Police surrounded Chattanooga City Hall on Friday afternoon after a suspicious package was reported inside the City Hall Annex, but no device was found.
Patrol officers guarded the building’s perimeter as bomb technicians examined a package inside the annex building about 1 p.m.
A city employee stumbled upon the package that had “another language or scribble” on the front of it, Chattanooga police spokeswoman Officer Rebecca Royval said. The return address was smudged into an illegible blob.
As Royval spoke to the media, Assistant Chief Tim Carroll pulled her aside to tell her a “rather thick” manila envelope contained only a stack of papers.
Royval later deflected the notion that the package could have been related to recall efforts or other tension between residents and the city’s politicians.
“It was nothing like that,” she said. “But when we get a suspicious package, we have to treat it seriously. Better safe than sorry.”
The scare brought out Police Chief Bobby Dodd and several of his newly promoted assistant chiefs along with the city’s bomb squad. They blocked off several streets.
“When the city receives a suspicious package, we’ve got a decision to make,” Dodd said. “We decided to handle it today.”
Bomb technicians made sure to keep the package still as they took an X-ray scan of its contents, finding nothing but documents inside.
Officials said they would not release the contents of the papers as they investigated further.