By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
This weekend we received the following email, presented below with no edits or corrections, exactly as it arrived in our inbox:
Wow! I just watched video of lying office michael bell, and his even more stupid/corrupt boss—officer jason hall—who still has a job btw, try to frame an innocent Nate Stephens. Officer hall looks like he has about a fifth grade education. officer hall could care less about people—That was obvious!
We were about to plan a large corporate event in your town. After watching your dishonest police department, AND a CORRUPT DA THAT STILL TRIED TO CONVICT AN INNOCENT MAN!!!
WE ALL SAID NO WAY AND GO SOMEWHERE ELSE FOR EVENT! WE PASS ON YOU IDIOTS! DISHONEST SCUMBAGS. (JUST COST THE TOWN ABOUT $25K).
Backwoods dishonest demons. Did you report on this? Seems kind of important when your dishonest police department, and DA!, are terrorizing citizens that SOMEONE report on it and fire them.. Have you ever spent the night in jail for no reason?
Just watched your mayor too. LOL. Yall need to wear clown face and shoes just to live there. Nothing worse than dishonest scumbags who act like they are legit. Is anyone honest in Grayson City?
Sent with Proton Mail secure email.
In response I pointed out that a search of our website would have shown that we have covered the viral video in question, as well as other incidents and lawsuits involving Bell. I also pointed out that we plan to continue to cover lawsuits involving Bell as they move through the court system.
We also noted something else – something you’ve probably already noticed yourself – which is that this “business person” who chose to deprive our community of this staggering $25,000 investment was brave enough to insult our community and our region. But they weren’t brave enough to sign their name, or to list their business. In fact, they even emailed us through a secure and anonymous email account associated with the Swiss based Proton Mail.
Normally, I wouldn’t even bother to respond to a message like this, but this one pushed a few buttons for me.
The characterization of the entire region as backwards, ignorant, and uneducated is something outsiders have leveled at us for a long time. We see the author of the email return to variations on this over and over, at one point calling us “backwoods,” a not so coded term for unsophisticated, as if the ability to step out our front doors and gaze upon some of the most beautiful landscapes in the country is somehow inversely proportional to our level of intelligence and sophistication.
And it’s obvious from their characterization of our people – most of whom were equally outraged by former officer Bell’s actions in this and other cases – and their word choice that they aren’t from the region. Because it’s so often outside agitators. No one from anywhere even remotely nearby, for instance, would call it “Grayson City.” They also wouldn’t ignore the fact that it was locals who were leading the charge in comments sections across the internet – helping make the video go viral. Or that there are local attorneys taking on these cases against Bell.
And, while we’ve stayed editorially silent on this issue so far, preferring to focus on objective coverage of the video, court case, and the city’s official response to the controversy, the time for staying silent is over.
We need to acknowledge the mistakes made here. We also need to address some of the unfair blame.
It’s obvious from the viral videos that Bell did not express the demeanor required for a police professional. He should not have been hired. And he should not have been allowed to move on to another department so easily. Some of that is down to personnel issues that tie the hands of what former employers are allowed to report – an issue we’ve touched on in past editorials about unethical professional behavior. But there are undoubtedly things that could have been done to alert other employers of Bell’s unprofessional behavior, just as Grayson should have been made aware of other, past issues that reportedly involved Bell in other jurisdictions. Perhaps they were. Unfortunately, the police chief at the time Bell joined the Grayson department has retired, and though our reporter has attempted to contact him to discuss the case, he’s had no luck.
Current leadership will need to answer for that – both the mayor and the current police chief.
But while they will need to answer for it, it’s unfair for them to bear the full brunt of the blame. The mayor is the head of the city, and the buck ultimately stops with him. To his credit, Mayor Troy Combs has not attempted to deflect the blame back onto the police department or the former chief, as some have surely suggested he do – especially in an election year. He saw the shot coming and took it on the chin like a man.
Yes, his response in those early moments after the video went viral registered as tone deaf. He said the police had “fully embraced” the use of body cameras – something that Bell’s apparent attempts to obscure his body camera and microphone, and that Seargent Hall’s lack of visible body cam, seemed to contradict. (We have heard reports since that Hall was just getting off duty, and on his way home, when he responded to the call for backup because it was en route, and that this may be why he did not have a camera, but we cannot confirm that.)
But while the statement that body cameras had been “fully embraced” might have been something the community was skeptical about given what they saw, the thing that Troy didn’t focus on, and probably should have, was that the body cameras worked.
Without the body camera footage, it would have just been Nathan Stephens’s word against that of officer Michael Bell. The word of a suspected DUI hit-and-run driver against an officer of the law. How do you think that kind of case would have gone in court?
We may not be happy about the way Bell treated Stephens. We may not be happy with the way the city and the police department reacted. Because we shouldn’t be happy with it. It’s exactly the kind of scenario that make so many people distrust the police – the proverbial “bad apple that spoils the entire bunch.”
But the body cameras worked.
They might not have been embraced as enthusiastically as the mayor’s response suggested, but they worked. The body camera documented the interaction. And the footage it captured enabled Stephens to get off on the DUI charge. They did what they are supposed to do to protect citizens from police overreach, and to document abuse.
We don’t have to like what they show. We shouldn’t. But they worked.
Folks may not like the way the mayor and police responded to this event, and we wouldn’t blame them for that, but the body cameras that the mayor and city council voted to purchase and implement did their job. They documented the scene objectively.
We got to see what happened. And we didn’t like it. But it sure beats not having the opportunity to see it at all.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
