By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
APRIL 29, 2025 | Next week (May 8), Peachtree Corners will host a key discussion on law enforcement in that city. The meeting will be at 7 p.m. at Christ the King Lutheran Church. If this interests you, be there early, since the church will seat only 300 for this meeting.
However, the program will be live-streamed. To see it as it happens, go to this link to watch the stream.
Anticipated to come out of this gathering is the big question: should Peachtree Corners pursue having its own police department? For this to happen, the city can simply change the way it currently provides law enforcement. By its charter, the City of Peachtree Corners provides three essential services: waste management, police and fire protection, and public works. The city currently relies on the Gwinnett County Police Department and the Gwinnett County Fire Department for law enforcement and emergency response, with the Gwinnett County West Precinct serving Peachtree Corners. Out of its $62 million overall budget, it allocates $1.2 million for police protection.
City Manager Brian Johnson will present findings of a police staffing study by the Center for Public Safety Management, a Washington, D.C. firm, which is evaluating the feasibility and projected costs of forming a city police department
What would it cost Peachtree Corners’ citizens to have their own police department?
A short answer might be: “Big number.”
GwinnettForum has researched the cost of the cities in Gwinnett which have their own police departments. The results can be seen in this accompanying table.
The largest city police force in Gwinnett is in Lawrenceville, with 87 sworn officers. The smallest force, with 22 sworn officers, is in both Auburn and Braselton. It follows that Lawrenceville’s police budget is the largest, at $66.7 million. Braselton spends the least, $8.2 million. The results can be seen in this accompanying table.
The Gwinnett city spending the highest percent of its overall budget is Braselton, for which the police budget is 50 percent. Next higher is Duluth, at 39 percent, while Norcross and Suwanee are spending 38 and 37 percent of their budget on policing.
The city spending the least part of its city budget on police is Auburn, spending 19 percent. Lawrenceville is next at $26.7 percent.
Braselton also has the highest ratio of sworn officers per population, at one officer for every 706 residents. Duluth follows with one officer per 622 people, while the lowest is Norcross, with one officer per 346 residents. All figures are based on the 2023 U.S. Census population estimates.
Now, looking forward to the May 8 Peachtree Corners gathering, how much would the city have to spend on its own police department, based on the figures in other cities? If you take the city with the lowest ratio of sworn officers to population, that is Norcross at 356, that would mean Peachtree Corners would need to have 124 sworn officers.
Norcross spends $7.7 million for 52 sworn officers, so using that ratio Peachtree Corners would need to fund $18.4 million for its own force.
Using a similar ratio, compared to Lawrenceville, it would mean that Peachtree Corners would spend $25.3 million for operations of its own police force. In addition, the city would have to initially construct a police building. You might remember that the City of Norcross is building a new police facility, estimated to cost $20 million.
The cost of a police force for Peachtree Corners depends on how much its citizens are willing to pay for its own police presence.
- Have a comment? Click here to send an email.
Follow Us