Talitrix Funds Campaigns of Local Sheriffs Creating Apparent Pay-to-Play Opportunities

Yes­ter­day, the Ful­ton Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers heard star­tling rev­e­la­tions from fel­low Com­mis­sion­er Bob Ellis. Ellis, the com­mis­sion­er from North Ful­ton, issued his remarks to pro­vide con­text for an ensu­ing dis­cus­sion relat­ing to a much-report­ed con­tract between the Ful­ton Coun­ty Sher­iffs office, head­ed by Sher­iff Patrick Labat, and Tal­itrix, LLC, an Alpharet­ta security/monitoring firm that pro­vides wear­able bio­met­ric wrist bands and tech­nol­o­gy used in track­ing indi­vid­u­als as autho­rized by law.

If you fol­lowed my Sub­stack last win­ter, you know of cer­tain seri­ous con­flicts-of-inter­est chargesI alleged regard­ing Geor­gia House Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Todd Jonesin view of leg­is­la­tion he has spon­sored over the last two Gen­er­al Assem­bly ses­sions. Those con­flicts are due to the fact that Jones is the founder of Tal­itrix and one of the patent hold­ers of the Tal­itrix tech­nol­o­gy, which is the same tech­nol­o­gy I allege his leg­is­la­tion would require the Geor­gia Depart­ment of Behav­ioral Health and Devel­op­men­tal Dis­abil­i­ties to pur­chase. Last Spring I filed anethics com­plaintagainst Jones for spon­sor­ing leg­is­la­tion his firm could, and very like­ly would, prof­it from.

Begin­ning his dis­cus­sion, accord­ing to Com­mis­sion­er Ellis, on April 19, 2023 the Ful­ton Coun­ty Com­mis­sion approved an emer­gency fund­ing request brought by Sher­iff Labat in the amount of $5.3 mil­lion dol­lars. That mon­ey was to be spent to install Tal­itrix tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing mon­i­tor­ing devices in one of the Ful­ton Coun­ty jails, a move which, lat­er in the sher­iffs words, was designed to save lives. Of that fig­ure, $2.1 mil­lion would be spent to pur­chase Tal­itrix wear­able devices, the kind referred above. Accord­ing to the con­tract, the work would be com­plet­ed and devices pro­vid­ed to jail inmates by July. By Sep­tem­ber, no wear­ables had been fur­nished and very few are fur­nished and work­ing as of yes­ter­day, accord­ing to Ellis.

That is where the sto­ry got inter­est­ing. By way of con­text, Com­mis­sion­er Ellis informed the mem­bers that when the April emer­gency fund­ing request was approved, the sher­iff had not dis­closed that he had pre­vi­ous­ly entered into cer­tain no-bid con­tracts with Tal­itrix, dat­ing back to Sep­tem­ber of 2021. Ellis expressed con­cern that knowl­edge of those con­tracts had not been shared at the time of the emer­gency request. Com­mis­sion­er Ellis then star­tled his fel­low com­mis­sion­ers, reveal­ing that since his last elec­tion, Sher­iff Labat had received a total of $78,100 in cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions from Tal­itrix, its employ­ees, spous­es or relat­ed enti­ties, ques­tion­ing whether the Sher­iffs deci­sions to con­tract with Tal­itrix and the April emer­gency request might have been cloud­ed by the mag­ni­tude of those con­tri­bu­tions.

Com­mis­sion­er Ellis con­tin­ued, shar­ing that late in the evening of Octo­ber 9, he received a text sent by an indi­vid­ual claim­ing to be the CEO of Tal­itrix, basi­cal­ly sug­gest­ing that I be qui­et in a fair­ly threat­en­ing mes­sage.

The North Ful­ton com­mis­sion­er then relat­ed a sub­se­quent expe­ri­ence arriv­ing home to find polit­i­cal fliers had been placed by hand into his mail­box, those fliers dis­play­ing var­i­ous deroga­to­ry state­ments about him, also mes­sag­ing that Com­mis­sion­er Ellis had sold out Ful­ton Coun­ty. Ellis thought it odd to receive those kinds of fliers, remind­ing the com­mis­sion mem­bers that 2023 is a non-elec­tion year, when nei­ther he nor any­one else is run­ning for local office. The cam­paign-style lit­er­a­ture had been placed by hand in his mail­box, as appar­ent­ly it bore no postage.

Accord­ing to the North Ful­ton Com­mis­sion­er, at the bot­tom of the fliers was print­ed,Paid for by Amer­i­cans for Pro­tect­ing the Pub­lic.Curi­ous to know more about that enti­ty, Ellis went online to the Geor­gia Ethics web­site, dis­cov­er­ingAmer­i­cans for Pro­tect­ing the Pub­licis a PAC orig­i­nal­ly formed on March 31, 2023 by an indi­vid­ual of the name of Justin Hawkins, who, inci­den­tal­ly, is the CEO of the Tal­itrix, LLC, and would be the same indi­vid­ual who alleged­ly sent the threat­en­ing mes­sage in the recent late-night text, if, of course, the text was authen­tic.

Ellis expressed inter­est in the tim­ing of the text and the deliv­ery of the mail­box fliers, which hap­pened to coin­cide with the pub­li­cized upcom­ing dis­cus­sions sched­uled for yes­ter­days com­mis­sion­ers meet­ing, hav­ing to do with Sher­iff Labats emer­gency request for mon­ey going to Tal­itrix, and the com­pa­nys seem­ing fail­ure to live up to its oblig­a­tions.

The com­mis­sion­er con­clud­ed his con­tex­tu­al remarks ref­er­enc­ing a $232,000 con­tri­bu­tion to theAmer­i­cans for Pro­tect­ing the Pub­licPAC, giv­en it from an orga­ni­za­tion by the name of Tail­trix, either mis­spelled but mean­ing Tal­itrix, or per­haps an enti­ty of a sim­i­lar name.

Com­mis­sion­er Ellis remarks led me to fol­low that same path of inves­ti­ga­tion to learn more aboutAmer­i­cans for Pro­tect­ing the Pub­lic, Tail­trix and to dis­cov­er what a $232,000 PAC con­tri­bu­tion might have been used for. I dis­cov­ered that, of the $232,000 con­tributed by Tail­trix, at least$188,125.52 had been con­tributed either to the pri­ma­ry, or the runoff cam­paign of Clay­ton Coun­ty Sher­iff Lev­on Allen, who won re-elec­tion last April by a scant 266 votes. Doing the math, it appears to have cost Tail­trix about $707/vote to help the embat­tled sher­iff to win his runoff.

I also dis­cov­ered that the present Chair­man ofAmer­i­cans for Pro­tect­ing the Pub­licis one, William M. (Marc) Mor­ris, for­mer Geor­gia House Rep from Forsyth Coun­tys 26th Dis­trict, and appar­ent present Chief Peo­ple Offi­cer at Tal­itrix.

Thus, yes­ter­day, in the few short min­utes while Com­mis­sion­er Ellis spoke, we learned that Tal­itrix, LLC spent over $78k sup­port­ing Ful­ton Coun­ty can­di­date for sher­iff, Patrick Labat, with whom the com­pa­ny would sub­se­quent­ly con­tract for over $5 mil­lion in busi­ness hav­ing elicit­ed emer­gency fund­ing from the coun­ty com­mis­sion in April. We also dis­cov­ered the same com­pa­ny, Tal­itrix (Tail­trix), found­ed by Geor­gia House Rep Todd Jones,fund­ed the cam­paign of Clay­ton Coun­ty Sher­iff, Lev­on Allen, through theAmer­i­cans for Pro­tect­ing the Pub­lic PAC, to the tune of over $188K. Doing that math, and assum­ing the same return on invest­ment, appar­ent­ly we could expect a lit­tle over $12 mil­lion in Tal­itrix con­tracts from Clay­ton Coun­ty, should the same emer­gen­cies arise.

At the end of the meet­ing, obvi­ous­ly fed up with all he heard, com­mis­sion chair, Rob Pitts, motioned the Tal­itrix con­tract be rescind­ed. The motion passed 4–1 with one vot­ing present.