Community Review Board Weighs Expansive Complaint Against MNPD

Nashville's Community Review Board assembled downtown Tuesday to discuss a 61-page complaint from a former officer that alleges broad malfeasance and mismanagement within the Metro Nashville Police Department. The complaint itself has not yet been made available to the public. Former MNPD Lt. Garet Davidson, who retired in early 2024, took responsibility for the complaint in a statement on his podcast released hours before the meeting. 

Metro attorney Nicki Eke began the meeting by advising members against discussing the complaint specifics, as the complaint will likely prompt an investigation within Metro. Members — specifically CRB executive director Jill Fitcheard and Alisha Haddock — emphasized the gravity of the allegations and weighed potential legal issues against the public’s compelling interest to know its contents. Procedural questions about the body’s role in the complaint, including what due process will follow the filing, stymied the body at various points during the meeting.

“The complaint is not confidential,” Fitcheard told her fellow board members early in the meeting. “It is a public complaint sent by email via a retired officer. I think that this community deserves to understand the complexity of the complaint. I think that we have a fundamental responsibility to talk to the public that is here today about some of the allegations.” 

The complaint, filed with Metro’s Office of Professional Accountability and shared with the full CRB last week, reaffirms suspicions of many board members that police have worked against citizen oversight efforts. Metro OPA, which is implicated in the complaint, cautioned the CRB against publicly discussing the complaint in an email to board members Tuesday morning. One individual familiar with the complaint described its contents to the Scene as “case after case of issues of misconduct from police officers that were swept under the rug or otherwise handled incorrectly.”

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At Tuesday’s meeting, board member Haddock specifically referenced allegations in the complaint that high-ranking MNPD officials helped craft 2023 state legislation gutting police oversight bodies statewide. Throughout the meeting, Eke continued to caution members against getting too close to specifics.

Board members Mary Beard (in-house counsel at HCA) and Drew Goddard (a longtime attorney at Bass, Berry & Sims) tried to sketch out the legal guardrails around the CRB’s role in any pending follow-up to the complaint. Its far-reaching allegations create potential conflicts of interest for the MNPD, the Office of Professional Accountability and the CRB, according to public conversation on Tuesday. 

“Speaking truth to power is not an easy thing to do,” said board member Mark Wynn, a retired police officer. “I want to personally thank this retired police officer for being a police whistleblower in this complaint.”

Davidson's podcast, titled IA: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, publishes stories about police misconduct. The most recent episode includes a high-level overview of his allegations against Metro.