State and federal review of the case
On May 10, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said that his office would review how the investigation into Arbery's death "was handled from the outset".[8] At Carr's request, the GBI is investigating whether District Attorney Johnson or District Attorney Barnhill committed misconduct by "possibly misrepresenting or failing to disclose information during the process of appointing a conflict prosecutor to investigate" the death of Arbery.[66] Carr also called for a federal investigation into how local investigators and authorities handled the case, including "investigation of the communications and discussions by and between the Office of the District Attorney of the Brunswick Judicial Circuit and the Office of the District Attorney of the Waycross Judicial Circuit related to this case."[102]
The next day on May 11, the U.S. Department of Justice responded that the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia "have been supporting and will continue fully to support and participate in the state investigation. We are assessing all of the evidence to determine whether federal hate crimes charges are appropriate."[103][104]
Prior allegations of misconduct by local authorities
Following Arbery's killing, media investigated the history of the GCPD.[5][105] The New York Times noted that
in preceding years, the department had "been accused of covering up allegations of misconduct, tampering with a crime scene, interfering in an investigation of a police shooting and retaliating against fellow officers who cooperated with outside investigators."[5]
Days after Arbery was fatally shot,
the chief of police, – who had been brought in to clean up a police force described by the county manager in 2019 as poorly trained and characterized by a "culture of cronyism", – was indicted on charges arising from an alleged cover-up of a sexual relationship between an officer and an informant.[5] In response to a grand jury report issued in November 2019, which had condemned the GCPD over "alleged officer misconduct and poor coordination with the local sheriff's office",
State Senator William Ligon of Brunswick in early 2020 introduced legislation to allow voters to abolish the Glynn county police department. Although the legislation initially stalled in the General Assembly, after the legislature returned following the COVID-19 recess, the House passed the legislation 152-3.[106][107] The Senate then passed the legislation as Senate Bill 509, which Governor Kemp signed. The legislation allows a November 3, 2020 binding referendum such that the police department would be abolished if a majority of Glynn County voters agreed.[108]
The involvement of the GCPD as the primary investigator in a case involving its former officer Gregory McMichael was controversial.[28]
Arbery's death also prompted re-examinations of the way prosecutions of shootings were handled by the Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office. In 2010, two police officers fatally shot an unarmed white woman through her car windshield.
Four former prosecutors, who had worked under Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson, alleged that Johnson shielded the officers from criminal prosecution. A 2015 investigation by WSB-TV revealed that Johnson had agreed to withhold a draft murder indictment from the grand jury and had "allowed the officers' department to present a factually inaccurate animation they created showing the car escaping through a gap and running over the officers."[105]