TWO COMMUNITIES DISBAND POLICE; SOME SAY METH BUSTS ARE WHY

GRUETLI-LAAGER, Tenn. (AP) -- Four days after police arrested a new
alderman on drug charges, the city board voted to shut down the department
and put the longtime chief and his three officers out of work.

Four days later, city officials in neighboring Palmer also disbanded their
two-officer police department, which assisted arresting the Gruetli-Laager
alderman.

During the public votes, the Gruetli-Laager aldermen mentioned complaints
of police harassment while Palmer officials talked about saving money.

The fired police in these small towns say they know the real reason they
are out of work: They went after illegal methamphetamine labs rife in their
Cumberland Plateau county.

Gruetli-Laager Mayor Donna Rollins, who took office Aug. 6, and the other
three aldermen who voted to abolish the police department refused to
discuss the reason behind their Aug. 19 votes. Although Palmer Mayor Paul
Campbell disagreed with the decision by his aldermen, he said it was financial.

Now some of the 1,800 residents in Gruetli-Laager are not only downright
nervous about being dependent for nighttime protection on two county
deputies patrolling 630 miles of winding, hilly roads. They also wonder
what is happening at City Hall.

Beverly Sanders, whose R&B Video rentals is next-door to City Hall, said
she and others want to know how the town will provide law enforcement.

"We felt really good being up here by the police station, but now there are
no police," she said. "It's a concern for sure."

Swiss immigrants settled Gruetli-Laager (pronounced GROOT'-lee LAH'-guhr)
in 1869, but from the City Hall parking lot the name is the only clue to
the poor farming community's beginnings. Both Gruetli-Laager and Palmer are
in Grundy County, a mountainous region about 30 miles northwest of
Chattanooga notorious in decades past as a home for moonshine stills and
automobile chop shops.

Alderman Wayne Grimes, the lone vote against the shutdown, said
Gruetli-Laager's police chief of 21 years and the three other officers
stepped on the wrong toes when they busted 67 methamphetamine labs in the
first seven months of this year.

"I just feel like maybe they were doing their job too good," said Grimes, a
contractor who is midway through his second term as an alderman.

Grimes said police crackdowns on beer sales to minors angered some market
owners and relatives and friends of those arrested.

"To me it was a political deal," Grimes said. "They thought that hopefully
if they got rid of the police department they would drop the charges."

Rollins previously served as mayor and has "old grudges" with former police
chief Ferrell Hicks, he said.

Alderman Jim Layne, 37, who was freed on a $1,000 bond following his Aug.
12 arrest on a charge of buying a controlled substance without a
prescription, declined to comment on why he voted to shut down the
department. The aldermen who joined in that vote, Dwight Hargis and newly
elected Connie Cannon, also wouldn't talk about it.

Former chief Hicks said his department not only policed Gruetli-Laager but
also responded to calls from residents outside the city limits. He stands
behind the department's work and all of its drug cases.

Hicks, 62, said the new mayor "wanted the key to the evidence room and
wanted to tell you who to go after. I don't go along with that."

Methamphetamine, an addictive stimulant manufactured from easily obtained
chemicals, is the "biggest problem this county has got and it will increase
now," he said. Hicks declined further comment.

Gruetli-Laager's former mayor, Wanda Hart, said she and the chief sometimes
disagreed during her just-ended term. But meth manufacture and addiction
are problems for the region, she said.

"I don't know if you can give that too much attention," said Hart, a nurse.

She sometimes heard from residents who thought the police didn't do enough,
and she didn't think the officers were overzealous. But she also recalled
citizen complaints about harassment, although nobody would officially complain.

"It was hard to say whether it was going on or not," said Hart, who didn't
seek re-election.

Palmer's former police chief, Barry Parker, said he was hired in June after
the town of about 900 residents went 18 months without a police department.
He said no money problem was mentioned before he was told the department
was out of business.

Parker also thinks his involvement in drug enforcement may have contributed
to the decision. He said meth labs in the community have supplied dealers
and users throughout Tennessee for years.

Rollins, a retiree who campaigned on a promise to abolish the police,
answered the phone at City Hall Thursday as Tennessee Bureau of
Investigation agents pored over police evidence and case files.

District Attorney Mike Taylor requested the TBI assistance but he said it
wasn't an investigation. He wouldn't comment on the board's decision to
abolish the police department.

Grundy County Sheriff Robert Meeks also declined comment except to say he
would try to make sure his deputies patrol the communities.

The Grundy County Swiss Historical Society celebrated the community's
European heritage at its annual celebration earlier this month. John
Baggenstoss, an organizer who lives at Monteagle, said there is "very
little left" of buildings from the original colony.

"What is going on out there politically I couldn't tell you," Baggenstoss
said. "It's a fairly rough little neighborhood."