Since 1993, Tennessee law enforcement agencies have received more than 41,000 military surplus items worth at least $121 million, much of that going to the state’s smaller cities and counties. According to a Tennessean report based on data from the state Department of General Services, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office leads the pack at $9.7 million in equipment. It is followed by the Loudon County Sheriff’s Office, $8.1 million, Livingston Police, $4.5 million, Parsons Police, $4.2 million and the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department at $3.8 million in equipment. Over the past nine years, Tennessee has moved from 47th in...

A Bedford County resident is charged with doctor shopping for drugs, using TennCare healthcare insurance benefits as payment. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) announced the arrest of Brian Keith Tucker, 39, of Shelbyville. Tucker, is charged in Bedford County with three counts of doctor shopping. The Bedford County Sheriff’s Office assisted in the arrest. “The fraudulent misuse of TennCare benefits is a serious issue but Tennessee is out front in cracking down on these types of crimes,” Acting Inspector General Lawrence S. Saylor, Jr., said. “Health care providers and their employees have become very good at spotting these...

The Warren County High School student who took a gun to school last week prompting a lockdown has pled guilty in Juvenile Court to the charge of delinquency to the act of possessing a firearm on school property. The teenager has been committed to the Department of Children’s Services. There he is expected to receive rehabilitation and educational services. Some students said they saw the 17 year-old with the gun that turned out to be a loaded .22 caliber handgun inside a locker at the McMinnville...

Residents across the state are preparing to celebrate a historic anniversary – the 50th year of the Wilderness Act. The act was signed into law on Sept. 3, 1964, establishing the National Wilderness Preservation System “as a mechanism to have kind of a unified way of giving protections to wild places that we want to give our highest protection to,” said Tennessee playwright and wilderness enthusiast Jim Pfitzer, “places where we don’t want to have any road building or developments or mineral extractions, that kind of thing.” Initially, some 9 million acres of wildlands were set aside for the...

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and Department of Veterans Affairs Commissioner Many-Bears Grinder recognize the service and sacrifice of Private First Class Cecil E. Harris of Shelbyville. Harris was serving with the 179th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division on January 2, 1945 when his platoon was holding a defensive position in France near the German border during World War II. The platoon came under attack and had to make a hasty withdrawal. When the platoon was able to regroup, fellow soldiers realized PFC Harris was missing. He was 19 years old. The United States Army Graves Registration Command (AGRC) investigated...

Charter Communications Inc. said late Saturday that the company was aware of some customers experiencing Internet outages across its service area. Charter spokeswoman Kim Haas says the company is working to restore service and says the cause is unknown. She said the issues were “intermittent across parts of our footprint.” Most Service in Coffee County was back to full capacity on Sunday afternoon. Haas said she could not provide any further details. Social media users posted complaints on the company’s Twitter and Facebook pages. The company did not immediately respond on either site. Numerous calls to the company’s service...