NORMAN PARK — Norman Park’s story: Is it a mayor’s personal vendetta or a gung-ho police chief getting his comeuppance? Whatever the cause, the fallout could be a rough road for the municipality.

The forced resignation of Ray Bedal as Norman Park Chief of Police came with a measure of protest Friday night. With him set to go is the remainder of the police department and another city employee, officers said.

“I’m not staying in this mess. I’d jump back in Iraq before I stay here, and I got blown up over there,” Investigator Shaun Amy said after Friday’s called city council meeting.

“We come in every day not knowing if we were going to have a job,” said Lori Beth Wiard, who resigned Wednesday as city clerk because of the stress in the work environment.

Some in the community have been nervous about the uncertain state of the police department. The Observer listened to a recording of a Jan. 18 911 call during which a Norman Park Dollar General employee inquired whether the police force was fired. She told the operator that Jay Gray, the mayor’s son, was in the parking lot with several others allegedly bragging that all the city’s police officers have been fired. Dollar General had been victim to break-ins in the past year, and the employee, audibly rattled, asked to have an officer at the store when the clerks leave at night.

“Norman Park is part of Colquitt County, and we’re certainly not going to abandon the citizens of Norman Park. If they need our services, all they have to do is call,” Colquitt County Sheriff Al Whittington said Monday.

Councilman Wesley Key, who is in his third term on council and voted against accepting Bedal’s resignation, said he thought the police chief was “fired the wrong way.” Bedal was dismissed first by Mayor Sandy Hurst Jan. 16, she said, but the city council agreed Friday night to accept a resignation and agreed to his terms, including a month’s salary and the return of a vehicle he bought with his own money then titled to the city to use as a patrol car. The city attorney advised the city, Hurst said, to settle with Bedal, because although the city would win the suit it would cost the city more to go to court.

“I think we should’ve given him a reprimand like we’ve always done. I just felt like he wasn’t done right,” Key said. “As far as what he wanted that’s fine with me, but if we would have done it right to start with, none of this would have never come up.”

At an earlier meeting, some citizens came forward to complain about Bedal’s aloof demeanor and his method of issuing traffic citations. Key understood that the police chief issue would be discussed at Friday’s meeting, “but the mayor goes the next day and fires him.”

Norman Park council historically, he said, will issue an oral reprimand then a written one before considering termination of an employee, Key said.

Critics of Mayor Hurst say the real root of the her discontent with Bedal stemmed from when he was said to have issued a traffic citation to her husband while employed with the Berlin Police Department several years ago. Bedal doesn’t recall the ticket and said he couldn’t find record of it. They also contend that she has a “vendetta” against the police chief because of several of her relatives’ run-ins with Norman Park police. Hurst said she didn’t harbor any ill-will toward Bedal for his encounters with her husband nor does she have a grudge against him for his role in the arrests of a couple of her relatives.

A 14-year-old juvenile arrested over Christmas for a string of burglaries in Norman Park, including causing more than $6,000 worth of damage at the Georgia Baptist Conference Center, is the son of Hurst’s aunt and works in Hurst’s cafe, Bedal said. Although the case was turned over to the sheriff’s office, Norman Park police was the arresting unit, Bedal said.

In addition, Hurst’s son was picked up last week by the Norman Park police for a misdemeanor probation violation.

“They’re trying to make it look like I’ve got something against Raymond and I don’t. I don’t have nothing against him, and there are other people — that’s what’s getting this mess all out of proportion. I don’t have nothing against him. It’s just the incident against him — him speeding on D.H. Alderman Road…,” she said.

Hurst was referring to a complaint by a resident on D.H. Alderman Road that as he was turning into his driveway one day, Bedal allegedly drove past him in a patrol car at least 100 miles per hour and had almost collided with him. Bedal was supposed to be off duty.

Bedal has been police chief in Norman Park since summer.

“We’ve had a lot of complaints about him and even the sheriff’s department has had a lot of complaints about him,” she said. “…Ever since he got hired, we’ve gotten complaints about him. I was just hoping it would just die down, but it kept getting worse and worse.”

Whittington confirmed Monday that he had numerous complaints about Bedal, including the chief driving at reckless speeds off-duty. He deferred the complaints to the mayor, he said, but dispatched a patrolman with a radar to catch Bedal. The deputy, however, never found him, Whittington said.

Bedal said the complainant said that he was flying by at speeds approaching 120 mph.

“As for passing that man at 120, that didn’t happen,” Bedal said.

The mayor allegedly claimed she followed him home on a specific date in the past couple of weeks, he said, and that Amy was riding with him. Amy told The Observer he wasn’t with Bedal at that time. Plus, a volunteer fireman was following Bedal, Bedal said, and his vehicle doesn’t go that fast. The firefighter nodded in agreement with Bedal.

“He’s not above the law, and that’s the way I felt,” Hurst said.

Ironically, the policemen claim that Hurst doesn’t want the force to issue traffic citations, especially to Norman Park residents, and that she allegedly has stated that she wants Norman Park to run like Mayberry.

“Basically, she’s made statements that she wants this town to run like Mayberry and she doesn’t feel that anyone in the city should receive a citation,” Bedal said. “…She doesn’t want any citations. She’s been in my office and told me she doesn’t want any citations issued, especially people who lived in the city.”

Last year, the Norman Park Police Department wrote more than 1,500 tickets, Bedal said. Before Bedal became chief, about 75 percent of issued citations were for speeding, he said. Since he took over, the number of speeding tickets has decreased considerably and more tickets have been issued for drunken driving, marijuana possession, failure to maintain lane, no license and suspended licenses, for instance, he said.

Bedal said he has solved 10 burglaries and has made two arrests during his time as chief.

“And since then we haven’t had anything — it’s been a quiet town until he left,” said Officer Chuck May, who has also resigned.

Bedal complained that the mayor asked the force to do “selective police work. Amy heard the same basic directive from the mayor, he said.

“She wants this place to run like Mayberry. …There’s no more Mayberrys in this country. I don’t care what you say,” he said.

The “Ray-bashing,” as one of the Bedal supporters said, began in a town hall meeting called to discuss the city’s strategic plan. A group of people with complaints about the chief showed up to speak their minds. Bedal said some were just griping about getting a ticket.

“All of our speeding tickets that were wrote, I don’t think any were under 15 miles over the speed limit,” Bedal said.

Former City Councilman Jimmy Morgan said that the police give drivers the 15-mph benefit before pulling them over.

“Really, what difference does it make if somebody is speeding and hits them and it kills them. Does it make a difference if they live in town or if they live out of town?” he said.

One of the complaints was that police stopped semi trucks in a roadblock and held them while running a canine unit, which Bedal and two of his officers denied Friday. Other than for speeding, Norman Park police don’t pull over semi trucks in town, because there’s no safe place to do so, Officer Chuck May said.

“We never even stopped the semis. We let them pass,” Bedal said of the roadblocks.

City council had asked him, Bedal said, to conduct a roadblock once a month before the change in the council occurred at the beginning of the year. At the town hall meeting prior to Friday’s meeting, Bedal said he was criticized for allegedly harassing working people by holding a road block between the hours of 4 and 6 p.m. Bedal recalled one roadblock on R.L. Sears Road held at 4 p.m. during which he stopped 10 cars. The other roadblocks were held at different times, he said.

Hurst denied that she nor the council didn’t want the police to issue traffic citations and that Norman Park doesn’t have a problem with speeding traffic.

“But then, I’m not out here every day either,” she said.

“We just don’t want our town to be on the Internet as a speed trap,” she said. “…This town, they’re just wanting to start over and have a fresh start, and we’re just trying our best to get it.”

Since Bedal has been chief of police, Morgan said, Norman Park Police Department has become a self-sufficient force. In addition, Bedal was trying to get 24-hour policing in place in Norman Park. He thinks it’s needed. He was one man away from 24-hour coverage. A prospective employee was set to go to the next police academy, but the mayor allegedly interceded and told the prospect that she changed her mind, he said.

Also there was some controversy about a grant Bedal had gotten for the department — a $16,000 grant with an $8,000 match from the city for equipment including a new camera system and a AR-15 high-powered police rifle. Bedal said he put in a request for three shotguns and a rifle with the hope of securing the shotguns. Instead, he got the rifle.

“Sometimes you apply for more than you want,” he said, adding that he had to bring in more firepower than the 1952 Sears shotgun assigned to the force. “I was trying to upgrade us to where we’d have a little more in our trunk than that.”

The $8,000 match was covered by the police department’s technology fund which is funded by citations, Morgan said.

Hurst complained that the council really didn’t know much about Bedal when he was hired. (Bedal worked for the force part time between 2001 and 2004.) He was interviewed and hired on the same night, she said

“That was too fast to begin with,” she said, saying that a couple of councilmembers wanted him in as chief.

Advertisements are going out for a new chief. Hurst said she wants someone with experience, “probably a little older.” Bedal is 29.

Hurst said that a rumor began just before elections last year, that the new councilmembers wanted to get rid of the police department. Hurst insisted that was just rumor. Bedal said his litigation attorney hired a private investigator and found out different.

“According to my private investigator, that is what they said. The two councilmen said the mayor basically recruited them to get me off the police department,” Bedal said.

Morgan has asked publicly for the mayor’s resignation Friday and said he is looking to organize a recall.

“They’re just trying to run me down…,” Hurst said. “…There’s no vendetta. People just start running their mouths and don’t know what in the world.”