When two unions decide a town isn’t big enough for both of them, officials of one union aren’t necessarily respectful of the niceties of law in winning members away from the other. Such has been the case in the Nashville area, where a Teamsters local has been engaging in low-intensity guerrilla warfare with a rival union affiliated with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). Secrets of that battle continue to emerge. On Friday, September 21, Joe Everson, a resident of Memphis, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to making false statements in connection with a joint FBI-Department of Labor-Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe surrounding the discovery in July of surveillance equipment at an FOP summer youth camp.
Union Corruption Update reported this August that the Nashville Metro Police Department decommissioned one of its officers, Roy Dunaway, after learning that he had been involved in a plot to bug a summer youth camp in nearby Mt. Juliet sponsored by a local of Teamster rival, the Fraternal Order of Police. Dunaway had served as the department’s liaison to Local 327. At the time, only one person, Calvin Hullett, a Teamster employee and former FOP local president, had been arrested – for aggravated burglary. Agents from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) searched Hullett’s home, gathering evidence suggesting that as many as six current or former members of Metro Police, the Davidson County (Nashville) Sheriff’s Office and the Shelby County (Memphis) Sheriff’s Office may have been involved. Everson appears to be of the latter.
According to the plea agreement, Everson had been contacted this past May by an unnamed “Individual A,” who was interested in the purchase and installation of surveillance equipment at a campground facility for low-income kids operated by Andrew Jackson Lodge 5 of the Fraternal Order of Police. Individual A was an employee of IBT Local 327. After agreeing upon a price, Everson met with this person and another in Nashville on June 9, receiving a check for $5,000 drawn on a Local 327 bank account as payment for both equipment and installation. Everson and the two associates later that day went to the camp. Over the course of the investigation, Everson knowingly provided false information to TBI agents, denying that he’d visited the camp or installed any equipment. He is scheduled for sentencing on January 25, 2008. (States News Service, 9/21/07).