- Would you be ready to call the cops over a botched burger?
“With great power comes great responsibility,” is a warning given to Spider-Man, but it applies to everybody. When you have authority over people, you shouldn’t abuse it.
One Georgia sheriff, however, is currently embroiled in a dispute about whether he overstepped his professional limits.
And it’s all because of a Whopper.
Recently released bodycam footage has landed Cobb County Sheriff Craig Owens in hot water. The videos show Owens calling his deputies to a Burger King restaurant.
It’s not that there’s a robbery happening or anything. Owens simply wants his deputies to march to the restaurant and get the owners’ information from the employees so he can complain about the wrong order he received.
With the sheriff’s seat open for reelection this year, Owens’ competitors have seized the opportunity to cast him in a bad light. Owens himself defends his actions as a business complaint call that any civilian can make — after all, he wasn’t in uniform at the time and never identified himself as the sheriff.
An abuse of power or a legitimate complaint call? You decide.
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Owens’ Burger King incident happened already back on March 4, 2023. However, it took until October 11, 2024, before the body camera footage of the incident was sent to Channel 2 Action News.
In the video, the deputies speed through Cobb County, seemingly on an urgent dispatch. Their lights and sirens are on, and they speed through some red lights (as law enforcement officials on an alert call are allowed to do).
The deputies arrive at a Burger King restaurant in Mableton, Georgia. The video shows them exiting their vehicle and approaching a truck in the parking lot — with Owens sitting in it with a passenger.
“Hey, do me a favor,” Owens tells the deputies in the video. “I need to get, all I need is the owner name of whoever owns this damn facility or the manager.”
Owens goes on to explain that he had ordered his passenger “a Whopper, no mayo, cut in half.” However, it appears he received the wrong order, and the restaurant refused to replace it.
“I don’t need no damn money back no more. I just need to find out who owns this place so I can do an official complaint,” Owens states.
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With that, the deputies walk over to the restaurant to acquire the information. The video doesn’t explain why Owens couldn’t ask for the manager’s information on his own.
Once the deputies reach the Burger King, however, they find that the doors are locked. Employees inside the restaurant appear reluctant to unlock them, but they eventually do so at the deputies’ request.
“Nobody is in trouble, we just want to get some names,” one of the deputies says to an employee who identified themselves as the assistant manager.
“There isn’t even going to be a report written. That guy out there, he’s just going to file a complaint for his food,” the deputy continues.
Eventually, the employees explain that they barricaded themselves in the restaurant due to past issues with violent customers. Some have even started stalking staff they felt had wronged them.
Finally, the deputies receive the manager’s contact information and take it back to Owens. The video shows them explain to Owens that the restaurant has had difficult customers and that’s why the staff was uncooperative.
“You didn’t tell him who I was, did you?” the footage shows Owens asking with a laugh.
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Well, that’s the incident. Nobody got physically hurt and it was seemingly a brief affair, but it has landed Owens in some trouble.
The Cobb County sheriff’s position is up for reelection this year. Owens’ main challenger, David Cavender, and his chief deputy candidate Mike Dondelinger, argue Owens behaved improperly.
“I think it’s an abuse of power,” said Dondelinger, deeming the incident a “form of intimidation” and “waste of resources.”
“I’m shocked the sheriff feels so flippant about this issue that he would have deputies run lights and sirens, placing citizens at risk and his deputies at risk, just so he could get information from a business owner that clearly could have been followed up on another day,” Dondelinger added.
Owens, for his part, doesn’t believe he did anything wrong. In a public statement, he said he placed a simple “business dispute call.”
“This is a call that ANY citizen can make, and law enforcement will respond,” wrote Owens.
“I was not in my uniform, and at no point in my interaction with the staff did I identify myself as a member of the law enforcement community. At no point did I indicate my position, nor did I ask the responders to do anything that they would not, had not, or have not done for anyone else who makes a business dispute call.”
Owens claims his challengers have “politized” the issue. Nonetheless, he does apologize for “distracting” the public from the Sheriff’s Office’s mission.