Gallatin Police Department lies with claims it investigated the death of Grant Solomon

When lying and omission become part of your character, you lose integrity and the trust you once had from others. — Theodore Walter Fedorchak

Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth telling, truth speaking, truth living, and truth loving. — James E. Faust

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As a follow-up to the recent coverage of the death of Grant Solomon, there’s an important aspect that other media are not covering.

Specifically, the Gallatin Police Department is lying with its claims that it investigated Grant’s death.

While there may be papers with the word “investigation” on them, the Department made a de minimis effort to acquire and preserve evidence. And without evidence, the Department could not perform a meaningful investigation.

That is the real issue in Grant Solomon’s death: Why did Gallatin not make any effort to obtain and preserve evidence about the circumstances of Grant’s death? And why does it pretend voters are stupid, with its claims that the matter has been investigated, when the City doesn’t have the evidence needed to conduct an investigation?

Red herring alert.

In other words, Gallatin PD didn’t even take the steps needed to conduct an investigation, let alone actually have an investigation. Even worse, Department officials think they can brush us off with these lies.

Not gonna happen.

Failing to acquire and preserve evidence is a violation of Grant’s rights to the equal protection of the laws and an egregious breach of the Department’s duty to protect the public. As such, we hope Grant’s mother and sister sue in federal court for the violation of Grant’s civil rights.

Even worse, the Gallatin Police Department compounds the situation by refusing to take responsibility for its inaction.

Police officers know that two critical attributes of ethical policing are accountability and transparency–including owning up to the mistakes that all officers make. Thus, by insisting that it did everything by the book and by brushing off outside scrutiny, the Gallatin Police Department erodes the trust of the public and damages the reputation of its officers.

Before we go further, we recognize that accusing someone of being a liar is a serious matter.

Moreover, it gives us no pleasure to say this about a police department and its officers. But, when, as here, a police department is lying to avoid dealing with the murder of Grant Solomon, we need to call a spade a spade.

Context informs investigation

One fundamental rule of police investigations is that context informs the details of an investigation. In this regard, the Gallatin Police Department ignored an alarmingly large issue: The allegation that Aaron Solomon, Grant’s father, previously attempted to kill Angie, Grant’s mother, and, at the time, Aaron’s wife.

This allegation, even taken on its own, should have been enough to warrant a vigorous, in-depth investigation. Such an investigation would have included:

• Interviewing Aaron, Angie, and Gracie.
• Interviewing staff and faculty at Grace Christian Academy.
• Obtaining DNA samples from Grant’s truck, his clothes, and more.
• Pulling cellphone tower information and geolocation data for all persons in the area.
• Reviewing Aaron’s phone records and internet history.
• Reviewing license plate reader information in the area.
• Interviewing the individuals who had control of Grant’s cell phone following his death. Specifically, it was in the possession of one of Aaron’s friends. Yet at Grant’s funeral, Aaron told an over-the-top fabrication about how a Good Samaritan found the phone and became a Christian. This narrative is categorically a lie, which leaves unexplained how this person got Grant’s phone.
• Reviewing black box data from Grant’s truck.
• Reviewing black box data from Aaron’s truck.
• Performing an autopsy on Grant’s remains.
• Conducting an accident reconstruction, assessing tire tracks, and more.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the Gallatin Police Department didn’t know about Aaron’s purported history of attempted murder.

Even in that case, there were plenty of issues around Grant’s death that demanded — indeed, screamed — about the importance of a thorough police investigation. These issues include:

• Why did Aaron lie about Grant’s cell phone?
• Why was Aaron so insistent on meeting Grant the morning Grant died, even though they did not have an appointment at the Ward Performance Institute?
• Why are Aaron’s claims about his son’s death inconsistent?
• Why did Aaron fraudulently attempt to total Grant’s truck?
• Why does the black box from Grant’s truck make it clear that someone drove the vehicle on top of him?
• Why does Aaron claim that Grant’s truck dragged him to his death, which absolutely did not happen?
• Why did Grant’s pastor, Steve Berger, lie about his meeting with Grant? Specifically, Berger’s claim that Grant came to see him to learn how to be “closer to Jesus” is hogwash.

But even there, the warning signs that Grant’s death warranted a thorough investigation are numerous. For example, the allegations that Aaron sexually abused his daughter and physically and emotionally abused both Grant and Gracie should be enough to alarm any law enforcement officer.

Add in the allegations of interstate human trafficking, child porn, and other criminal activity by Aaron, and we cannot imagine a legitimate fact pattern under which the Gallatin Police Department legitimately failed to pull in other law enforcement agencies, including federal agencies.

In other words, the Gallatin Police Department is worse than incompetent: It’s corrupt.

Gallatin elected officials share culpability

It’s also important to remember that Gallatin officials have utterly ignored calls for accountability in the death of Grant Solomon. Indeed, so far, Mayor Paige Brown, local chief of police Don Bandy, and others have refused even to answer our pleas for help. That is unconscionable and not the way civilian oversight of law enforcement should operate.

That begs the question: How can any of these characters claim to be responsible, ethical, or accountable when they ignore the death of an eighteen-year-old boy?

As to the local prosecutor Ray Whitley’s claim that he prosecutes all prosecutable cases, that begs the question: Why is it not prosecutable? With the police department’s refusal to acquire evidence, of course, it’s not prosecutable. The point is that the police department needs to conduct a meaningful investigation, obtain the required evidence to prosecute and go from there.

Meanwhile, let’s go straight to the heart of the matter: Whitley and others can spare us the conclusory remarks unsupported by evidence.

If indeed there is a legitimate reason Grant Solomon’s death is not murder, explain it to us. Explain to us how he got dragged to his death without a single scuff. Help us understand who the three guys in high-visibility vests were at the scene of Grant’s death and why they left the scene. And tell us why you don’t have an issue with Aaron Solomon’s inconsistent statements.

Is it because Aaron has kompromat on you? Could it be the allegations of human trafficking, which Aaron himself raised in legal pleadings, are true? Do these issues implicate Gallatin officials?

Until we get an answer, Anglican Watch recommends that the Gallatin electorate vote Paige Brown and all current Gallatin elected officials out of office.

Good government is accountable government, and everything we can see suggests that Paige Brown and other Gallatin elected officials are spectacularly corrupt.

Indeed, how can Brown be a parent and not be concerned about the death of Grant Solomon — another mother’s son? And if Brown really were concerned, she could start by answering her emails and asking for an investigation.

Time to put an end to Paige Brown’s corrupt political career and drain the swamp of Tennessee politics.

In the meantime, we want to explicitly say this: the Gallatin police department is lying when it says the death of Grant Solomon has been investigated. Claiming that filling out a traffic accident report and interviewing Aaron Solomon rises to the level of an investigation, when even basics like toxicology or an autopsy have been omitted, is deceitful and disingenuous, and we utterly reject the lies of Chief of Police Don Bandy and others involved in this sordid cover-up.