Crossville Chronicle

7/23/24

Inmates released from state prisons in neighboring Morgan and Bledsoe counties are given $37 and, clad in white shirts and khaki slacks, often board a charter bus bound for Crossville as the first stop.

And that bus stop on Executive Dr. is a dark, deserted gas station that’s closed for business.

“They need to have a business any place where they’re dropping people off and picking them up,” City Attorney Randy York said of the charter companies using the closed-down business. “It shouldn’t just be on the side of the road like that.”

Crossville City Council could be looking at an ordinance to that effect as early as August. It will be a relief for Police Chief Jessie Brooks and his squad.

“There’s nothing I can do about it, but I’d sort of like to keep an eye on them,” Brooks said during the City Council’s regular work session earlier this month. “At least if the business where they drop them off is manned, at least they can keep an eye on them and say if they start to doing whatever meanness they want to get into.”

The police chief said officials from Morgan County Correctional Complex and Bledsoe County Correctional Complex send him notifications when a released prisoner is expected to be at the Crossville bus station.

He’s received 30 such notifications since February and is paying officers overtime to patrol the area for the safety of businesses and other passengers dropped off or waiting to catch the next bus.

“A lot of them are sex offenders,” Brooks said. “There’s really nothing we can do for them. We can’t arrest them. They’re just getting out of prison. Most of the time, they’ll drop them off. They don’t give them a watch. They don’t give them anything. Their bus is supposed to be there at 5 o’clock or whatever time it’s supposed to be there. They don’t have a watch. They don’t have a cellphone.

“And 90% of the time, you find them down in town.”

He told council members that a detective took a young woman in her late teens to early 20s to a nearby restaurant. She was waiting at the deserted bus stop, he said, with two newly released sex offenders.

“We had one incident where one guy had served 20-something years for drugs, manufacture of meth,” Brooks said. “He asked my narcotics officer where he could score some meth. His 20 years in prison’s really not done much to rehabilitate.”

The ordinance was initially scheduled to go before the council this month. York requested that it be pulled so he can look into clauses that stipulate fines and penalties, other clauses and ordinances, as well as if Crossville City Court has the authority to review violations.