SOUTH PITTSBURG, Tenn. - South Pittsburg police are looking for the perpetrator of a downtown vandalism incident last month.
During the early morning hours of March 31, police Chief Robert "Bobby" Simpson said someone went through town shooting some storefront windows with a pellet gun.
"This is a felony amount of damage that was caused," he said. "It's not going to be tolerated."
Since the incident, officers have "ramped up" patrols in the downtown area and are focusing on enforcing curfew laws.
"We want parents to know there is a curfew," Simpson said. "State law addresses youths being out after midnight. We're going to look at that."
He said his officers have been instructed to pull over teens if they're out after midnight and are "just cruising around town on the front streets."
"We're going to find out what they're doing out here," Simpson said. "That's going to get the parents up out of bed and have them come out and tell us what their children are doing."
There is one camera that shows the downtown area along Cedar Avenue on a continuous feed on a local cable television channel, but it doesn't record.
Other than that, officials are not aware of any other security recording devices along that route.
"That's the sort of thing that somebody, especially kids, usually brags about," Mayor Jane Dawkins said.
"They'll think it's funny, and we want to know people who think it's funny," Simpson added. "We want to talk to them."
Anyone with information about the incident is encouraged to call the South Pittsburg police department.
In other business, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has recertified South Pittsburg's police department for its data submission to the Tennessee Incident Based Reporting System.
In April 2015, the department was decertified for failing to submit data in an acceptable manner between 2012 and 2014 when it was under the direction of former chief Dale Winters.
Simpson, who took over as chief in February 2015, said the TBI audited the department's reports back to 2013.
"They found hundreds of reports that were either coded improperly, missing, just not entered, or whatever - just a variety of problems," he said. "That started all kinds of phone calls and ways to remedy this. I don't know how many calls I made to TBI trying to get this solved. Finally, we set up a procedure in doing this."
Several South Pittsburg officers were sent to training for certification on submitting the reports, and then those officers took the backlog of cases and began submitting them properly.
"The stacks were ominous," Simpson said. "When you saw the stack, you would think there's no way they're going to be able to do this. Well, they did."
He thanked his officers for their hard work and dedication to get the certification back "way ahead of schedule."
Ryan Lewis is based in Marion County. Contact him at ryanlewis34@gmail.com.