After months of requests from the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Red Bank has released four harassment complaints filed by police officers against Bradley Hanon, the former city patrolman recently described by three city commissioners as "a good officer."
Officer Shane Dockery, Officer Tammie Delashmitt and former officer Steven Meador filed written complaints last year stating that Hanon created a hostile work environment for them. Most accuse Hanon of intimidation.
"That's news to me," Hanon said Friday. "They didn't get my side of the story."
Internal documents reveal that just before Hanon resigned Jan. 8, Police Chief Tim Christol placed him on the same shift as Delashmitt, a female officer who had filed allegations of harassment against Hanon on Aug. 11.
After Delashmitt filed the complaint, Red Bank commissioned Knoxville attorney Pamela Reeves to investigate. She found that Hanon bypassed the chain of command to tell his supervisors that Delashmitt conducted "an illegal arrest" and that he spread rumors about Delash-mitt having an affair with a sergeant.
Christol defended pairing Hanon and Delashmitt.
"It wasn't a gender-based harassment thing," Christol said. "I do know what I'm doing in these personnel decisions."
Records show Christol based his decision on Reeves' investigation, which concluded a month before Christol became police chief.On his first day as chief, Christol told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that "we won't base decisions on something that happened before I got here."
"How can you [accept] an investigation you didn't do?" Hanon said.
Past Times Free Press stories have shown that Hanon lobbied two Red Bank city commissioners to work toward the firing of Police Chief Larry Sneed, filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against Red Bank and searched several homes without warrants, consent or life-or-death circumstances as required by law.
City Manager Chris Dorsey released the officers' complaints to the Times Free Press last week. Hanon resigned Jan. 9, effectively removing the "under investigation" label that keeps some police records sealed.
According to Meador's Oct. 5 complaint, Hanon accused Meador of "[sucking] up" to "the people who have [run] this department into the ground."
"You and everyone else here need this job," Hanon told Meador, according to the complaint. "It's not like you can stand up against the giants like I can and risk to lose this job."
When Meador told Hanon he wanted to stay out of the controversy surrounding the police department, Hanon described three factions - the pro-Sneed side, the "limp" middle and the anti-Sneed side - and lumped Meador in the middle.
A subsequent Meador complaint, dated Dec. 6, states: "Bradley Hanon [makes] me despise working for Red Bank."
On Friday, Hanon said, "You call that harassment?"
Two weeks ago, Meador resigned from Red Bank and got a job with the Chattanooga Police Department. At the time, he told the Times Free Press that he "never looked for a way out of Red Bank."
On Nov. 2, Dockery filed a three-page complaint describing Hanon as an officer who causes confrontation "about issues that do not pertain to him or his role as a patrol officer on second shift."
"If this does not change soon I do not feel it will be safe for me to continue to work for the city of Red Bank," Dockery wrote.
Delashmitt and Dockery still are on the police force.
In July, Hanon privately lobbied Vice Mayor Greg Jones and Commissioner Floy Pierce to work toward Sneed's dismissal, saying he treated officers unfairly. Later, Hanon filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against Dorsey for employing Sneed as long as he did.
Sneed supervised two arrests of Mayor Monty Millard, and the former chief's lawyers have said Hanon's claims masked political motivations to get rid of Sneed.
In December, Dorsey commissioned an outside investigation into a Nov. 16 search conducted by several officers, including Hanon.
Investigators said the officers unlawfully searched several homes and also illegally asked Red Bank Fire Department personnel to break down a door blocked by guns and ammunition.
Dorsey suspended Hanon for 30 days without pay at the conclusion of the investigation.
Jones, Pierce and Millard objected, all praising Hanon as "a good officer."