Dunwoody Police Chief Heads to the Other Georgia

Today, Dunwoody Police Chief Billy Grogan has Georgia on his mind.

He’s taking his police knowledge across the globe, flying from Atlanta to the Republic of Georgia.

Grogan will be traveling around the country for a week, putting on seminars about the process of starting a police force from scratch – something he helped accomplish two years ago in Dunwoody.

The trip is a result of a March 2010 visit to Dunwoody's Police Department by the Republic of Georgia’s Police Chief Goga Grigalashvili.

Grogan gave the chief and his men a presentation during their visit.

“We talked to him about things like recruiting and police training and the importance of having a good culture within the department, as well as community policing initiatives,” Grogan said. “He really enjoyed those presentations and thought it had applicability to his situation.”

Grigalashvili thought it would be a good idea for Grogan to give some training to his police force.

“One of the things he found pretty interesting was the fact we were a new department,” Grogan said.

Grigalashvili, on a much larger scale, was trying to do something similar – to build up his police department.

“He was brought on in 2005 to take over their police force and kind of get it started,” Grogan said. Georgia had had a police force, but it was undergoing a huge change.

In 2005, the entire 30,000 person Republic of Georgia Patrol Police Department was terminated, according to Grogan. It was dissolved because it was antiquated and corrupt, among other things. Since Chief Grigalashvili was brought in to rebuild the department, the U.S, Department of State has worked with him to upgrade and train his police department.

“He’s trying to modernize it. That’s been his job,” Grogan said.

Grogan’s trip is paid for by the U.S. State Department, which has been establishing relationships between Georgian police and U.S. Police forces.

Grogan will be in the Republic of Georgia for a week, returning next Saturday.

This isn’t the Dunwoody Chief’s first trip overseas on police business. He helped to train Egyptian police in 2008, teaching a course on community policing to the country’s national police department. He did the same in Israel in 2000.

“Certainly going to Egypt and Israel it is interesting to see how other countries police,” he said. “In some cases it can be similar to us, but in many cases it can be far different.”