A Chattanooga activist is asking federal investigators to look into the practices of the Chattanooga Police Department, citing recent fatal shootings by police.
Lorenzo Ervin, a former president of activist group Concerned Citizens for Justice, sent a request to the U.S. Department of Justice in late September.
“The point is, it can’t even be brought to their attention if you don’t write a letter or make some sort of complaint,” Ervin said by phone.
Since 1994, the DOJ’s civil rights division has had the ability to conduct pattern or practice investigations that focus on long-running systemic police misconduct. The division can determine whether law enforcement agencies are systemically violating the Constitution or federal law, according to a statement from the DOJ.
Sgt. Victor Miller, spokesperson for the Chattanooga Police Department, referred questions to the city attorney’s office Thursday. The city attorney did not respond by press time.
Most recently, the DOJ opened an investigation into the Memphis Police Department after the police killing of Tyre Nichols.
Police in Louisville and Minneapolis were also recently investigated and were made to sign agreements promising to address violations found.
Ervin said his concerns with Chattanooga police go back to the late 1970s, when Concerned Citizens for Justice started its “Body Count” of people killed by local law enforcement officers. Over more than 40 years, the group has logged 79 people killed by law enforcement in the area.
“I just feel that nothing has changed,” Ervin said.
Three recent fatal police shootings in and around Chattanooga also spurred Ervin to write and submit the complaint, he said. Roger Heard Jr., 34, and David Mendez Lopez, 17, were shot and killed by Chattanooga officers about three weeks apart in August and September. William Hicks, 56, was shot and killed by police in Soddy-Daisy in September after reportedly attacking officers with a knife.
All three cases are still under active investigation by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, TBI spokesperson Susan Niland said in emails.
“We’ve got to this point they’re starting to kill kids,” Ervin said. “Despite whatever race, whatever situation, where they’re starting to kill school kids — that should bring pause to everybody.”
Ervin also cited cases going back to 1984 in which people protesting police actions were arrested and punished for demonstrations. Ervin himself was arrested several times for disorderly conduct and disrupting public meetings, according to Chattanooga Times Free Press archives and Ervin’s letter.
The most recent of those, he said in his complaint, was the 2020 arrest of activists including Marie Mott and Cameron Williams, or C-Grimey, for burning a flag and blocking a road during protests in reaction to the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Charges were dropped in the case against the activists more than two years later.
Mott said she shares Ervin’s concerns about police violence in Chattanooga but said an investigation should also look at personnel issues. Mott said that should include recent reports of two high-ranking officers being paid for unworked time and of 14 officers with allegations of untruthfulness who settled with the city last year.
“We need to clean up the Police Department, that’s overdue,” Mott, who plans to run for mayor in 2025, said by phone. “And at the same time, to shift what public safety looks like, so we can actually start addressing some of the issues and breaking the opportunity for police to actually go into the community and harm people.”
Mott also said she worries recent changes made to the city’s police advisory committee will give residents even less oversight of the Police Department. Before, the nine City Council members each chose one representative from their district to serve on the committee. After changes imposed by the statehouse earlier this year, the new committee is set to have seven members, all chosen by the mayor and approved by council members.
“To consolidate that solely in the hands of a mayor is robbing the legislative branch of its oversight,” Mott said. “The majority of our mayors have never come from any of the poor or distressed areas in our city, right? So the majority of the relationships that they have are people who are within certain classes or brackets within our city who often already have certain privileges.”
Ervin said he wanted a federal agency like the DOJ to investigate the department since local and state agencies in Tennessee work closely together and their employees often move between agencies — making it hard for them to be objective, he said.
Without more scrutiny or accountability for the department, Ervin said he worries tensions in the city could escalate.
“It’s really sad, so I’m just putting it in the feds’ hands,” he said. “If they want to do something about it, they can.”
Ervin said he has not heard back from the Department of Justice in response to his request. Representatives from the department did not respond to requests for comment on the complaint.
Contact Ellen Gerst at egerst@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6319.