By Danny Fenster
ticklethewire.com
Nine months from retirement, a Tennessee ATF agent was notified in August that the agency intended to fire him.
But the ATF agent Steve Parris, an African American, says the recommendation to fire him is rooted in nothing more than an informant’s racism, backed by the informant’s law enforcement buddy, Vonore, Tenn. Police Department officer Mathew Watson and disgraced former Vonore Police Chief Mike Myers, according to a report on the website of the Knoxville News Sentinel.
At issue: the informant and the police officers claim that Pariss gave the informant Andy Maltby–a convicted felon–his gun at a barbecue in March of 2008 for some target shooting, the paper reported. ATF sided with in a follow-up probe in which Parris was accused of lying about the incident.
“By hook and by crook, they’re trying to terminate him for some unknown reason,” Parris’ attorney Hugh Ward, a former federal prosecutor, told the paper. Ward is representing Parris in his appeal of the matter.
Ward got affidavits from law enforcement offices at the picnic who said Parris wasn’t even armed, according to the paper. The paper reported that Ward claims in an affidavit that the informant made the allegations because he was angry at Parris for only paying him $50 for some snitch work.
“As a prosecutor, if someone had given me that case for us to prosecute, I’d say, ‘You’re kidding me,'” Ward said of ATF’s probe into Maltby.
ATF declined comment, according to the paper.
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