Nashville police investigate bull’s-eye in NAACP leader’s yard

The leader of the Nashville chapter of the NAACP walked out of his house on Saturday night to find that someone had propped up a bull’s-eye target in his yard.

So the chapter president, the Rev. Keith Caldwell, called the police. But according to an account that Caldwell posted on Facebook, the officer who came to his house did not take the threat seriously. The officer, he wrote, shrugged “and said that he ‘thought the target was pretty cool.’”

“I informed him that I am the local NAACP President and have deep concerns about what this could mean for the safety of my life and the lives of my family members,” Caldwell wrote. He said he had told the officer “that it concerned me that he was so flippant about the matter.”

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said in a statement today that it was seeking to determine who had placed the target in Caldwell’s yard, and that it was reviewing the interaction between its officer and Caldwell, which it referred to as an “apparent disagreement.”

Later today, it said that the officer, Eric McCoy, told the department’s Office of Professional Accountability, which investigates complaints, that he “meant no disrespect to Caldwell and understands how his words were misconstrued.”

The department said that the two would meet in a mediation session.

It also said that, using surveillance footage, it had identified the man who had placed the target in the yard. The police said the man, Roy E. Brown, 63, knew Caldwell and “thought the plastic game target resembled a flower that would look nice.”

Brown received a citation charging him with intimidation, a misdemeanor, and will be booked on Aug. 14, the police said.

Caldwell, reached by telephone tonight, said, “From the information I have, it does not appear to be a racialized act.”

“I am advocating for it to be heard in mental health court,” he said.

Brown could not immediately be reached for comment tonight.

The department described the target — a bull’s-eye with plastic bristles, propped up on a stand in the yard — as a game “available from Walmart.”

Caldwell was initially concerned that the target might have been placed in the yard as an act of intimidation because of his role as NAACP president, the police said.

Under his leadership, Caldwell said, the NAACP chapter has worked with the chief of Nashville’s Police Department on oversight and threats toward African-Americans. Caldwell also said he had been lobbying the chief to make body cameras mandatory for officers.

In 2018, after a white Nashville officer fatally shot a black man who was running away from him, the NAACP chapter was part of a coalition that proposed the creation of a civilian board to investigate allegations of police misconduct. The board was approved in a referendum that year.

In an earlier interview on Monday, Caldwell, 52, said that although he had previously been the target of racial slurs and threats, he had not received any such threats lately before the bull’s-eye showed up in his yard.

“Not any more than the organizer of a community organization has had for the past 20 years,” he said. “The N-word, and ‘watch yourself,’ but nothing having stuff put in my yard.”

Caldwell, the pastor at a United Methodist Church in Murfreesboro, Tenn., said he called the nonemergency number for the Police Department after he and a friend found the bull’s-eye on Saturday, to make it a matter of record.

Caldwell said he expected the officer, who is white, to write up the details of the incident and provide a report number.

“I really felt he maybe needed some sensitivity training,” Caldwell said. “He just did not think it was a big deal.”