Overview
- The intergovernmental policing agreement expired Sunday, May 31, after negotiators failed to sign a 12‑month extension and the contract authority for county officers lapsed.
- Cobb County Sheriff Craig Owens began deputizing just over 100 county officers and officials are finishing paperwork to ensure patrols, emergency response and ongoing investigations continue unchanged.
- The collapse followed Mableton’s late insistence that local misdemeanor citations be handled by a Mableton magistrate or city court, a procedural change county leaders say is operationally and technologically unworkable for a short extension.
- County Chair Lisa Cupid and Mableton Mayor Michael Owens sharply disagree about who raised the court‑routing issue last, and the sheriff says his office was excluded from the administrative talks.
- Mediators had reported a roughly $13–13.5 million one‑year payment in principle on May 22, but negotiators have not set a timeline for resolving the dispute and options range from a new IGA to the city standing up its own police and court systems.