Newport, Tenn, city police have been under investigation since June 2005, because enough reports had been made against the officers conducting illicit activities. These activities include pulling over migrant workers and rolling them for their cash payments, redistributing drugs found from busts, and embezzlement.
According to research, the investigation began following a cock fighting raid, where $40,000 and 144 people were seized by federal and state agents. A few days later, the sheriff's deputy Larry Joe Dodgin was arrested on drug charges, setting up six other police officers to be indicted.
At this point, shit started to pick up:
- July: Daniel Lynn Curenton arrested on charges of money laundering & conspiracy;
the FBI followed up with subpoenas to probe the sheriff's dept's drug fund. - August: School bus driver Dewey Lynn Phillips was arrested for drug trafficking as part of the ongoing FBI probe.
- September: A sherrif's deputy, John W. Black was taken into custody by federal authorities on Sept. 26 on charges of mail fraud and perjury.
- October: Sgt. Patrick Sheldon and Sgt. Jimmy Roach were charged with civil rights violations following a federal grand jury indictment (the aforementioned "rolling the Mexicans").
- December: County Chief Deputy Pat Taylor being taken into custody and arraigned in federal court, alleging that he, with others, "did receive, possess, conceal, store, barter, sell and dispose of certain goods, wares and merchandise of a value of $5,000 or more, which property had crossed a state boundary after having been represented to be stolen and subsequently brought into the state of Tennessee, the property having been represented to the defendants to have been stolen ..."
Now, here we are, 2006; a year described by Mayor Connie Ball as a year of "growth & revitalization." So far, here's what's happened:
- Jan 3: State trooper Kevin Kimbrough is transferred to Hamblen County for his safety, as he was an informant against Johnny Black.
- Jan 4: Inmates, opportunistic as always, start crawling out of the woodwork. A Greene County Jail inmate alleges that, upon transfer to Cocke County, he was denied basic hygienic necessities, then was beaten, choked, and shocked with a police taser by sheriff's deputies who also taunted him with a police dog. The inmate filed a $3 million civil rights lawsuit on Tuesday against the Cocke County Jail, Sheriff D.C. Ramsey, Corrections Chief Michael "Mikey" McCarter, and eight current and former sheriff's deputies and jailers.
- Jan 5: James Mark Thornton, charged on the cocaine trafficking arrest of the school bus driver (Dewey Phillips), agreed to plead guilty to one count of trafficking if he could cooperate with federal authorities.
- Jan 6: Michael McCarter takes the Plain Talk on a tour of the jail, no doubt a PR stunt for the local area.
And, in the biggest fishing expedition, FBI agents have officially named Cocke County sheriff D.C. Ramsey as a target of their investigation.
Now, we covered how opportunistic inmates can get. That doesn't hold a candle to the general population.
- September 2005: Phillip David Lauder of North Carolina entered CVS Pharmacy on Cosby Highway brandishing a shotgun and demanded drugs. During a two-hour standoff, which included law enforcement agencies from Newport, Cocke County and Morristown, Lauder held five people hostage.
- December 2005: A 61yr old woman is a victim of aggravated burglary.
- Jan 6 2006: A 19yr old woman states that she was carjacked and kidnapped to Knoxville, where she escaped and made her way back home.
- Jan 10 2006: Two gunmen entered the Auto Zone & robbed the store and its patrons & employees of a combined total of almost $10000 (including $3000 in cash carried by ONE CUSTOMER, and "a Wal-Mart card with a $20 limit").
The first step in taking over any town is to compromise the police force. Then, as mass confusion sets in and the populace begins to take advantage, the truly ambitious can take over. Newport has opened the floodgate to takeover.
3 comments:
Back in October, before I made my illustrious return to the JCT, my aunt Cheryl was hospitalized for the walkin' pneumonia in, of all places, Newport. She lives in White Pine, which Nate probably remembers as where you would stop to piss when you were traveling to College Square Mall, so I guess that's why her general practicioner sent her to Newport. Either that or he hates her.
We went out to visit her during her hospital stay and on the way back, Dad was telling stories of the bad ol' days of Newport. Growing up in Motown in the mid to late 70s, he was peripherially aware of what went down in the ass end of the ass end of the Universe: Cocke County.
When I was growing up we would go fishing on Douglas Lake, often near the 25-E bridge to Cocke County. As soon as you crossed that bridge you came to Thunderbird's, one of those dirty old bars where people were routinely stabbed in a drunken brawl when they weren't being shot in a drunken brawl. It has been converted into a fancy dinner bar, which is somehow sad. There were a couple more of those dirty ass bars not far from there, of which one is still a bar and the other is, I believe, boarded up and lost to time. Well, not really "lost," mind you, but it ain't there no more.
Anyhow, I think pretty much this same scenario played out a couple of decades ago, culminating in the sheriff at the time along with half the deputies being busted in a huge raid when DEA agents set up a sting involving a shitload of cocaine on a prop plan needing a place to land. The sheriff was most happy to oblige, for a small fee of course.
Not to mention the chop shops and the car lots loaded with stolen automobiles.
(Searching for verification on this story netted the following comment on a story about a KKK rally in Newport : "The current KKK is a perverse corruption of the original and deserves to be treated with contempt." I wish you could send someone a big, steaming dump via email.)
Not to mention Brenda's Lounge, which rests on the end of Newport; it used to be a non-stop hookerfest there. It was owned by a chick, named Brenda, and they really treated pizza delivery boys well ... with money, pervs.
However, I did take a pizza there once, and a chick I went to high school with (I worked at the Hut on odd weekends to keep my summer gig) was there, and actually looked pretty hot (as the rare whore sometimes does). Well, she asked me what I was doing when I got off work, and kept trying to convince me to come back.
Well, one visual sweep around the bar, and the guy passed out with his head on the table was enough to convince me that her chooch was nowhere my genitals needed to be in even the same room with.
Brenda's was extremely well known for its reputation as a whorehouse. On deliveries, I'd get truckers from as far out as Arkansas asking me where Brenda's was. I'd tell them & get great tips. Brenda's meat curtains were apparently pretty popular.
That was 1996. I hadn't really bothered checking into Brenda's progress as the years rolled on. This year, swung by for shits & giggles, to find that Brenda's had been turned into a church. Yep ... it's that strange.
It's weird being in the Tri-Cities area after growing up in the Five Rivers region. I asked if Libby had ever been to Newport because I wondered if Newport and the rest of Cocke County had the reputation with a native Kingsportonian that it does in, say, Motown. That entire area is just a bad, bad place, isolated from the rest of civilization by mountains and populated by people you'd expect to see in pictures Brent posts on SF by that one photographer.
Sure, it's more "gentrified" in Newport proper (a black mayor and a whorehouse converted to a church...) and there are plenty of backwoods places in this country that aren't too dissimilar from Bybee, but Cocke Country is its own little world.
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