunwoody as a defendant.
The city released a brief statement, saying it could not comment specifically on the litigation, but added, “We want to make it clear that the city of Dunwoody complies with all applicable provisions of the Georgia Open Records Act.”
The lawsuit alleges that the trio lied about and/or covered up information related to an open records request Hirsch made regarding an incident that occurred between a police officer and the manager of a Dunwoody tire store.
The Oct. 13, 2021 incident, as recounted in the lawsuit, involved Dunwoody Police Officer Minh Pham and an unnamed store manager at Mr. Tire on Dunwoody Village Parkway. A call received by 911 claimed that Pham was being belligerent.
The lawsuit claims that Pham “essentially held hostage a Mr. Tire store manager against his will by causing the store manager to believe he was being detained for failing to fix the officer’s wife’s personal car.”
A communications log that Hirsch included in the lawsuit showed a call from Mr. Tire at 1333 Dunwoody Parkway was reported as a civil dispute between two parties, and the caller advised that “a customer and her husband are refusing to let them leave.” The reference to “them” does not list a person’s name. In the report, the caller was only identified as “John.” The call log identified the husband as a police officer.
In the lawsuit, Hirsch said that he became concerned after hearing about the alleged incident and filed an open records request around Oct. 28, asking for all text messages to and from Pham from Oct. 13 to Oct. 14.
An email sent from Dunwoody City Clerk Eric Shealy to Hirsch five days later said the city found “no records that are responsive to your request using the information provided.”
However, in July, Hirsch sent a message to Dustin Guwin, a Dunwoody contract employee hired through a staffing agency, asking him about the text messages.
According to the suit, Guwin replied that LePage had acknowledged there were four text messages on Pham’s phone during the period Hirsch requested, despite Dunwoody Police Chief Billy Grogan having told Guwin there were none.
“Ginger informed myself and Ms. Lowery, who decided we’d rather not go down the path that accuses Grogan or one of his officers of being less than forthcoming,” Guwin wrote to Hirsch. “So Ginger told me to just forget that Sharon [Lowery] had ever asked me about it and that they’d report back to you that there were no texts during that time period, which I believe that they did.”
Hirsch also included in the lawsuit the minutes of several council meetings wherein, during public comment, he said that LePage and Lowery should be investigated and criminally charged for lying to him regarding Pham’s texts.
Hirsch, who ran unsuccessfully for city council in 2017, asked that each of the three defendants be fined $1,000, that the city be compelled to release the text messages, and that his attorney fees and litigation costs be covered.
