About Thomas Mindar

Deputy Sheriff Thomas Mindar gets his desire to serve and protect as a family calling. His father was a police officer in Illinois and so he grew up knowing what a cop’s life would be like. After training as a boxer and winning two separate Georgia Amateur boxing Championships, Thomas began his career in law enforcement.

Mindar’s sense of duty extends to his country as well. He is a veteran, having joined the army when he was 17 years old. He served in Iraq in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm as a combat infantryman, but also trained as a paratrooper. He was a 1996, honor graduate of the police academy he attended, then went on to serve with the Fayetteville Police Department for six years where he was honored as Police Officer of the Year in 2000. He then worked for the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department under 30 year veteran Sheriff Randall Johnson, where he learned the law enforcement techniques and philosophy of the esteemed County Sheriff. Mindar was named Deputy Sheriff of the Year in 2005.

“There will never be another sheriff like Randall Johnson,” said Mindar, an 11-year veteran of local law enforcement. “He, almost single-handedly, has kept the crime out of our county by aggressively hunting down criminals and making them pay for their crimes. The good citizens of our county need to know that the great tradition of Sheriff Randall Johnson will continue.”

Some of his more important arrests broke up a Riverdale City organization scamming elderly residents. He arrested two separate individuals who attempted to bribe him. He believes in the saying, “Do the right thing, even when no one is watching.” Both in Iraq and at home he was a front-line kind of guy, and while wishing to carry on the great tradition of Sheriff Johnson, he has some innovative ideas of his own.

He plans to have “town hall” type quarterly meetings with the public to discuss problems and how to correct them. And, at the next meeting, he will report back about prior problems and how they were solved. He would re-deploy some of the traffic officers, backed up by narcotic-detecting dogs, to the north end of the county, where crime is creeping in. “Regular road checks, at random times and locations, will put the fear back into the criminals’ minds and out of our citizens’ lives.”

Yet, more aggressive patrolling does not mean more tickets for law-abiding citizens. Even though as a law enforcement officer he had one of the highest number of arrests and highest number of warrants served, he brings common sense to the law and stated, “I don’t believe in writing tickets is the answer to lowering or curbing the crime rate. I would rather a deputy give a verbal or written warning than write a ticket because it has the same effect. I believe it is more important to write a speeding ticket in a school zone, a neighborhood where children are playing, or where a church is letting out, than where your car is the only one on the road.”

He wants to clamp down on “Deadbeat Parents” by computerizing the data on GCIC/NCIC so an officer will know the status of someone who is stopped. This will allow parents and children who aren’t being supported to access the help of the Sheriff’s Department. “I have worked in warrants for over 4 years now and see a problem. I know how to fix it and will do so as Sheriff.”

He wants to create a Drug Counseling Center in Fayette County to educate the public about drugs and help citizens combat their addictions. “People need more than just getting locked up to help them from committing future criminal acts.” To fund these programs, he intends to aggressively pursue Federal Grants available for these types of programs and would bring in experts like Ben Thomas, former Chief of Police in Senoia, with over thirty years of law enforcement experience, to assist him.

He would like to create a Tri-County burglary suppression task force to exchange information and to double or triple manpower in needed areas. He would maximize existing jail facilities to free up pods, including changing one now empty, into a female pod using drug money seized over the years of aggressive law enforcement.

“To sum it up, I am going to bring in a more diversified department to help deal with the county’s needs. I will be out there, just like Sheriff Randall Johnson has been, for over thirty years. I will be in the thick of it with my fellow deputies, suppressing crime and answering the good citizens of Fayette County’s needs.”

*Biography by Award Winning Author, Mark Nesbitt (Author of Historical Non-Fiction Literature)