The City of Milner’s entire full-time police department has resigned, and the city manager is walking out with them, after a public collapse of trust with city leadership in the small Georgia town.

City Manager Tausha Grose announced the departures at the Oct. 19 City Council meeting. She said the police department’s last day would be Oct. 28 and her own last day would be Oct. 30. Most part-time officers had already resigned.

What is at stake is basic local law enforcement coverage and who answers 911 when a town’s own force is gone. Grose and Police Chief Lamar Bunn both rejected the idea that a fight over officers’ outside work caused the mass exit. They said the real issue was trust, character, and whether they could still do their jobs.

City hall hears the walkout in public

CBS News Atlanta reported that Grose told the council the trust was gone and that she could no longer function in the role.

"The trust is gone. I have been rendered ineffective in my position,"

Grose also said, "There is no trust." She added that leaving hurt after years of service. "It breaks my heart to have to resign," she said. She told the council she had devoted six years to the city.

Fox News carried a fuller statement from Grose on the scale of the resignations.

"It is with my extreme sorrow that our entire full-time police department has resigned, most of our part-time police. And also, I've also filed my resignation with the city clerk today."

Chief Bunn framed the same break in personal terms. He said he could not lead without the chance to work with character intact.

"If I cannot do my job, if I'm not given an opportunity to do my job with character, I can't do it,"

Bunn also said, "So it's the trust issue. If it can be fixed, we need to fix it." He expressed interest in resolving the dispute before the Oct. 28 last day for the force. CBS News Atlanta was told he was out of town with family and could not comment further at the time of its report.

Surveillance claims and a denied work-rule storyline

Grose said officers could keep working part-time jobs elsewhere. She said they had been temporarily barred from using city vehicles for that outside work. Both Grose and Bunn rejected the suggestion that the vehicle rule was why the department quit.

Bunn raised a sharper concern: surveillance. He said officers could not trust that cameras or tracking devices would not be used without their knowledge. The New York Post reported his public claim that a tracker was placed on his truck with personal funds and without city council or supervisor approval.

"City Hall every day, it's got a tracker on my truck, it was bought with personal funds and placed on my vehicle without the city council or my supervisor, city administrator knowing it."

Fox News and the New York Post also reported that Bunn accused city hall of spreading a false claim that he had an affair with the city manager. Resignation letters from Bunn and Captain Craig Walton cited fundamental differences on leadership, ethics, and legal compliance, and called for an investigation into Mayor Craig Timmons. Those remain allegations and stated reasons for leaving, not adjudicated findings.

Tensions over tracking and cameras fit a wider pattern of fights over how police tools are used and watched, including cases such as a Georgia man who filmed himself tearing down Flock surveillance cameras and ended up behind bars.

Mayor Craig Timmons told The Herald Gazette he had not expected the resignations. Asked whether he had placed a tracker on Bunn’s vehicle, the mayor declined to comment directly, the paper reported. CBS News Atlanta said it was not able to reach the mayor.

Who is leaving, and who may fill the gap

Bunn said he had not asked other officers to resign with him and that he was not the first to submit a resignation. An unnamed officer who spoke with CBS News Atlanta said the officers gave the mayor and council time to work things out. The officer said they were hopeful, but that it had not happened. The officer also said most, if not all, of the officers will go to work for other agencies.

That kind of force-wide fracture echoes other recent police integrity and leadership crises, including when a Charlotte chief sought firings after biased officer texts triggered an FBI civil rights probe.

Jennifer Holloway, who has worked five years at the Red and White Food Store in Milner, said she knows most of the people who come into the store. She said she is not worried about what happens after the officers leave, even as she wished they could stay.

"I mean, I wish we could still have our police officers here, but I don't know what's going on over there,"

Holloway also said the county would respond if trouble came.

"We have a nice little community, and the county will, you know, take over. If we have a problem. They'll be here quick,"

Authorities have not publicly confirmed which county agency would handle routine and emergency calls after Oct. 28, or under what formal arrangement. No public results have been released on whether the trust dispute was resolved before the stated last days.

Unincorporation threat and the next council date

Former council member Skip Seda told the council he will push to unincorporate Milner if the city loses its police force. That would move the fight from a personnel crisis into a question of whether the city itself remains a separate local government.

Breakdowns inside law enforcement can turn personal and operational fast, as seen when a Colorado ex-deputy faced charges after overnight gunfire at sheriff and police facilities. Milner’s case is a mass resignation, not an attack, but it still leaves a town without its own full-time force on a fixed clock.

Milner City Council’s next scheduled meeting is Nov. 16 at 6 p.m. Investigators and residents will need city leaders to show, in plain terms, how calls for service will be covered, whether any surveillance claims will be examined, and whether the mayor faces any formal inquiry of the kind the resignation letters sought.

Local policing depends on more than patrol cars and schedules. When officers say they cannot trust the people who oversee them, public safety becomes a paper promise until competent coverage is restored.

Pressure on departments already shows up in other cities racing to secure streets and trails during active probes, including Lansing’s probe of river trail deaths near Michigan State as security ramped up. A town that sheds its whole full-time force has even less margin for delay.

Dramatic police-family and force upheaval stories draw the same reader worry about what happens when the badge line breaks, including when a Massachusetts wife was named a fugitive after a police officer husband was found dead at home. Milner’s crisis is institutional, not a homicide case, but the public test is the same: who protects the public when the local force is gone.

Law and order starts with a force that can serve without fearing its own city hall. If leaders cannot restore that trust in the open, residents are left with empty badges and a council calendar.