The state board overseeing Tennessee law enforcement officers decertified a Shelby County Sheriff’s deputy earlier this month, but had questions about the requested decertification of a Memphis police officer. 

The Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission (POST) decertified Deputy Brandon Hughes when he failed to appear before the board for his June 15 hearing in Nashville.

Hughes reportedly was pulled over for DUI and having his weapon on his person before reportedly lying to Memphis Police Department officers.

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In the same hearing, the board rejected a request from MPD to decertify former Officer Elijah Presley over a 2021 incident.

Also during the hearing, as previously reported, a decertification hearing for MPD’s Preston Hemphill, who was involved in the traffic stop of Tyre Nichols but never charged, was delayed until the end of litigation and federal investigation.

POST certification is required for all Tennessee law enforcement officers. 

Presley’s case brought claims from some board members that Shelby County law enforcement agencies might be over-reacting as they send cases to the POST board in response to recent problems with law enforcement in Memphis and Shelby County.

Presley resigned from MPD in 2022, prior to administrative hearings. He now works in law enforcement for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

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Presley is alleged to have broken the arm of a woman during a domestic violence call, according to MPD decertification request documents.

Presley and his partner, according to the documents, appeared on the scene of the domestic violence call, and Presley approached the woman. She got in her vehicle, the documents state, and drove her car into her driveway at 30 to 40 mph. The woman then ran inside her home.

When Presley’s partner joined him, Presley spoke to the woman through her iron door, and she demanded a supervisor.

It was then that Presley is said to have kicked in the glass of the storm door and reached through to unlock it, kicked open the metal door and forced his way inside. As the woman pulled away from his grasp, Presley allegedly grabbed her with his partner and took her to the floor, breaking her arm.

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“You failed to ask the female about the domestic assault allegation,” decertification documents read. “Your lack of de-escalation along with an incomplete investigation led to premature allegations. Your judgments and actions were hasty and partially based on your partner’s past history of domestic violence calls to the location.

“You forced entry into the complainant’s home, regarding a misdemeanor offense, and used unnecessary physical force to make an arrest that may have been avoided.”

POST members seemed to side with the officer during discussion of the offense.

“You said she was struggling?” one member asked MPD Internal Affairs Lieutenant Keith Morris.

Morris said the woman was struggling and her arm hit a counter during the struggle with officers.

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Timothy Taylor, the attorney for Presley, said Presley was never served with charges and that if MPD felt his actions justified termination, there was no action taken that gave that indication. Taylor said MPD allowed him to work throughout the entire time he was in Memphis, and he was never put on desk duty.

“I feel very disturbed about the background of this case and the actual action that is subject of discipline,” POST Senior Counsel Brent Cherry said. “It’s disturbing to me that we don’t have more of a report of the investigation to be able to determine exactly what happened.

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“If we’ve got two officers that are basically busting into a house, dragging a woman out and breaking her arm in the process, even though she may be unruly to some extent … perhaps you can all put my concerns to rest a little bit here.”

Chad Partin, a POST commissioner and the Coffee County, Tennessee, sheriff, said that given the “climate of Shelby County” right now, criminal wrongdoing —if there were any — would have gone to a grand jury.

Seven officers from Shelby County law enforcement agencies have been sent to POST for decertification in 2023.

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“This was retroactive and digging up records because of all the crap that’s going on over there,” Partin said. 

“I can guarantee you that the state of Oklahoma Highway Patrol would be just like the Tennessee Department of Safety, and they dug into this and hired this young man. And it’s a shame we’ve lost him in the state of Tennessee.”