VARNELL, Ga. — Varnell City Council member Sheldon Fowler cursed Varnell Police Chief Lyle Grant and another city officer and poked them in the chest with his finger when they responded to a domestic incident at Fowler’s house on June 13, according to an incident report filed by Grant. In that report, Grant wrote that “officers were tolerant of his behavior because of his position on the Varnell City Council.”

In response to a request by the Daily Citizen-News, CIty Manager Mike Brown refused Friday morning to turn over the officers’ body camera videos of the incident, and the first incident report provided to the paper by Brown was missing information, including the narrative and the name of the reporting officer.

City Attorney Terry Miller said he would not turn over the videos and the full incident report to the newspaper because the investigation is still open, but he said he could not confirm that the Varnell Police Department is the agency investigating the case. He could not say which agency was investigating the incident.

Friday afternoon, Brown said Miller had given him the OK to release the full report after ascertaining that no minors were involved. The incident report listed no minors involved. What Brown provided then was still missing a full list of witnesses, complainants and victims as well as a list of any evidence. The Daily Citizen-News obtained the full incident report from a source.

In the report, Grant writes that he and another officer, identified in the report as G. Fowler, were sent to Sheldon Fowler’s residence by 911 around 12:45 a.m., where they were met by Fowler’s wife.

The report says the wife said “her husband Sheldon was highly intoxicated and being very boisterous and excessively argumentative.” It says she indicated she just “wanted him to go to bed and sleep it off.”

“Officers witnessed Sheldon calling one of his daughters ‘a f—— retard’ and the other a ‘f—— bitch’ and several other names aimed at them and his wife as he stood at the top of the stairs in his underware (sic),” the report states. According to the report, the daughters are adults.

The report says that once the family members were separated Fowler turned his anger on the officers.

In the report, Grant says he spoke to the wife and “was able to get her and the daughters to leave the residence for a while so he would not have anyone to argue with. That’s when she told me he had also taken Ambien with the alcohol he drank.”

The report says the wife and daughters left the home and the officers followed.

Officers were at the home for about an hour and 45 minutes. They did not arrest Fowler. Brown said Friday that Grant told him a warrant for Fowler’s arrest had been issued by the Whitfield County Magistrate Court on Thursday, nine days after the incident, two days after some members of the City Council found out about it and the day the Daily Citizen-News began investigating the incident.

District Attorney Bert Poston said early Friday afternoon he was not aware of the incident. Later Friday afternoon, Poston said he had been informed by the Varnell Police Department that they had received a warrant from the Magistrate Court for Fowler’s arrest on counts of simple battery on a police officer, simple assault and disorderly conduct. He said he had not received any paperwork on the matter.

Grant did not immediately return a telephone message left at Varnell City Hall Friday afternoon.

Sheldon Fowler did not immediately return a message left on his cellphone Friday afternoon.

Council member Andrea Gordy said she found out about the incident “by accident” on Tuesday just before the council’s monthly meeting.

“I was leaving for the council meeting, and one of Sheldon’s neighbors called me asking why the police were at his house,” she said. “I said, ‘I don’t know. It could have been a break-in.’ She said, ‘Well, according to one of his daughters it was a domestic disturbance.'”

Gordy said that when she got to the council meeting she began to ask about it and was told by Brown that police had been called to Fowler’s house for a domestic incident.

After the council meeting ended, officials had a reception for longtime Municipal Court judge Phil Woodward, who recently stepped down after being named Juvenile Court judge.

According to council members, Brown, council member Ashlee Godfrey, Gordy, Grant, Mayor Anthony Hulsey, council member Jan Pourquoi and two police officers then went to Grant’s office and watched police body camera video of the incident.

Hulsey could not be reached immediately Friday afternoon and Godfrey did not immediately return a telephone message left at her office.

Council member David Owens said he has made a deliberate choice not to watch the video or read the incident report because he didn’t want to be seen as influencing the investigation.

“I have not talked to Sheldon, and I have not talked to the chief,” he said. “This is a serious incident, and I want to let the authorities handle it.”

Pourquoi said he’d just left the council meeting when Gordy called to tell him they were going to watch the video and asking if he wanted to join them.

“It was informal. We had already concluded the council meeting,” Gordy said. “It was shocking. We could not watch all of it. it was so bad. We watched maybe half of it.”

Gordy said Grant treated the incident very differently from the Varnell officers who responded to a domestic disturbance at her home last year.

“When the officers arrived and saw that it was me (a council member), they immediately said, ‘We shouldn’t handle this. We have to turn it over to the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office,'” she said. “And I understood that. There should be no question that I wasn’t receiving any favoritism.”

Pourquoi says at one point in the video the officers warned Fowler that if they called the sheriff’s office he would be arrested.

Gordy says Godfrey asked Grant why he did not call the sheriff’s office.

“She said, ‘This is ridiculous.’ And he said, ‘We just wanted to give him a chance to sleep it off,'” she said.

But Gordy said the failure to call the sheriff’s office wasn’t what bothered her the most.

“What’s really shocking and what’s sad is that we didn’t help the people who were hurt,” she said.

Pourquoi was even more blunt.

“The Varnell Police Department let a woman and her children down,” he said. “There’s no question. We did nothing for this family. It’s a disgrace.”

The Varnell City Council has a special called meeting scheduled for Wednesday at 8 a.m. at City Hall to discuss personnel.

To read the incident report involving Sheldon Fowler, a member of the Varnell City Council, read this story at www.dailycitizen.news.