THOMASVILLE- The Thomasville City Council met on Monday evening, where they heard a show cause hearing from American Legion Post 519, following a string of calls to Thomasville Police Department.

According to city attorney Tim Sanders, the American Legion already had 15 violations this year, resulting in the hearing.

The hearing began with Thomasville Police Department’s Major Shane Harris showing the Council emails detailing the various steps TPD took while working with the American Legion during violations.

“In 2021, TPD began responding more often to the Wright St. and Hopkins St. area due to large parties,” Harris said. “Citizen complaints grew from these disturbances we were responding to. The disturbances resulted in TPD asking other agencies to help respond to clearing the streets and restoring the peace.”

Harris explained when responding to these calls, TPD found there were a lot more people than there were officers and for safety reasons, other resources such as Georgia State Patrol and the Thomas County Sheriff’s Office were called upon.

“These large crowds were in and around the Legion,” Harris said.

TPD then called a meeting with the Legion on March 17 in order to be proactive about the situation, as it continued to grow.

“We wanted to work with the Legion and see what we could do to minimize some of these calls we were getting last year,” Harris said.

After meeting the American Legion Executive Board on March 17, 2023, TPD was informed the Board would like an increased police presence in the area. In addition to added police presence, the Legion agreed to add a security guard to help with loitering.

Despite the Board’s best efforts and the extra security, police were still called to maintain crowd control.

“Sometimes people just wouldn’t listen to the Board members,” Harris said.

The Board was then approached again to ask how they planned to control these crowds and what their plans were moving forward to ensure maximum occupancy level rules were being followed.

Harris said at the time of the question, the Board said they would begin using a counter at the door to make sure the maximum occupancy wasn’t being exceeded.

Harris said in addition to this, the Board and he also discussed the parking situation on Hopkins Street.

At the time of the meeting, cars were parking on both sides of the street, making it inaccessible in the event of an emergency. For this reason, the city engineers erected “No Parking” signs. However, cars continued to park there while attending parties at the Legion, forcing TPD to issue multiple citations.

Harris then showed the number of calls E911 has received about the American Legion in 2023, which totals at 57, with the calendar year still not complete.

He then provided photos of various situations TPD has responded to at the Legion, including a shots fired call in 2021, along with multiple citizen’s complaints and weapons offenses in 2022 and 2023.

The Council thanked Harris for his presentation before allowing Steven Reynolds 2nd District Commander of the Legion Post of Georgia.

Reynolds confirmed that the American Legion Executive Board did meet with TPD and wanted to work with them in order to control crowds. However, Reynolds said he was told that the American Legion could give TPD a “courtesy call” before anything happened.

“Yes, we made 47 courtesy calls, but then it was used against us,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds went on to say that many of the incidents Harris showed photographs of were not of people in the roads leaving the American Legion, but of people walking down the street and passing the building.

Reynolds showed various incident reports from TPD, sharing that despite the reports, no citations were ever issued.

Following statements from Reynolds, Harris and two members of the public, Sanders told the Council they had several options on how to move forward.

Councilwoman Wanda Warren made a motion to continue the hearing, allowing for the Council to conduct their own research before removing or continuing to allow alcohol to be served at American Legion Post 519.