There’s this great podcast called No Fair Remembering Stuff, and the hosts basically fill their show with relevant shit they remember that the rest of the world seems to have forgotten. They deal mostly with politics, but it kind of works like this: Say someone kicked you, and you suspected they might have done it on purpose, but they were all apologetic. “Oh, I’m so sorry. What a regrettable accident. You have to know I’ve never done anything like this before.” But just as you were about to believe them, the hosts of No Fair Remembering Stuff popped up and started listing all the other “accidental” kickings this person has been involved in, and maybe the results of investigations into those kickings, and now that you hear all these past things together, it sure seems like this person just has some kind of jones for kicking people. And now you’re mad, but the kicker is hurt that people remembered all the old stuff they’d done, so they couldn’t just pretend this was an accident.
Extensive complaint says officials ignored department policy, manipulated investigations, lied about reforms and helped pass a law gutting the Community Oversight Board
These past couple of weeks have been quite a circus for the Metro Nashville Police Department. First we got the complaint from former Office of Professional Accountability Lt. Garet Davidson alleging — among many, many things — that OPA Director Kathy Morante gave Deputy Chief Chris Gilder a small, engraved crystal trophy in honor of the work that Gilder and Deputy Chief Mike Hagar allegedly did to lobby the state to dismantle Nashville's Community Oversight Board that voters put in place. Then on Friday, another complaint emerged. This time we learned that Lt. Alfredo Arevalo is saying that the Covenant School shooter’s journals were kept locked in Davidson’s office, insinuating that, if they leaked, Davidson must have done the leaking.
So was Davidson attempting to get his allegations out before it came out that he might have been the Covenant journals leaker? Is the department implying that he might be the Covenant journals leaker as a way to delegitimize some of his claims?
And now here’s where we get to play No Fair Remembering Stuff!
A court filing says Garet Davidson had access to Covenant School shooter’s writings
The first and most important bundle of stuff is that last year, Nashville paid $1.2 million to Paul Shane Garrett, who was wrongfully convicted of murder. Garrett was arrested in 2001. In 2004, DNA from the crime scene was matched to a different person, but no one told Garrett or his lawyer this. WPLN's Anna Gallegos-Cannon reported:
In 2011, MNPD cold case detectives found very little documentation that linked Garrett to the murder. During this time, DA Johnson, former Assistant District Attorney Kathy Morante, former Police Chief Steve Anderson and others from MNPD held a “clandestine” meeting to discuss the lack of “credible evidence” connecting Garrett to the crime. However, the district attorney took no steps to clear Garrett’s name.
We can get another angle on this from Steve Cavendish at the Nashville Banner:
Confronted with this problem, Johnson convened what [then-Criminal Court Judge] Mark Fishburn describes as a “clandestine” meeting in 2011. Roland and Postiglione presented their findings of Garrett’s innocence to Johnson, MNPD Chief Steve Anderson, Deputy DA Tom Thurman and ADA Kathy Morante. The potential fallout from the case was serious enough that the public relations leaders for the police and district attorney’s office, Don Aaron and Susan Niland, also were there. If Roland was right and Garrett was not the killer, an innocent man had been in prison for almost a decade.
You may wonder: What happens to people who have growing concerns that a man is sitting in prison for a murder he did not commit after they have their secret meeting to decide to do nothing about it? Steve had that covered in his 2023 report too:
Of the attendees at that “clandestine meeting,” several remain in law enforcement. Deputy DA Tom Thurman retired in 2016 and MNPD Chief Steve Anderson retired in 2020. Kathy Morante now is the director of the Office of Professional Accountability for MNPD. Susan Niland is a senior public information officer with the TBI. Don Aaron is MNPD’s public affairs director.
And Torry Johnson is a professor at Belmont University’s law school, where he teaches criminal law, criminal constitutional law, criminal procedure and on alternating semesters, a course on wrongful convictions.
If you didn’t laugh out loud reading that last part, you’re a better person than me.
Here are some relevant headlines.
January 25, 2016: “Commission Begins Decertifying Metro Police Officers” — a story about how MNPD thwarted efforts by the state to decertify bad cops.
The Metro police department's representative repeatedly told the commission these agreements prevented her from taking a proactive role in the state's disciplinary process.
Kathy Morante, director of the Metro Police Department's Professional Standards Division, told the commission, "When that settlement is made, it is made very clear to the officer that we are not going to seek decertification."
Morante joined the MNPD in 2013 after more than a decade as an assistant district attorney. And the job she is doing now, as director of the department's Office of Professional Accountability, and that of her predecessors has been called into question.
A pending lawsuit, filed by a man who was wrongly detained for a DUI in 2014, has raised issues about how allegations of misconduct against police are handled.
“Beyond the specific issue of false DUI arrests,” the suit says, “as a general matter, MNPD officers have little reason to fear sanctions for falsely arresting a civilian because MNPD supervisory staff almost always resolve civilian-initiated complaints in the officer’s favor.”
Later in the story, MNPD spokesperson Don Aaron told the Scene: “This police department has absolute and full faith and confidence in Office of Professional Accountability Director Ms. Kathy Morante, a former Tennessee Deputy Attorney General and former Assistant District Attorney General, as well as the investigators who report to her.”
Aug. 6, 2020: “Report: 19 Women Detail Toxic Work Environment, ‘Boys Club’ at the Nashville Police Department.” Relevant quote:
One woman calls the department a “boys club” and says anyone who complains about harassment can expect their reputation and career to be “shot to hell.” Another says she was called “Aunt Jemima” and was groped at work so many times that she’d cry all the way home and could hardly sleep.
Sept. 29, 2021: “Behind the Blue Wall: Officers Describe a ‘Toxic’ Culture Within Metro Police.”
But when some officers are accused of serious misconduct, they manage to get by with little or no discipline. Sometimes they’re even promoted. Many current and former employees say it largely depends on whether you’re in good favor with the leaders of the department and the Office of Professional Accountability.
“I mean, it was obvious that some got away with whatever, with little taps on the wrist, and then others, they were like beating them down,” said former Sergeant Marita Granberry, who worked at the department for about 30 years before retiring in 2015. “It’s like the rules were only applied to certain people, and other people could do whatever they wanted to do and squeeze out of it.”
The lawsuit between former police officer Monica Blake — who is mentioned in the above-linked story — and the city outlines even more disturbing allegations of police misconduct toward each other and how the OPA smoothed things over for their friends and made things hard on their enemies.
Aug. 7, 2023: “A Nashville police officer endured sexual harassment. Her successful lawsuit shines a light inside the department.” Important bit from this story about how MNPD works:
The head of the Office of Professional Accountability, Kathy Morante, did testify during Gomez’s trial about the alleged retaliation.
“If we are given information that any officer — even if it comes up after a sexual assault allegation — has been doing policy violations … that are dangerous, that are very serious to the department, we’re obligated to look into those,” Morante said.
Former police officer Greta McClain says this tactic is common at MNPD. It’s used as a way to keep people quiet.
“If they want to look hard enough, you know, we all make mistakes and they can find some reason to punish you for something,” McClain says.
Later on in the story, McClain says, “If they’re going to treat their own this way, what do you think they’re going to do to an average citizen?”
I don’t know how many stories we need to read before we’re convinced of a pattern, but it seems like if you’re a cop the OPA likes, you will be shielded from consequences as much as humanly possible. And if you are anyone else, tough shit.
So while, sure, Davidson could be the leaker, the OPA has a long record of alleged retaliation against cops who cross them. And even if Davidson is the leaker, he retired. So if he's the leaker, the people charged with holding cops accountable failed to realize they had someone who wouldn’t follow procedure in their midst until he was gone. That, also, is not a great look for them.
Complaint against police department takes toll on community-police relations
I’m co-hosting this week’s Pod Bless Nashville, wherein co-host Braden Gall and I have a discussion that is the culmination of a couple of discussions we’ve had about Theeda Murphy’s appearance on the show. Murphy is a police abolitionist. I think I’m fairly typifying her opinion in saying she believes the police do more harm than good, and we have no evidence that MNPD is even remotely willing to or capable of being accountable to the community they serve. Police wrongdoing is never adequately addressed, and the culture seemingly cannot be reformed.
I told Braden that a thing I’ve been really, really struggling with is that, if Theeda asked me to give her examples of how the police provide more benefit to her community than they do harm, I don’t have good answers. And I personally feel like I can’t just hand-wave away the idea of police abolition if I can’t make the argument that they do more good than harm. I’m not saying I think police abolition is the way to go. I’m saying I’m really struggling with my inability to come up with an argument for why Theeda should want to keep the police. And I genuinely think this is important for the whole city to spend some time thinking about.
Hoo boy — then I started doing the research for this piece. Just story after story featuring allegations about how poorly the police treat each other, sexual harassment, retaliation, racism, sexism and a double standard for how people in good with the OPA get treated versus how people who aren’t get treated ... and now I’m sitting here with another question I don’t know how to answer. Why should the police want to keep the police? Do they think they do more good than harm to each other? Do they feel like they’re held accountable to each other? From the outside, it sure doesn’t look like it.
And like former officer Greta McClain says, “If they’re going to threat their own this way, what do you think they’re going to do to an average citizen?”
