The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has opened a case against a Cleveland police officer accused of sexually assaulting a woman with whom he was having an affair.
TBI spokesman Josh DeVine said today that investigators began to look into the rape allegation against Officer Carl Walls at the request of District Attorney Jimmy Dunn, who oversees the 4th district where the alleged incident took place.
On Thursday, a 30-year-old woman went to the hospital and filed a complaint against Walls claiming that the officer forced her to have sex with him at a cabin in Gatlinburg on July 31.
Walls told the Times Free Press that he was having an affair with the woman, but he denied any criminal wrongdoing.
The criminal allegations emerged after the Cleveland Police Department began to look into a drunken weekend in Gatlinburg when Walls and Officer Chad Nave, who are both married, took the women they were seeing with them to a rented cabin. Interim Police Chief Mark Gibson said the department is investigating both Walls and Nave to see if the officers broke department policy during their extramarital affairs.
Both officers met the women they were seeing while on duty. Walls met the 30-year-old woman after he responded to a domestic call at her former house, according to the woman. And Nave met a 20-year-old woman during a police ride-along program, the police chief said.
The 30-year-old woman told the Times Free Press that Walls would stop by her house multiple times a week around 6:40 a.m. while on his shift to have sex.
Timeline of Cleveland police sex scandals
Aug. 7: Officers Carlton Walls and Chad Nave are placed on administrative leave to investigate allegations of extramarital sex and a woman’s accusation that she was sexually assaulted July 31 at a rented cabin in Gatlinburg.June: Lt. Steve Tyson and Officer Jeffrey Griggs’ demotions and reassignments upheld for policy violations related to investigation of ex-Chief Dennis Maddux’s affair with Griggs’ wife.May: Maddux submits retirement letter after internal affairs investigators said he lied about the relationship and events involving Cindy Griggs.February: Officer Jeff Griggs finds his wife and Maddox trysting in a car across the county line in Calhoun, Tenn.January 2014: Longtime Chief Wes Snyder retires after surveillance video showed him meeting a woman at a warehouse storage unit fitted out with a rug, blankets and a bottle of brandy.July 2013: Former Officer Ross Wooten is suspended and later resigns over the third allegation of sexual misconduct since he joined the department in 2004. The woman also sued him in federal court.May 2013: Sgt. Bill Higdon is terminated for repeated policy violations two months after suggestive texts and explicit photos from him turn up on the phone of a high-dollar prostitute whose death by gunshot was ruled a suicide.December 2011: Snyder claims there was no evidence to investigate allegations of that officers were giving pills and alcohol to teenage girls and having sex with them before one officer shot and wounded another in December 2008. An investigation led to the imprisonment of Officers Dennis Hughes and Nathan Thomas on charges of having sex with 14- and 16-year-old girls.