A White County grand jury has indicted two men – one a Washington County deputy sheriff and the other a retire Sparta policeman — on charges of stealing from a non-profit organization devoted to law enforcement officers, reports the Cookeville Herald Citizen.
Robert Hall, 68, a retired lieutenant for the Sparta Police Department, and Maj. Gary Bradley, of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department, were each indicted Monday on one count of theft over $60,000, one count of conspiracy to commit a felony and two counts of forgery.
“The victim of the theft was the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Officers Association, a non-profit corporation,” said Bryant C. Dunaway, 13th Judicial District Attorney General.
That statewide association meets every other month for one afternoon at the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy in Donelson, and it hosts spring and fall conferences annually for the purpose of law enforcement education and training.
It was chartered in April 1986, and its purpose is to facilitate the exchange of information, ideas and practices among training officers from law enforcement agencies across the state.
According to information released from the district attorney’s office yesterday, the offenses for which Hall and Bradley were charged came after the special investigation unit of the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office began investigating allegations of theft spanning from January 2007 through December 2013.
“Both men were officers of the non-profit corporation during that time period,” Dunaway said.
The two men were both arrested on Tuesday following the Monday indictment and booked into the White County Jail on a bond of $10,000 each.
Hall is retired from the Sparta Police Department, where he built a career as a police training expert, drafting training manuals and helping various other agencies establish training procedures.
Bradley began his employment with the Washington County Sheriff’s Department nearly 20 years ago, in September 1995.
…Washington County is located in the tip of East Tennessee, and its county seat is Jonesborough.