By: Jeremiah Chancey, Guyton resident
Recently the Effingham Herald wrote a glowing review of the new Guyton Elementary School Resource Officer (SRO) Dennis Langley. In the article, they touched upon his hire and the purchase of a new vehicle. The article left the impression that this was the first ever Guyton PD SRO and car purchase. However, both the vehicle purchase and Officer Langley were not the first in the new SRO program at GES. After a review of the SRO, it is clear there is information that was not contained in the article the public deserves to know.
As the school year was beginning, the city reached out to O.C. Welch about purchasing a new police vehicle to use for the newly created SRO position at GES. On multiple occasions O.C. Welch asked city officials to give him details of what they were looking for and he would make it happen. Those details were never sent, in fact no response was ever sent to his requests. Instead of following through GPD Chief Breletic traveled to Roswell, GA to a car dealership where he purchases a 2021 Dodge Challenger. The paperwork shows this car had never previously been used as a police vehicle, but rather had been used as a rental car. Records show this purchase was never approved by council until after it became public, then city officials approved the purchase one month only to follow up with a discussion of transitioning the vehicle to surplus. Shortly after the purchase the school board reached out and stated they weren’t comfortable with the process used for the purchase and would like the city to follow the purchasing policy for any SRO vehicle. This was why the council discussed having to surplus the vehicle. The city did spend several thousand more dollars on the vehicle to install a radio, MDT, and other electronic equipment so the Chief could use it as a daily vehicle or a surveillance vehicle as he has claimed.
GES did have an SRO before Officer Langley was hired. Beginning with this school year GPD Officer Anguiano filled that position. School and city officials reported that he was doing a great job and was well liked at the school. In December Guyton city council voted to give all city employees a $500 Christmas bonus for their hard work last year. That bonus went to everyone who had not submitted a letter of resignation. That meant that Officer Anguiano was not eligible because he recently given the city a one month notice he was leaving to become SRO at Springfield Elementary. Thankfully resident turned mayoral candidate Andy Harville and journalist Jessica Syzilagyi organized a GoFundMe that raised over $2K to give to Officer Anguiano to make up for the city’s failure to value its employees.
Now that you have a firm understanding of how we arrived here, it’s important to examine just who this new SRO really is. Guyton’s application asks that those seeking employment list their last three employers. In the reason for leaving box those employers he listed the following as the reasons: city council, political turmoil, and personal reasons. Those reasons seen very ambiguous and raised concerns that led to a deeper dive in them.
On his application Officer Langley listed that he was a Lieutenant with the City of Boston Georgia. He lists that employment started in March of 2018 and ended in April of 2019 for personal reasons. Records obtained from the City of Boston show that he was only about a year and a half off for his starting date. The city reported that he began employment in November of 2016, and it ended in May of 2019.
According to records and the dates of employment from his application he quickly transitioned to the Town of Lake Park. That might sound familiar since it is the same city that Chief Breletic worked for as chief of police until his termination. His tenure there does overlap with Officer Langley and gives a clue as to how Officer Langley came to hear about the SRO position and likely why he was hired. In his letter of resignation Officer Langley cited political upheaval and named two council members as being responsible for it. He gave no specifics as to what that meant, but the date of his resignation is quite different from the date listed on his application with the City of Guyton. On his application he lists that his employment ended in November of 2021, but his letter of resignation shows that it did not end until seven months later in June of 2022.
The only disciplinary action taken against Officer Langley during his tenure with Lake Park was a written counseling with a day of suspension. In January of 2022 he was written up when the mayor (one of the people he cited during his resignation) witnessed him running a stop light. An investigation later confirmed the action and in addition to his write up he was forced to park the patrol car at the station at the end of his shift for 30 days and was suspended for one day. The write up doesn’t specify he was in the patrol car at the time of the incident, but the corrective action taken appears to hint that he was. Could it be that he was still mad the mayor witnessed and reported his violations of law? Or maybe the Town of Lake Park wasn’t comfortable with him working for another department that led to his resignation rather than political turmoil?
Officer Langley listed the City of Cecil as his most recent employer. For his dates of employment, he lists he worked there from November of 2021 until February of this year. Records from the City of Cecil indicate that his employment actually began two months before that in September of 2021. He also put a different start date for the Town of Lake Park than on his Guyton application. It appears as if Officer Langley altered his dates of employment so that it would show a transition from one employer to the next with no gap or overlap. In this instance he is listed as being employed by two different police department from September of 2021 until June of 2022. His employment with the City of Cecil ended earlier this year when “He threw his badge and keys, spoke inappropriately to the mayor; then walked out.”
Officer Langley’s City of Cecil file also shows that he was derelict in paying his court ordered child support. Shortly after his employment with Cecil began the city received an Income Withholding for Support order. This order stated that Officer Langley was more than 12 weeks behind on support and the order was good through September of this year. It is concerning that Officer Langley is charged with caring for children when he has in the past been negligent in his own child’s financial well-being.
For his employment history description of work Officer Langley cites general law enforcement and traffic training for all of his employers. No employer reported any history of working as an SRO, his social media profile is NSFW (I highly recommend you check it out) and given his impulsive behavior (especially at his last employer), it is unclear why he was selected to work with children. On his application for employment with the City of Guyton it states above the signature block “I understand that any omission or misinformation given on this application will prohibit my employment on the grounds of the rejection of my application or immediate dismissal whenever such omission or misinformation is discovered.” It appears that like Officer Langley, the City of Guyton has lied on its application for employment as Mayor Deen has shown that statement simply isn’t true. If they are okay with police officers falsifying records to get hired, how well can we trust they aren’t doing it afterwards?
