Every cop in Milner, Georgia, is walking off the job after the mayor allegedly slapped a GPS tracker on the police chief's personal truck — and refused to deny it when confronted. When the government surveils its own law enforcement, the people who protect your streets simply leave.

The stakes are straightforward: a town of fewer than 1,000 residents, 45 miles south of Atlanta, will wake up Thursday with no local police department. City Manager Tausha Grose announced at Monday's council meeting that five full-time officers and most reserve officers have stepped down. The department's last day is Wednesday, Oct. 28. Grose herself resigned effective Oct. 30.

The walkout began after Police Chief Lamar Bunn accused Mayor Craig Timmons of placing a tracking device on his personally purchased truck and monitoring him through city hall cameras — without the knowledge of the city council or the city administrator.

Bunn laid it out plainly at the meeting: "City Hall every day, got a tracker on my truck, bought with personal funds and placed on my vehicle without the city council or my supervisor, city administrator knowing it…violating my fourth amendment right."

When asked directly about the tracker, Timmons had every chance to deny it. He didn't. "I have no comment," the mayor said, according to Atlanta News First.

Bunn also knocked down rumors of an affair with Grose and said disputes over overtime pay and a proposal to ban officers from using city vehicles for part-time work had been brewing. But the breaking point was the surveillance. "The constant looking over my shoulder to know that someone's got access to a camera that watches city hall," Bunn said. "It's not right. It's just not right."

Bunn told Fox 5 he didn't ask his officers to quit. "I didn't ask them to do it," he said. "It's not like I said, 'Hey guys, let's quit.'" They walked anyway. He's also considering legal action against Timmons and the city.

The Lamar County Sheriff's Office is expected to cover Milner in the interim. Whether that's a permanent arrangement is an open question. Former city council member Skip Seda told Atlanta News First he'll push to unincorporate Milner entirely if the police force and city manager are gone. "Because we already paying taxes for Milner, and about the only darn thing the difference between us and the county is that police force," Seda said. "So, why would we continue to pay Milner taxes?"

A mayor tracking a police chief's vehicle without authorization isn't oversight — it's surveillance. The Fourth Amendment exists precisely to restrain this kind of government overreach. When the people sworn to enforce the law become targets of it, they quit. And the citizens who paid for their protection are left to figure out what comes next.