THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2026 · Issue No. 78 · 12 min read
Fired over camera searches, Milton detective goes to court
The city's own decision says why it fired him. Plus: most readers in our poll have voted.
This issue is presented by Amber Kuhn · At Home Property Group |
A Milton resident who has sold more than $80 million in homes. Amber has guided buyers and sellers through more than $80 million in sales since 2018, pairing nearly two decades in corporate talent acquisition with relationship-first real estate. Bolst North Atlanta, top 2% nationally, and a repeat Atlanta Home Magazine All-Star.
404.441.7582 · amberkuhn@athomepg.com Sponsored · Amber Kuhn, At Home Property Group |
|
In this issue A fired detective goes to court. Randy Dula asks a judge for his job back. The city’s own decision, filed with his petition, says why it fired him. Our poll: most have voted. That’s 38 of the 47 readers who answered Tuesday’s poll. Early voting ends Friday. And. A football win at Riverwood Friday guarantees Milton at least a tie for first in its region. Also: applications for City Hall’s citizens academy, the clocks going back, a correction, the Halloween weekend calendar and a one-tap poll on how you’ll spend the night. |
Top of Mind
the one thing to know this morning
Fired Milton detective asks a judge to undo his firing
Randy Dula, the Milton police detective fired in August over searches he ran for his wife’s car on the city’s Flock license plate reader system, has asked Fulton County Superior Court to give him his job back.
His petition, filed Monday and assigned to Judge Thomas A. Cox Jr., asks the court to order him reinstated with back pay and benefits, or to send the case back to the city for a new hearing. Attached to it is the city’s final decision in his case, a record we asked the city for on Oct. 15 under Georgia’s open records law and have not yet received.
Why it matters: The city’s 36 license plate cameras, from the company Flock, record the cars that pass them, yours included, and officers can search those records by plate. The city’s written reasons for firing an officer over his searches are now in a public court file, and a judge has been asked to decide whether they hold up.
What the city decided. City Manager Steven Krokoff, the city’s top appointed official, denied Dula’s final appeal to the city on Sept. 28. He upheld the firing and the four findings a department review board had made against him: conduct unbecoming, neglect of duty, abuse of position and use of department equipment.
Dula has said he used the cameras to find his wife’s car because he feared she might be having a medical emergency. Krokoff wrote that Georgia’s plate-reader law allows the cameras only for investigations “initiated by a law enforcement agency,” and that he did not find Dula’s searches to be “activity initiated by the Milton Police Department.”
Krokoff wrote that Dula’s testimony about Jan. 24, 2026, undermined his claim that the searches were “an authorized response to a medical emergency.” The recorded searches “spanned approximately seven and a half hours,” he wrote, yet Dula did not ask for help from the police agency covering the area where he believed his wife was. Krokoff wrote that he did not treat the absence of a 911 call, “standing alone, as establishing misconduct.” But together with the repeated searches and the absence of agency involvement or documentation, he wrote, the missing call weighed against Dula’s “characterization of this activity as an authorized agency response to an emergency.”
He also wrote that Dula told the review board nothing it could say would change his belief that his actions were lawful, and quoted him: “There’s nothing I would have done different.” Krokoff wrote that those statements bore “directly” on whether anything short of firing would work. Citing “the seriousness and repeated nature of the conduct,” he ruled out counseling, training or a lighter penalty.
What Dula says. His lawyer, Robert L. Sirianni Jr., argues the city read the law too narrowly. A brief filed with the petition, his lawyer’s written argument, says Dula used the system “as a police officer” because he believed the person in the car might be having a medical emergency. It argues that “the duration and repetition of the searches do not transform that stated law-enforcement objective into a personal one,” and that the city “inferred an unauthorized personal purpose from the absence of formal agency procedures.”
The petition says Krokoff misapplied city and police policy, too, including the department’s plate-reader policy, which Dula was never charged with breaking. Among its other claims:
- →He was not told in writing what he was accused of before he was questioned in the department’s internal investigation, as department policy requires.
- →A witness with evidence in his favor was kept out of the review board’s hearing.
- →The board held back its decision, took more information from the investigator and met again without Dula and without telling him.
- →Firing him was harsher than the discipline the city has given other employees for comparable or more serious conduct.
Krokoff’s decision does not answer those points one by one. It says he considered Dula’s objections to “the investigation’s fairness and completeness” and found “no basis to conclude that the findings or disciplinary disposition resulted from predetermination, manipulation, or retaliation.”
What the dates show. The review board’s findings are dated July 29, the petition says. Dula was fired Aug. 7, according to city and state records. Police Chief Jason Griffin denied his first appeal Aug. 20, and Dula appealed to Krokoff on Aug. 24.
While that appeal was pending, the police department told us twice, on Sept. 11 and Sept. 18, that the two cases of possible camera misuse it had found in a review of search activity “remain under investigation.” On Sept. 18 it said that was why it could not give more details, and that it “will address any substantiated policy violations through the applicable administrative and disciplinary processes.” Neither answer mentioned the board’s findings or that an officer had been fired. The department has not told us whose cases they were. USA TODAY’s list of police flagged for unusual Flock searches includes Dula and one other Milton officer, who resigned in July while under investigation, according to state records.
On Oct. 2, four days after he denied Dula’s final appeal, Krokoff declined all 44 of our questions, including whether anyone involved in the two cases had left the department. His letter cited the staff time and legal review the questions required, and it called any private use of the cameras “unacceptable.”
The city’s answer. We asked Wednesday whether the city would fight the petition, why the department said in September that both cases remained under investigation and how it would answer Dula’s claims. The city’s statement: “The City does not comment on the substance of individual personnel matters or pending litigation. Because of that, the City has no comment on a court petition or on this matter generally.” Krokoff wrote us the same thing Oct. 22, after we had emailed the city questions following the Oct. 20 news conference.
Sirianni and Mitch Skandalakis, the lawyer who spoke for the Dulas at that news conference, did not answer our questions by Wednesday’s deadline. We will add any answer online.
What’s next. The petition asks the city to send the court the full record of the case, including recordings of the board hearing. The case turns partly on what Georgia’s plate-reader law allows. When we searched CourtListener, a public database of court opinions, on Oct. 2, we found no Georgia Supreme Court or Court of Appeals opinion citing that law since it took effect in 2018. The city says it expects to release records from our Oct. 15 request for the department’s internal investigation of Dula by Nov. 4.
Earlier: the lawyer’s account and what the search logs show (Oct. 20) and our first story on his firing (Oct. 15).
Know a neighbor following the camera story? Pass this along.
Fill the roundabout | |
The Roundabout stays free. Starting Sunday, you can help keep it that way. | |
This fall we filed more than 40 public records requests, most of them to the City of Milton. They’re how you learned about the cameras and the contracts approved after the fact. Records cost money and reporting takes time, so on Sunday, Nov. 1, we open The Inside Lane, a membership for readers who want to help pay for it. | |
Nothing is gated. Every issue, story, guide and record we publish stays free for every reader, whether you join or not. | |
 | |
Each neighbor who joins or gives lights one stretch of the circle. The first 50 to join become our Founding Lane. | |
|
Your Vote
Two days left to vote early: today and Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., at any Fulton early voting site. The Milton Library had taken 11,180 ballots by Tuesday night, 1,765 of them on Monday and Tuesday. Countywide, in-person early voting reached 248,003 ballots, and Tuesday’s 19,218 made it the busiest day since Friday, Oct. 16, according to the county’s newest unofficial count.
Most readers who answered Tuesday’s poll had already voted: 38 of 47 said they had cast a ballot, 36 of them early and in person.
Have you voted yet? | ||||
Yes, early in person
| ||||
Not yet, on Election Day
| ||||
Not yet, early by Friday
| ||||
Yes, by mail
| ||||
My mail ballot isn’t sent yet
| ||||
Haven’t decided when
| ||||
47 readers, one tap each. We left out four taps that hit several answers within three seconds, the mark of email security software, not people. It isn’t a scientific poll, just the readers who tapped. |
Voting by mail? By the end of Oct. 27 the county had mailed 15,349 ballots and accepted 8,443 back from voters. Its seven mail ballot drop boxes, inside early voting sites and open only during early voting hours, had collected 2,356. None is in Milton; the nearest, at the Alpharetta Library, had taken 613. The state’s My Voter Page shows whether yours has been accepted, and it can text, call or email you when the status changes. If your ballot never arrived, the county says you can still vote in person: early through Friday, or at your polling place on Election Day, Nov. 3.
Bring a photo ID. Georgia requires one to vote in person. A Georgia driver’s license works even if it has expired, and so do a U.S. passport, a military ID and the other photo IDs on the state’s list.
After Friday. Early voting and the county’s drop boxes close Friday at 7 p.m. Our Oct. 25 issue covers what to do with a mail ballot after that and how Election Day works, and our Oct. 20 guide explains the ballot itself.
The Scoreboard
every game, both schools, the night it finishes
Wednesday, Oct. 28 · flag football | ||||||
| ||||||
Football · Friday, Oct. 30 · 7:30 p.m. kickoff | ||||||
| ||||||
Scores, standings and rankings: MaxPreps, a high school sports site. Rankings as of Oct. 25 (football) and Oct. 26 (flag football). Win-loss records are our own count. | ||||||
Flag football. Milton’s flag team shut out Gainesville 20-0 and Johns Creek 22-0 at home Wednesday, for 14 straight wins, eight of them shutouts. Cambridge has settled on a score: 19-0 over Chattahoochee on Wednesday, after 19-0 at Sprayberry on Monday. Both came in region play, where the Bears are 2-0. Milton is back Monday, Nov. 2, with two games: 6:30 p.m. against Heard County and 7:30 p.m. at McEachern.
What a win Friday would clinch. If Milton beats Riverwood, the Eagles (4-0 in Region 7) can finish no worse than tied for first. Gainesville and Roswell, both 4-1, each have one region game left: Gainesville’s is Friday at Lanier, and Roswell is off until it plays at Milton on Nov. 6.
Cross country. Saturday’s sectional meets decide who runs at state. Runners from Milton’s region race at Foxhall Resort in Douglasville, where the boys’ qualifying race is set for 8:40 a.m. and the girls’ for 9:45. Cambridge’s region runs at One Church in Fayetteville, boys at 8:30 and girls at 9:30. Each qualifying race sends its top 12 teams and its first 20 finishers on to state, where Cambridge’s qualifiers race Friday, Nov. 6, and Milton’s on Saturday, Nov. 7. Sectional tickets are $10, sold only online through GoFan. Every schedule and score →
Correction: Our Oct. 8 issue said Milton’s flag football team shut out Riverwood 38-0 and Lanier 40-0. The scores were the other way around: Milton beat Riverwood 40-0 and Lanier 38-0.
Around Milton
Learn how City Hall works. Applications are open for Milton’s 2027 Citizens Government Academy. Participants visit city facilities, meet leaders from across city government and ask them questions. The class meets Tuesdays at 6:30 p.m. for eight weeks, starting in late January. Classes routinely fill, the city says, so it asks anyone interested to apply soon. The city’s announcement lists no cost or deadline.
Reader poll · One tap How are you spending Halloween night? Halloween is Saturday.
One tap shows you the tally so far. Results Sunday. |
The Agenda
public meetings this week and next
Planning Commission. The commission met Wednesday night on the Brookecrest and Harmony at Highway 9 subdivision plans and a permit for a preschool in Crabapple, all three in our Oct. 25 preview. The city hadn’t posted the results when we put this issue together, so they’re in Sunday’s issue. Until then, the city’s video of the meeting is on YouTube.
Coming up. City Council meets Monday, Nov. 2, at 6 p.m. As of Wednesday night, Municode, the site where the city posts agendas, had nothing up for that meeting or for the others we listed Tuesday: the Design Review Board on Tuesday, Nov. 3, and the Council’s work session on Monday, Nov. 9.
This Week in Milton
the calendar, day by day
Sunday, clocks go back. Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, when clocks fall back to 1 a.m. So Halloween night gets the extra hour.
Thursday, October 29
- →4:00 PM · Wanderlust Food Truck Fest · Market District Crabapple and Crabapple Market, until 8 p.m.
- →6:00 PM · Acoustic Tom · Hyde Brewing, until 9 p.m.
Friday, October 30
- →6:00 PM · Live music · Six Bridges Crabapple, until 9 p.m.
Saturday, October 31
- →12:00 PM · RPG Alliance: Teen D&D (teens 15 to 17; one spot left as of Wednesday night; register) · Milton Branch Library, until 4 p.m. (free)
- →3:30 PM · Halloween drive-in golf cart movie night · Hyde Brewing, until 10 p.m.
- →6:00 PM · Live music with Kenny & Mollie & Sarah · Six Bridges Crabapple, until 9 p.m.
See the full Milton calendar → · Got an event? Submit it
Spot something we missed? Just reply. Every correction we have run is on our corrections page.
