Grady County Commissioner responds to employment of alleged sex offender

Grady County District 1 Commissioner Zac Davis responded Thursday regarding the employment of Jared Titler.

Titler, a 22-year-old Tuttle man, was arrested in June on charges of inappropriate communications with an underage girl. He is currently awaiting a pretrial conference August 28 in Okaloosa, Florida.

At the time of his arrest, Titler was working for the City of Tuttle as a Fiber Optics Installer, but was let go following the charges.

After he was bonded out, Titler was employed at the Grady County District 1 Barn was let go more than a week ago, August 7, according to a termination notice the commissioner provided.

Commissioner Davis said today, “The only thing I was a little upset about was I didn’t get a chance to respond so I can show that I have transparency through my office. The people deserve to know the facts. I would have liked to have been able to say that he did work here, it didn’t work out, and he doesn’t work here any more. He was just part time. He came to me and asked me for a job. He told me about his situation. When people are released, whether it be pretrial, post-trial, when the judge releases them back into society, these people have to be productive for society and I had a job opening, a part-time job opening, and he came to work. It didn’t work out and now he no longer works there, and that’s really about all there is to it. I can’t get into personnel issues. It was a mutual agreement between the two of us that he no longer needed to work there.”

There is no policy preventing the county from hiring felons or sex offenders, alleged or convicted.

“When you get released back into society,” Davis said, “whether that’s the judge releases you from jail before a trial, or you go to prison and get released, when you’re back in society, it’s your right, it’s your duty, it’s your obligation as a citizen to be productive to society. I had a job opening. It was part time and it wasn’t nothing fancy. It was literally scrubbing toilets and washing equipment and sweeping floors and it was just general labor work. He screwed up and I’m not condoning what he did, but it’s time to start paying his debt back to society and that starts with him going to work.”