Trouble, Right Here in Tarrant City
Oh yes, there’s trouble, right here in Tarrant City, with a capital “T” that rhymes with “C” that stands for (racist) Conspiracy.
(This article contains an update and *** retraction/corrections)
Apologies to Wilson and Lacey for screwing up their lyrics, but this ain’t no musical, this is real life in Tarrant, Alabama where I’ve spent weeks watching a group of disgruntled former and some current city employees, policemen, firefighters, electric company employees, former and current residents and city councilmembers post racist memes, false allegations and air their grievances against the new mayor of Tarrant. It all came to a head this past week when the former police chief Dennis Reno filed assault charges against Mayor Wayman Newton from an argument that happened on November 3, 2020. The Mayor held a news conference to refute the charges, and then released the cctv videos from the city hall and police station showing the chief using his allegedly hurt arm carrying boxes and doing other things later that evening and the next morning.
For a while I’d been wondering how to go about telling this story and how it would turn out. I’d been frustrated being a white ally, the only person in my city of 6500 with a Black Lives Matter sign in my yard; the only one showing up to the city council wearing BLM shirts and masks when I confronted the city council members that had done things that needed to be addressed, hoping that it would show my Black and other neighbors of color that they are supported and also encourage them to come speak out. But you never know what’s going to happen, or, should I say “What’s really happening in the new Tarrant” as the Facebook group that was formed by the angry mob. Citizens did start turning out, and that Facebook group was formed prior to the May 17, 2021 council meeting which I was unable to attend in person as I’d had shoulder surgery a week prior. (The FB group has since been hidden from sight completely after being named in the press conference and linked in a Trussville Tribune news article.) What’s also quite troubling is that the two news reporters that have written about these recent events, Carol Robinson from the Birmingham News and Erica Thomas of the Trussville Tribune, were members of the group and saw everything I will be making public here but chose to remain silent.
I suppose I’ll start from the beginning, give a little bit of backstory. Get yourself a cup of tea, you’re in for a ride, readers. When Mayor Newton was elected, it was a big surprise for some people. They fully expected it to be the other candidate, the one endorsed by the outgoing mayor of 16 years Loxcil Tuck, Joe Posey. That Ms. Tuck was also running for a district council seat and still endorsed a candidate for mayor while also acting as the outgoing mayor, well, no one blinked an eye. (To break this down a bit: If Posey was mayor, and Tuck won her district — and there was no reason why they wouldn’t, they were shoo-ins; the black residents rarely voted in numbers. Tuck would become Mayor Pro Tem and likely still be “ruling” the town with Posey as mouthpiece. That’s my theory and it’s been echoed by many other residents.) Mr. Newton got out the black vote, he worked for it. Still, out of 6500 residents, less than 12% voted in the mayoral race. When I met him last year, I’d only gone to get some produce boxes for myself and my neighbors. I didn’t even know he was campaigning. I decided then that I would help his campaign, and after he won the election, maintained the relationship. The new Tarrant City Hall was built across the street from where I live (convenient, I know), and two of his campaign promises, a farmer’s market and a pet wellness clinic came to fruition because we worked together to make them happen through connections I had in the area. This is NOT a man who can’t work with white people as I’m obviously as pale as they come. I’m just not racist, or I try hard not to be and continue to work on being as actively anti-racist as possible.
For these past seven (7!) months, as obstacle after obstacle has been thrown in his path, with a city council that’s often compared to a “circus”, a “shitshow”, a “laughingstock”; with two new council members and three holdovers from the past administration, the mayor has been under enormous pressure to fix everything that is wrong with this city. And this city has a lot wrong with it. But first, he needs to be able to trust the people he’s working with, has working for him, and is putting out to protect and serve the citizens of Tarrant. All the while, people have been questioning his integrity, his motives and whether he even lives in the city. I will admit I have on occasion questioned the same, because he IS a lawyer and a politician after all and my parents didn’t raise me to trust either one of those completely. But I will NOT stand by and watch as he’s essentially cyber-lynched by a bunch of petty crybabies who didn’t get what they wanted. So, as best as I can, here’s a basic timeline of events leading up to the arrest, with the players (at least those we’ve been able to root out from behind their fake profiles). *Nota Bene: I believe in the truth. This is the truth from the mouths of those involved. I’m putting it out there for the world to see. FAAFO.
In the above shots, the “Phillip” referred to is the current Lieutenant in the TPD and “Anthony” is the current Corporal. He is a subject of much derision and unhappiness, as he was a recent hire and then promoted above a longer serving member of the force. *** (this is a retraction and correction. My apologies to J. Page, I was misinformed as to who was working under the profile. I am SO SORRY.) Mike Aycock recently left the force and was using the Barney Phife profile, and it’s suspected that the current Lieutenant Phillip George may also be using it. Barney Phife may be the general profile for disgruntled members of the department to post their grievances.
Then the rest of the council members join this group, minus Threadford and the mayor. Tarrant already has it’s own “What’s Happening…” FB group, as do most towns and cities. But this one isn’t moderated, and it gets nastier over time. It’s only day two since I and an anonymous band of concerned citizens have gone in and started watching the “show”. And my therapist was starting to worry about my psyche. But I wasn’t so much doing this because I was on the mayor’s side — I was horrified at the systemic racism coming from law enforcement and council members. I guess that just goes to show how privileged I really was, that I was still shocked after all that’s happened recently including my own brutality at the hands of police. I didn’t think my city was immune from it, far from it. I knew that the predominantly Black and Latinx population had been ignored and was determined to help the new mayor do something about that. He campaigned on a slogan of “A New Tarrant”, and I’d promised to be his “accountability angel”: I’d call him out when he screwed up, too, keeping him honest when or if I found out he was doing the citizens wrong. For the most part, he’s been trying to fix decades of corruption and unjust decisions DURING A PANDEMIC. He’s been in office for a few months and these folks are after him like vultures.
Keep in mind as you start looking at these screenshots that Jay Felix (Butterbrodt), Larry Rice, Chase Ramsey/Chance Ramz, Wallace Page, Dan Weinrib no long work for or in Tarrant. Nor do they live here. At the time, I didn’t know that they were working with Dennis Reno to undermine the mayor’s ability to get anything done as well as the public’s confidence in him. What’s also concerning is there’s a member who proudly proclaims himself to be a “Three Percenter”. He works at the local steel coke plant that pollutes our city but is also, unfortunately, the biggest industry and tax revenue we have.
Around the same day that thread was posted, they were also posting the mayor’s addresses. His home address, the house he was fixing up, and his business address. He’s a real estate investor and owns several homes in the area. Apparently that makes you suspect. And then Lindsay Bloom showed up. Lindsay seems to know EVERYTHING that goes on in the city hall, and outside of it. I must admit, I’m intrigued as to who this profile actually belongs to and suspect it’s Butterbrodt although I’ve gone through a bunch of different scenarios over time. What’s most interesting is that Jay/Lindsay has SO MUCH information from within city hall. Current city workers are feeding him information. *As of 6/21/21 Mrs. Tommy Bryant has joined the regular city group and proclaim the mayor a liar on a share of his press conference. It leads me to wonder if the person within city hall feeding the information to Jay Felix/Lindsay Bloom is her husband, district 5 councilman Tommy Bryant and the main source of conflict on the city council. *As of 6/25/21 it’s suspected that Lindsey Bloom may be one of the administrative staff, including none other than soon-to-be-departing Deputy Mayor Kim Stone.
In the above screenshot, we see a real shot at the motives of this group. Fairfield, Al. is a predominantly Black city that is part of the Birmingham metro area, as is Tarrant. It’s main industry is steel, like Tarrant, home to the ABC Coke plant. Again I have to wonder why people who don’t live here are so interested in what’s happening, and determined to remove the newly elected mayor. Larry Rice Jr was a TPD Lieutenant and is currently doing security for a real estate company. He doesn’t live in Tarrant, so I’m not sure why this is so important to him other than he’s loyal to his former police chief and the former fire chief that was recently fired after a problematic arrest in Georgia for pulling a gun on a Black realty team. James Butterbrodt is currently working in Pell City, AL in law enforcement.
Things start coming to a major boil in June, when it’s made known that the city’s electrical system is at risk of failing due to the main power poles rotting at the bottom, which will cost the city some major money, and they haven’t been inspected for over 3 years. This information was relayed to the city council during the pre-council session. When it came time to have the actual council meeting, all hell broke loose *again*. Mayor Newton asked for a motion to appoint Deputy Mayor Kim Stone (Mayor Newton’s until-then administrative assistant) as the temporary clerk for the city council meeting. Councilman Tommy Bryant expressed immediate dissent at her “Deputy Mayor” title and demanded an explanation from Mayor Newton. Mayor Newton explained that Ms. Huddleston was his political appointee and that, in case himself or Mayor Pro Tempore Tracie Threadford were not at a council meeting, there would be continuity in the city. Councilwoman Threadford eventually made the suggested motion. There was no forthcoming second to the motion, nor would anyone on the council volunteer to take notes for the meeting, so no formal city council meeting could be held.
Much of this was missed by the general public, as a bad storm had knocked out the power and the internet live feed of the meeting. Apparently I and another person, a vision impaired but active attendee of the council meetings are…Deep State Agents who can knock out the Facebook Live Feed at will. Allow me to amuse myself with that for a moment.
Since the meeting could not continue as normal, citizens were invited to have their say for the public comments part of the evening. And boy, were the grievances aired. Eventually the meeting was unofficially adjourned and the internet chatter went into overdrive.
We have been without a city clerk since Dan Weinrib left when Mayor Newton took office. As he’s part of this internet “lynch mob”, he obviously holds a grudge against Newton. There were some interviews of clerks back in December and none were hired and then the issue just died away as more important business was at hand, I suppose.
This group of people have come together and forced a small business to close and spray painted anti-Semitic graffiti on the houses of the owners in retaliation to comments made in the regular city Facebook group and a protest against the cement plant brought into the city by the former administration. Remember, this is a group of police officers and city councilmembers, along with former and current citizens of Tarrant, AL.
Strife and disagreements among neighbors are nothing new, and Facebook fights are certainly nothing to make an entire Medium post about. But when it strays from being just chatter between neighbors to city council members and law enforcement plotting against citizens and the mayor,
In the above screenshot, remember that Barney Phife is TPD Mike Aycock (who resigned as of 6/25/21 and outed himself as Barney with a mistaken mispost today). Ringo Jackson is an unknown troll account. This kind of thing continued until 6/15/21, when a man was arrested in Tarrant. The group tried to create this story to humiliate the mayor:
PLOT TWIST: The person arrested is actually the grandson of district 1 council member Veronica Bandy. He was arrested for a failure to appear for a bond hearing on a 2016 arrest. Ms. Bandy later texted a citizen calling me and others “Wayman’s goons” because we’ve been trying to help him deal with this insanity and has blocked a bunch of people from her social media. She does know it’s a violation of the First Amendment, as per the ACLU case but apparently does not care.
They continued with the attempts to humiliate the mayor and smear his name to no avail, and the racist attacks came fast and furious.
See the below screenshots where they make fun of the (Black) Corporal Anthony Fields, the current Lt. Phillip George, who is white and has nothing to do with any of this, and my alternate profile which got booted from the group after this exchange. I should have known better than to say anything and kept quiet. Alas, I spoke up and showed myself to them.
After that scheme didn’t work, we come to the recent arrest, 7 1/2 months after the alleged assault occurred. And they had a field day with it, that is until the videos were released.
And here Carol Robinson from Al.com, who has been watching this group finally has something to report on. She’s the crime reporter for the Birmingham News, and I suppose all of the scheming and racist back and forth by law enforcement officers wasn’t enough for her to think there might have been a story to follow. She was there at the press conference linked earlier in my piece, and asked a few questions that these folks had but none of them stuck. We see exactly how she’s “helped” their cause. The “tyrant” that is trying to bring Tarrant into the 21st century and bring equity to ALL of its citizens.
After the Trussville Tribune also published a story from the press conference and then former chief Reno’s rebuttal, the “What’s really happening in the new Tarrant” group was hidden from sight. In the story, written by Erica Thomas, who is also a member of the group, Reno states that his elbow was injured and then later says he may need surgery on his shoulder. Links earlier in my story show how “injured” the chief was when he carried boxes and flags the day after the alleged altercation took place, as well as video of the actual altercation.
Today, Monday 6/21/2021 is another city council meeting. We’ll see how this one goes. Tune in to the Tarrant, AL Facebook page for the live feed of the meeting. It’s often better than anything on TV. And please, pray for us who live here and just want the best for all of our citizens — Black, white, Latinx and everything else in between. We’ve had it with all of this insanity and would really like to move forward.
My name is Jackie Beltaine. I’m truly one of the nicest people you’d ever meet. I’m the local dog lady, who takes care of the needy strays that show up — and sometimes those strays include people. I believe that Black Lives Matter, Women’s Rights are Human Rights, No Human is Illegal, Science is Real, Water is Life, in Religious Freedom, Love is Love and Kindness is Everything. Enough is enough. Namaste.
