Ex-GA deputy bragged to extremist group about beating Black man in custody, FBI says
A former Middle Georgia sheriff’s deputy bragged in text messages with members of an alleged extremist group that he had beaten a Black person he arrested and planned to charge Black Georgians with felonies to keep them from voting, according to an FBI affidavit.
The ex-Wilkinson County deputy, Cody Richard Griggers, of Montrose, was fired last November after the FBI contacted the sheriff there about an investigation into illegal guns and their alleged ties to a California man said to have made violent political statements on Facebook.
Griggers, 28, a former Marine, pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court in Macon to one count of possession of an unregistered firearm, a crime the authorities discovered in their probe, which began last summer. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in July.
The text messages noted in the FBI affidavit appear to have been sent in the months before Griggers began working as a sheriff’s deputy.
Investigating ‘Shadow Moses’
His name surfaced in August when federal agents searched the cellphone of a San Diego man and discovered group text messages with members of the texting group who referred to themselves as “Shadow Moses” or “Shadmo,” court documents state.
Griggers, in the texts, was said to have claimed he was making and gathering illegal firearms and explosives.
Griggers, who is white, “also expressed viewpoints consistent with racially motivated violent extremism, including the use of racial slurs, slurs against homosexuals and making frequent positive references to the Nazi holocaust,” prosecutors said in a statement on Wednesday announcing Griggers’ plea.
The prosecutors said that on Nov. 19 last year that the FBI searched Griggers’ patrol car and found a machine gun “with an obliterated serial number,” a weapon he was not allowed to have in his patrol car.
“An unregistered short barrel shotgun was found in his home,” the statement went on. “In all, between the defendant’s residence and duty vehicle, officers found 11 illegal firearms.”
Bragging about beating, arrests
It was Griggers’ statements in text messages, however, that most concerned Wilkinson Sheriff Richard Chatman.
Some of the statements were noted in an FBI affidavit used to obtain a search warrant of Griggers’ home on Ga. 112 in Montrose.
In a text with the “Shadmo” group in August 2019, Griggers claimed to have used excessive force on a man in his custody.
“I beat the (expletive) out of a (racial slur) Saturday. (Expletive) tried to steal (a gun magazine) from the local gun store. ... Sheriff’s dept. said it looked like he fell,” the affidavit noted, quoting Griggers.
Griggers went on to write that the beating was for him “sweet stress relief.”
“That never happened,” said Chatman, the sheriff, in an interview with The Telegraph Wednesday. “We don’t even have a gun shop here.”
Chatman, who is Black, said he concluded that Griggers’ claim was perhaps Griggers “being braggadocious.”
“I think he may have been working in the jail (at the time). ... We looked at all the cases he may have been involved in and we never had any complaints on him of any kind,” Chatman said. “We looked back and we pulled (records) of anything that he had taken a warrant for, any call that he had gone on, and we found nothing [that raised any red flags].”
Chatman later clarified that Griggers had not been hired on at the county jail until Nov. 7, 2019, and that Griggers did not become a patrol deputy until March 2020.
The sheriff said that he himself wasn’t aware of the troubling text messages until he was contacted by the FBI on Nov. 17, 2020, and that two days later he fired Griggers.
Ex-deputy discussed killing politicians
The affidavit also said Griggers had texted how he “intended to charge black people with felonies in order to keep them from voting.”
“It’s a sign of beautiful things to come,” he wrote, according to the affidavit. “Also I’m going to charge them with whatever felonies I can to take away their ability to vote.”
Griggers had worked as a deputy in Wilkinson County — which lies just east of Macon and has a population of about 9,000 people, about 40% of them Black — for just over a year, the sheriff said.
According to the FBI affidavit, Griggers also discussed “killing liberal politicians” with other members of the text group, writing they could “make it look like Muslims” were responsible.
Chatman said Griggers, upon being fired last fall, told the sheriff he was “sorry all this happened, that that wasn’t really him.”
This story was originally published April 28, 2021 at 1:54 PM with the headline "Ex-GA deputy bragged to extremist group about beating Black man in custody, FBI says."