A female Nashville police sergeant’s lawsuit against her former supervisors is moving forward after clearing another legal hurdle. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled against the city’s efforts to quash the complaint.
It’s a big step for a suit that directly challenges the culture of the Metro Nashville Police Department.
In 2020, Sgt. Michelle Hammond-Beville sued several members of the department’s Office of Professional Accountability, which investigates allegations of police misconduct.
She had worked in the unit — and raised concerns about what she saw as disparate treatment for white men versus women and people of color. According to her lawsuit, Hammond-Beville believed OPA was protecting some employees — mostly white men — and unfairly investigating others — mostly with “other demographic backgrounds.”
A WPLN News and APM Reports Investigation uncovered what many current and former MNPD employees have described as a two-track disciplinary system, just like the one she mentions. A data analysis found that people of color investigated for wrongdoing are severely punished at higher rates than their white co-workers. Black women accused of misconduct, for instance, are suspended, demoted or fired at more than twice the rate of white men.
After Hammond-Beville pointed out these patterns to her supervisors, she says, the office wrongly investigated her.
The details of the case are complex. Hammond-Beville was decommissioned in 2018 after a family member accused her of child abuse. From there, she alleges in her lawsuit, OPA Director Kathy Morante, Lt. Jason Sharpe and investigator Ron Carter failed to follow proper procedures for an internal affairs investigation. She says they refused to close the case against her or grant her a hearing to defend herself even after her family member recanted and officials from both an outside law enforcement agency and the Department of Children’s Services cleared her of wrongdoing.
The lawsuit also accuses a former Cheatham County sheriff’s deputy of arresting Hammond-Beville without probable cause and pressuring MNPD to fire her. The deputy has since been asked to resign, because the local district attorney considered him to be an unreliable witness. All his criminal cases have been dropped. Cheatham County, which is named in the suit, could not be reached for comment.
Nashville’s legal department has tried to get the case dismissed for more than a year, without success. City attorneys say the case is still in the early stages and that they are “confident in our clients’ defenses to the claim.”
MNPD has denied claims of unfairness or retaliation, and it dropped the internal investigation against her in September 2020. Hammond-Beville has since been reinstated and assigned to a new unit.
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