View From a Cop: The 'Good Old Days' and Corky Valentine

Long before the beginning of the Sandy Springs Police there was the Fulton County Police and before that the Atlanta Police and before that, the Fulton County Police again.

In this age of techno-everything it’s hard to imagine how police managed to keep up with the crooks without video, audio, tasers, laptops, reporting management systems, and the Use of Force checklist.

When the Fulton County Police took over in 1975, they did so on July 1 at midnight. Thirty-one years later at midnight, they went out of business in Sandy Springs. To an extent, there were a lot of similarities.

Although the Fulton County and Sandy Springs PD officers were handpicked at their respective times, county officers all came from the Atlanta Police Department. Some were asked to come over and some taken after they were asked to leave the city police. Needless to say there were many characters and some misfits among the officers who simply changed uniforms one night and found themselves working at the same location but for a new department.

Most of them were still working when I showed up in the late part of December, 1979. It was a strange culture, ruled by older veteran officers who liked things just the way they were and didn’t need rookies stirring up stuff. Although I had three years of experience when I came to the Fulton Police, I was still considered a rookie and some of the guys didn’t waste time talking to rookies. As time went on, they softened up and actually spoke to me.

The Sandy Springs precinct covered Sandy Springs and all unincorporated areas north of the Chattahoochee River. There were two beats south of I-285 divided by Roswell Road and two beats north of the interstate to Dalrymple Road, also divided by Roswell Road.

One beat ran north from Dalrymple to the river and included all areas now known as the panhandle or Council district 1.

North from there was beat 32 - north of the river and west of GA 400 in what is now Milton and beat 30, and east of 400 in what is now John’s Creek.

We had seven beats but usually ran five or six cars. Almost always, at least one beat was pulled. Calls for service were much lower than they are now. Accidents, thefts, vandalisms, and residential burglaries were the norm.  

A patrol officer knew that his backup could be 15 minutes away - an eternity during a fight.

Two things I learned to do quickly: Talk my way out of trouble if I could. Second, when the fight was on, I wasn’t shy. It was not uncommon to come home with a black eye or cut up or with a sprained something or other. 

After a few years working nights, I transferred and worked the day watch, beat 32. That meant I had all of Fulton County north of the river and west of GA 400. You could work all day and maybe get three calls but drive 150 miles.

On the other side of 400 was beat 30 manned by the one and only Corky Valentine. If you lived north of the river, chances are you knew Corky or knew of him. If you knew baseball, you definitely knew who Corky was.

Before policing, Corky Valentine spent the first part of his life playing baseball. In 1954 he won 12 games for the Cincinnati Reds. In 1955, he won but 2. That was it for Corky in the majors although he went on to play several more years in the minors including the Atlanta Crackers where he won 16 games in 1956 and helped take the Crackers to the Southern Association League Championship two years straight.

Corky said he helped Hank Aaron reach his record 754 home runs by giving up Aaron’s 10 homer. He claimed that his “orbit” balls were hit so hard they beat Sputnik into space.

I used to meet up with Corky at a little diner in Alpharetta in the mornings before heading up north to await the few calls that would come in that day. He was a very gentle person, funny, and loved to talk about baseball.

I found a 1954 baseball card of Corky and he signed it for me. Every few weeks he’d ask me how much the card was now worth. I’d always add on a nickel from the last time he asked. In reality, the card wasn’t worth a whole lot but to me it was valuable.

On the beat, Corky was a community police officer before it was fashionable to be one. He would talk to the “Old Men” at the Birmingham Store or, according to rumors, sneak some fishing in the Chattahoochee up around Shakrag using a can of corn and a fishing pole stashed in the trunk of the patrol car. No one ever figured it was important enough to verify.

Corky was as pigeon-toed as anyone I ever saw. He would get out of his car and walk around with his big toes facing one another and looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world. On calls, he was a peace maker but he was not a person to mess with. In the late part of his career, his weight was down to maintain his diabetes but he was strong as an ox and rarely crossed by anyone who possessed any amount of brains. 

After his shift, Corky could be found in front of Green’s Liquor Store on Roswell Road at Cliftwood Drive where he spent every afternoon directing traffic in and out of the parking lot. He always carried a transistor radio in his shirt pocket and listened to it with an earpiece. A lot of folks thought he was wearing a hearing aid.

Corky was not a man easily phased. One morning he responded to a call to meet a man who had found a pipe bomb. For some reason, people in the early 1980’s frequently built small pipe bombs with galvanized steel cylinders threaded and capped at both ends and filled with gunpowder and whatever device to detonate it. Most of the time the bombs were duds as most domestic bombers in those days failed to grasp the concept of effective detonation.

A man found a pipe that appeared to have been made into a pipe bomb. Corky took it, put it in the trunk, and then finished the several hours left in his shift before returning to the precinct where he turned it in. He was not easily impressed.

He was a character in a department that was rich in characters and rich in odd balls. Although times have changed and of course, every generation of officer refers to the “good old days,” I doubt there were many like Corky.