On the Beat with Lt. Schoeppner

Lt. D.G. Schoeppner is Tucker’s liaison to the DeKalb County Police Department and can be followed at facebook.com/dgschoeppner or emailed at dgschoeppner@dekalbcountyga.gov.

It’s not uncommon for police agencies to brag about the high quality of the men and women who serve. Back in the mid-19th century, New Yorkers coined the phrase “New York’s Finest” to describe their police officers. We in the DeKalb Police Department also take great pride in our people who put on the uniform and take the great responsibility of putting others before themselves. This month we’re going to take a moment to recognize Detective Terry McCord and how he is a shining example.

Detective McCord originally hails from Anniston, Alabama, where he graduated high school in 1988. He studied criminal justice at Troy State University and was a member of the school’s basketball team. His exploits on the basketball court were major contributors to the school winning the NCAA Division Two South Regional Title in 1991 and finishing as runners-up in the Division Two National Tournament just two years later.

In 2016, Detective McCord was inducted into the Troy State University Hall of Fame. Terry’s former coach, Don Maestri, said of him at his induction, “He always wanted to be the best. He always wanted to be on top as a player and as a teammate. The strongest thing was his leadership skills. He’s the one that led us to the national championship game, and he made everybody better on that team.”

After college, Terry went on to play basketball professionally in Europe. After five years playing for teams in Luxembourg, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Lebanon, his professional basketball career came to a close. It was at that point that Terry moved back to Alabama and took a job as a campus police officer at Jacksonville State University.

In January of 2002, Detective McCord decided to move from the small-town campus police department to one of the largest agencies in the southeast, the DeKalb County Police Department. I was in the Police Academy myself when Terry came through the department’s abbreviated academy for officers moving in from other agencies. Once out on the road, Detective McCord started his career in North Precinct. He was a patrolman there until he was selected to be a detective in their property crimes unit in 2008. When North Precinct closed in 2014, Detective McCord was transferred to Tucker where he has been investigating our property crimes ever since.

Sometimes when people look at police officers, they have a hard time thinking of them as regular people. Detective McCord, like many of us, had an entirely different life before he put on the gun and badge. And that diversity of experience makes our department stronger.