According to a public information release from Sgt. Wayne Delk of the Cobb County Police Department, an arrest warrant was issued for Sheriff Kristopher Coody of Bleckley County for an alleged incident that occurred in a hotel in the Cumberland area of Cobb County.

The Courier usually does not print the names of suspects or defendants unless there is a conviction or guilty plea but this case meets our “public official” exception as outlined in our written policy below.

[The Cobb County Courier has a policy of withholding or redacting the name of suspects unless and until the person is convicted in a court of law or enters a plea of guilty. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty, and the internet has no effective way of removing reports of arrest if the person is exonerated. We do make exceptions in high-profile cases or charges against public officials where exoneration is likely to be as widely publicized as the initial arrest]

The public information release describes the alleged incident as follows:

On January 19, 2022 The Cobb County Police Department was alerted to an alleged sexual battery that had occurred the evening of January 18, 2022 at 2450 Galleria Parkway at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly. Following a thorough investigation by investigators from our Crimes Against Persons Unit (with statements gathered from multiple available witnesses) an arrest warrant was obtained on January 28, 2022 for Sheriff Kristopher Coody, the current Sheriff of Bleckley County. This remains an active sexual battery investigation, and we will not be offering any additional statements or providing any on-camera interviews.”

About Bleckley County

Bleckley County is located just southeast of Macon and Warner Robbins and due east of Columbus in middle Georgia. Its county seat is Cochran.

The county has a population of 12,583 according to the 2020 decennial census.

Kristopher Coody

According to his LinkedIn page, Coody took office in January of 2017.

According to information obtained from Georgia POST records by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and published in the article at this link, Bleckley’s certification was on probation for 24 months starting in 2009, and he was required to take anger management classes.

Cobb County Crimes Against Persons

The Crimes Against Persons Division of the Cobb County Police Department is broken down into several specialized units, to investigate homicides, robberies, technology-based crime, domestic violence and stalking, and crimes against children. It has a unit that does crime analysis to identify evidence to help link cases and identify suspects.

The division also houses the Crime Scene Unit that according to the division’s website “is responsible for documenting and processing crime scenes to locate evidence, identify suspects, and to present evidence in criminal proceedings. Crime scene technicians are responsible for processing evidence utilizing a variety of procedures for fingerprint, DNA, and trace evidence.”