Pro-tip for elected officials: constituent service shouldn’t mean getting yourself arrested

Thursday was a bad day for Brunswick City Commissioner James Henry Brooks, who was arrested in Glynn County and charged with obstruction of justice, while separately, Camden County Brunswick City Commissioner James Henry Brooks, Sr was arrested this week and charged with obstruction of justice in the appalling case in which a baby was shot in front of his mother.

Brooks, who serves as mayor pro tem on the four-member city commission, was arrested Thursday on charges of obstructing a police officer and interfering with a witness.

Brooks had attended a court hearing for 17-year-old De’Marquise Elkins, the murder suspect accused of shooting the baby, and was accompanying the teen’s mother.

When a police officer tried to talk to Karimah Elkins after the hearing, Brooks stepped in between them, Tucker said. “He told her, ‘Don’t make any statements until you have an attorney,’” Tucker said. “That’s what he did. I tell clients all the time don’t talk to the police without a lawyer, and it’s not a crime.”

“They’re constituents of Commissioner Brooks and he went to bat for them” before the women were charged, Tucker said. “Unfortunately he picked the wrong ones to go to bat for.”

The commissioner has other legal problems that aren’t connected to the baby killing. Also Thursday, a grand jury in neighboring Camden County indicted Brooks on racketeering and other charges, saying he abused his elected office by getting applicants for police jobs, liquor licenses and permits to pay him in exchange for his help influencing other officials. Tucker said Brooks did nothing illegal.

Brooks was initially held without bond in Glynn, but a magistrate judge later granted bail. Also on Thursday, a Camden County grand jury indicted Brooks of six counts including racketeering, three counts of violating his oath of office and two counts of attempting to use his elected position to influence hiring decisions.

Brooks is accused of taking $300 from a man in Camden County who had applied to be a Brunswick police officer.

Under Georgia law, the district attorney will forward the indictment to Gov. Nathan Deal, who will appoint a panel that includes the attorney general and elected officials to review the charges and recommend whether Brooks should be removed. Deal will then decide whether Brooks is to remain in office.

Brooks was originally charged by warrant in February 2012, but the formal charges of an indictment are required for removal from office.

Earlier this year, Commissioner Brooks spent two weeks in the Camden County jail after originally being charged in the hiring scandal. In a story dated January 31, 2013, the Florida Times-Union reported,

Saying Brooks could pose a risk to residents in Camden and Glynn counties, Magistrate Jennifer E. Lewis refused to release him on bail but set a preliminary hearing for 10 a.m., Feb. 10.

Lewis issued her ruling after a half-hour hearing in which Brooks sat shackled before her in striped jail clothing. Near the end of the hearing, District Attorney Jackie Johnson said there is more to come than the single bribery charge in which Brooks is accused to taking $300 to have a drug conviction removed from the record of a man who wants to be a police officer.

Johnson described the investigation as a probe into an “ongoing criminal enterprise that’s been going on for a long time.”

Apparently, neither of these were the Commissioner’s first run-ins with the law:

Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents arrested Brooks just after 2 p.m. in Brunswick on an outstanding Camden County warrant charging him with bribery, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

“He is charged with accepting a $300 bribe in Camden County to have a misdemeanor conviction of possession of marijuana expunged so someone could get a job with the police department,” Tucker said.

Individuals with drug convictions cannot be certified as police officers in Georgia.

Tucker said it was beyond any authority of a city commissioner to have a conviction removed from the court records.

“A Superior Court judge can’t even get a conviction expunged, much less a city commissioner,” Tucker said.

Tucker said Brooks returned the money well before his arrest.

Tucker also said public officials cannot be charged with bribery for taking money to do something that they have no power to carry out.

“It is well established a person cannot be bribed to do something outside his official dutes,” Tucker said of case law.

This is not Brooks’ first encounter with the legal system.

In January 1985, a Glynn County grand jury indicted Brooks on two counts of forgery, one count of credit card fraud and one count of the criminal receipt of goods fraudulently obtained.

The indictment says Brooks obtained a credit card by forging someone else’s name on a credit card application and also signed someone else’s name to obtain two phones and telephone service.

Brooks used the credit card number to place a phone order for goods from Spiegal Inc. and used the card to obtain goods worth more than $500 from Sears Roebuck Inc.

Brooks pleaded guilty and on Nov. 11, 1985, was sentenced to two three-year prison sentences and to pay $1,800 to Sears and $1493.32 to Spiegal.

Brooks was sworn in as the South Ward commissioner Jan. 1, 2006, and won a second four-year term in 2009.