The law-and-order spotlight is back on Warm Springs after a former police chief was arrested following a state review of the tiny city’s troubled department. Aisha Al-Khalifa, 41, of Grovetown, turned herself in on May 15 and was booked into the Meriwether County Detention Center, according to state investigators. The arrest is the latest ripple from a policing crisis that already put most of the town’s officers on ice last year.
In a May 20 press release, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said agents charged Al-Khalifa with False Statements and Violation of Oath of Office. Investigators concluded she “knowingly made false statements” during a review of the Warm Springs Police Department. The GBI said the probe opened on June 26, 2024, after the department itself asked for an outside look at its operations. The agency plans to turn its findings over to the Coweta Judicial Circuit district attorney’s office for review and possible prosecution.
Local television coverage amplified word of the arrest and the turmoil behind it. FOX 5 Atlanta reported that Al-Khalifa was elevated to interim chief after the city fired Chief Emilio Quintana and suspended most of the force in June 2024. That earlier shakeup put Warm Springs under a statewide microscope and set the table for the GBI inquiry. As FOX 5 Atlanta noted, it is still unclear when Al-Khalifa stopped serving as chief.
How the 2024 shakeup led here
The chain of events started with an anonymous email in June 2024 that accused officers of using city patrol vehicles while working paid off-duty jobs, according to records cited by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Those allegations, the paper reported, pushed city leaders to fire Quintana and suspend nearly the entire police force…