D’Marquivius Jamon (D.J.) King (via Facebook/City of Griffin, Ga.)
A Georgia police officer has been indicted on charges that he deliberately failed to investigate his half brother as a potential suspect in a murder case.
D’Marquivius “D.J.” King, 25, has been indicted on a felony count of Violation of Oath of Office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Friday. The indictment stems from the result of an investigation launched in February of last year over King’s handling of the investigation into the murder of a man named Javarreis Reid, who was shot to death in May 2021 at age 25.
King had been assigned to the case — but according to the GBI, he failed to fulfill his obligation as a police investigator.
“The investigation shows that King, while employed as an investigator with the Griffin Police Department, discovered that his brother, Damon Beck, was involved in the murder of Reid,” the GBI statement says. “King failed to properly investigate the murder.”
A Spalding County grand jury heard evidence on March 20, the statement said, and returned the indictment. On March 22, King turned himself in and was booked into the Spading County Jail, according to the GBI.
The indictment comes more than a year after concerns were first raised about King’s role in the matter. As Atlanta ABC affiliate WSB reported, King failed to properly investigate after learning his brother, Damon Beck, was potentially involved in Reid’s murder.
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Local NBC affiliate WXIA reported that internal records showed King’s brother, Damon Beck, was a suspect in Reid’s murder — and he didn’t tell anyone.
“It was determined during the investigation that Investigator King’s brother Damon Beck is involved in the murder,” an internal reprimand from November 2021 states, according to WXIA. “Investigator King failed to notify his chain of command of the conflict of interest and did not list Damon Beck as a suspect on any documentation.”
The reprimand said that King was in violation of the department policy that police department employees have a duty “not to give false or misleading information.”
Then-police chief Michael Yates said at the time that Beck was King’s half brother and the two had never lived together, and that King’s only wrongdoing was “poor documentation of his casework,” WXIA reported. Yates was placed on “non-disciplinary, administrative leave” in April 2023 and retired shortly after, the WXIA story said.
King was put on administrative leave on Feb. 27, 2023, as the GBI investigation was underway. He resigned from the police department in September, WXIA reported.
His resignation came after the district attorney’s office wrote in a September 2023 letter to Griffin City Manager Jessica O’Connor that the investigation into King and Yates revealed “policy violations” by both men.
“These violations are egregious enough to have destroyed my Office’s confidence in both Officer King and Chief Yates to effectively perform their duties,” the letter said, adding that prosecutors could no longer rely on King as a witness.
Beck, meanwhile, wasn’t apprehended until 2023, at which point he was accused of murder and aggravated assault. He is one of three defendants in the case and is currently being held in the Spalding County Jail on $750,000 bond, WSB reported.
King joined the force in 2017. As WXIA reported, he was considered a rising star in the department, and had even been the focus of a promotional segment by the city in which he spoke enthusiastically about his job.
The charge of Violation of Duty is punishable in Georgia by a sentence of one to five years in prison.
