The Chattanooga Beer Board requested installation of a camera outside Shady’s Corner bar on Cemetery Avenue to mitigate concerns brought by neighbors and the mosque next door.
“I think that will really give the community some easement, to know that this board, regulatory, police, all of us are working together to help them as well,” said board member J.W. Cole, who made the motion to request the camera. “Not to push Shady’s out, but to at least work where everybody’s level.”
The motion was made during the Beer Board meeting Thursday, after the Chattanooga Police Department unit responsible for finding cause for a citation determined, after consulting with the Hamilton County District Attorney’s Office, that there was not enough evidence to cite the bar for violating the beer code.
Board members began exploring ways they could cite Shady’s Corner when neighbors and members of the Masjid Muhammad, a mosque next door, appeared at the Nov. 6 meeting calling for the board to revoke the bar’s beer license. During that meeting, board members were instructed they cannot take any action against the business until the police bring a citation.
At the November meeting, neighbors cited issues with noise, broken beer bottles littered through yards, property damage, violence and traffic issues during the public comment period. Mosque members described an incident in which a bar patron urinated on the door to the mosque.
Chattanooga Police Sgt. David Cowan told the board that the bar’s owner had not responded to requests to talk from police.
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From Sept. 3 to Nov. 23, 18 police reports were filed around the address of Shady’s Corner, but none of the incidents in the reports occurred inside the bar, Cowan said. In order for the incidents to count as violations on the part of the bar, the police unit must meet a burden of proof that the bar owner had knowledge of the violation and there was some sort of intent behind the violation, said Cowan, the supervisor of the Police Department Regulatory Unit.
“At this point in the game, what we’re dealing with is common behavior coming from bars,” Cowan said to the board. “If you looked at random bars throughout the city, you’re going to have a number of these very same instances that occur in and around all of these bars.”
The idea for the camera came from a business on Main Street, Let’s Paint, that has been brought to the attention of the board for allegedly disrupting the peace in the surrounding Jefferson Heights neighborhood. Within the past month, a surveillance camera was installed near Let’s Paint, Cowan said.
(READ MORE: Man charged with false reports of bomb at Shady’s Corner)
Cowan said the camera and increased police presence seemed to be helping at Let’s Paint. The motion to install a camera at Shady’s Corner did not have any timeframe attached to it, but Cole said the board would follow up at the next meeting in two weeks. Cowan said the installation of a camera would depend in part on the availability of equipment.
Hammad El-Ameen, the imam of the mosque, distributed open records from the Chattanooga Police Department at the November meeting that showed 511 police responses to Shady’s Corner from Sept. 22, 2023, to Sept. 27, 2025.
At the meeting Thursday, El-Ameen said he doesn’t believe the problems at Shady’s would be tolerated near a church.
“There’s no way Shady’s Corner would still be there today with that many calls and incidents there,” he said.
Members of the Beer Board pointed out that complaints about Let’s Paint are more recent, while Shady’s has been an issue for more than two years.
“Let’s Paint is a fourth of the size of Shady’s Corner,” said Beer Board member Veronica Dunson. “Let’s Paint doesn’t have that much criminal activity that they got to have a camera pointed on them, regardless to who requested it. If you don’t have another camera, take the one from Let’s Paint and put it where it’s needed – it’s needed at Shady’s.”
Contact religion reporter Kailee Shores at kshores@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6659.
Note: This story was updated Dec. 6 to correct information about placement of a camera.