PALATKA, Fla. — Putnam County Sheriff Homer "Gator" DeLoach demanded that Palatka Mayor Terrill Hill resign during a contentious meeting of the Palatka City Commission on Thursday night.
During the meeting, DeLoach accused the mayor, who is also a lawyer, of a conflict of interest by taking cases involving the Palatka Police Department. He also accused him of showing up at crime scenes and interfering with officers duties.
"You have disgraced the office you hold," he said. "... I demand you tender your resignation as Mayor of Palakta."
DeLoach said he is submitting a complaint about the mayor to the Florida Commission on Ethics. If Hill does not resign, he said he will submit a petition to the governor to remove him from office.
Hill fired back, saying he wasn't going anywhere.
"Homer DeLoach had the audacity to come up here and say I was unethical, that I'm unprofessional...This is the same agency that has tried to portray me, as an African American man...as a drug dealer."
"I'm a trial lawyer," Hill continued. "I fight for justice. I fight for civil rights. And sometimes I file claims against police officers."
DeLoach said he felt compelled to speak at the Thursday meeting after reading Hill's comments in the Palatka Daily News, in which Hill denied taking clients arrested by city police or interfering at crime scenes. Hill was responding to comments made by DeLoach at a Tuesday meeting of the Putnam County Republican Club.
DeLoach called Hill's comments in the paper "outright lies."
"I have no recourse but to come before the commission and publicly refute the statements made by the mayor," he explained.
"My intent was not to speak tonight," said DeLoach, "but I come and stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters at the Palatka Police Department who have been under the iron thumb of Mayor Terrill Hill and select member of the commission who have habitually and systematically meddled and undermined police business for years."
The sheriff told the commission he has body camera footage of the mayor at crime scenes. First Coast News has requested the footage.
DeLoach also gave commissioners paperwork from a case, one from which he claims Hill withdrew late Wednesday night, after telling the newspaper he did not take cases involving the Palatka PD.
"Is your moral compass broken or just outright missing?" DeLoach asked the mayor.
First Coast News has reached out to both men.