TGF 084 Trooper Chadwick LeCroy cover art

TGF 084 Trooper Chadwick LeCroy

TGF 084 Trooper Chadwick LeCroy

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 This one is personal because I knew and worked alongside Trooper Chadwick LeCroy when I was an Atlanta Police Officer. Chad and I served together in Zone 2, and later I had the privilege of working with him when he joined the elite Georgia State Patrol Nighthawks DUI Task Force. He was one of the good ones – the kind of officer you wanted backing you up, the kind of man who made the badge mean something. On December 27th, 2010, Chad was murdered during what should have been a routine traffic stop. He pulled over a broken taillight on Bolton Road in northwest Atlanta.

The driver was Gregory Favors, a thirty-year-old career criminal with eighteen prior arrests and ten felony convictions. Favors fled, crashed his car, and when Chad approached on foot – without drawing his weapon – Favors fired three shots through the passenger window. One bullet struck Chad in the neck. He died in the ambulance on the way to Grady Memorial Hospital. But here's what makes this case so infuriating: Gregory Favors should have been locked up. He'd been arrested just seventeen days earlier and was out on a nineteen-thousand-dollar bond despite pretrial services recommending he be held without bail. Three times in 2010, the system said he was too dangerous to release.

Three times, judges ignored those recommendations. On the morning Chad was killed, Favors missed his court hearing. He should have been in jail, but instead he was free to murder a good man. The investigation was swift – dashboard camera footage captured everything. Favors stole Chad's patrol car, dumped it on Gun Club Road, and was arrested by Atlanta PD officers.

After nearly four years of legal proceedings, he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and received life without parole plus fifty-five years.

Chad LeCroy was the first Georgia State Trooper killed by gunfire in thirty-five years. He left behind his wife Keisha, sons Bret and Chase, and a law enforcement family that still feels his loss. A bridge over the Chattahoochee River now bears his name, and a scholarship in his memory helps new troopers get their education.

This is the story of how system failures cost a hero his life, and why there really are no such things as "routine" traffic stops.In memory of Trooper First Class Chadwick Thomas LeCroy, Badge #744.

End of watch: December 27, 2010.
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