Chattanooga’s police chief has claimed her primary residence is not just in Tennessee but also in Atlanta, according to public records.
Chief Celeste Murphy joined the department in April 2022 after spending 26 years with Atlanta police. She climbed the ranks and finished her career in Georgia after becoming a deputy chief in 2020.
That same year, she bought a home in Fulton County, and each year, she has claimed a homestead exemption for it — a tax break that requires applicants to certify that the home is their primary residence, according to property records. That exemption is still active, Fulton County records show, though Murphy on Friday said she intends to review that, in response to questions from the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Meanwhile in Chattanooga, the city’s charter requires employees to be Tennessee residents.
“You would be more invested in developing positive relationships with other residents because you are a resident,” Rick Dierenfeldt, a criminal justice professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and a former police officer, said in an interview. “If you don’t reside there, all of a sudden your job becomes a lot more impersonal.”
In an email Friday, Murphy said she lives and works in Chattanooga and her primary residence is there.
“I still have family in Atlanta, and I still own property there,” she said. “Like many homeowners, I filed for my homestead exemption after purchasing that house when I still lived in Atlanta, and I haven’t revisited it since. I will contact my tax preparer and make sure I’m compliant with Georgia tax rules.”
The chief was not available for an interview because of prior work commitments, department spokesperson Sgt. Victor Miller said by email.
In a departmentwide email sent Monday, Murphy told her officers, “Recently, a story was published regarding concerns about my residency. To set the record straight, I’ll never hold you all to a standard that I’m not prepared to be held accountable for. I live and work in Chattanooga and that’s where my residence is.”
”After many allegations, the city auditor found that I am a resident of Chattanooga,” she added.
Records
Public records show Murphy registered to vote in Tennessee, one of the criteria the city uses to establish residency, in July 2022.
Murphy lists a house on Chattanooga’s Southside as her mailing address on her voter registration application.
Neighbors of that address said they have not seen her in the area and said the house listed appears to be home to a group of 20- to 30-year-olds.
Murphy, 55, listed a different home in the St. Elmo area as her residential address on the same voter registration application. Property records show that 1,125-square-foot home is owned by someone with the same name as a sergeant at the police department. The sergeant came to the door Saturday and declined to answer questions, saying he was taking care of his mother.
The department did not answer emailed questions about either address.
On her voter application, Murphy checked the box certifying she is a resident of Tennessee.
“I love Chattanooga, and I have spent the last almost two years doing everything I can to make it the safest city it can be,” she said in the email. “In addition to my full-time schedule, I attend events in early mornings and on nights and weekends and am constantly on-call in case of an emergency that requires my attention.”
But her five-bedroom home in Fulton County, Georgia has continued to receive the tax benefit from the homestead exemption, according to public records.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press requested records pertaining to Murphy’s department vehicle, mileage and gas use last week and has not yet received a response. The department did not respond to questions about her travel.
Applications for both Tennessee’s voter registration and Georgia’s homestead exemption require the applicant to sign off saying the address listed is their primary residence.
Tennessee’s voter registration, which Murphy signed in July 2022, requires the voter to affirm their registered address is their legal residence, signed under the penalty of perjury, according to state law. According to the Secretary of State, which administers elections in Tennessee, “a person can only have one residence.”
Falsely claiming a homestead exemption in Georgia also carries a potential misdemeanor penalty under Georgia law.
“In addition, the property shall be taxed in an amount double the tax otherwise to be paid,” the law prescribes as a penalty for a fraudulent claim of homestead exemption.
Murphy signed up for the homestead exemption in 2021, and it has renewed automatically each year.
2023 audit
Murphy’s residency has apparently been a matter of discussion among the rank and file.
In July, officers responded to a car crash in Chattanooga involving Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis was gone from the scene by the time most officers showed up, off to a fundraising event at a private home. On body camera footage obtained by the Times Free Press through a public records request, officers can be heard speculating about where the presidential candidate was going.
“It’s not Chief Murphy’s, ‘cause she ain’t got furniture,” one officer said.
“How do you know that?” another responded.
“Somebody that works that area that has to go by to make sure it’s not been broken into told me,” the first officer said, according to the video.
“Really,” the other officer said, laughing.
In October, the city’s Office of Internal Audit received an allegation that Murphy was primarily living in Atlanta, potentially in violation of Chattanooga’s charter.
An audit found that to be unsubstantiated, auditor Stan Sewell said by phone.
No report was compiled when the investigation closed in November, and all the records used are confidential, according to Sewell. Murphy was interviewed as part of the audit, Sewell said.
“I was pretty comfortable that the allegation was not substantiated,” Sewell said.
The city doesn’t define what makes someone a Tennessee resident, Sewell said, so his office uses a combination of criteria — including voter registration, a driver’s license and owning or renting a home — to determine an employee’s residency.
Another Chattanooga police officer, Maj. Bakari Welles, was audited last year after an allegation that he did not live in Tennessee. That allegation was also found to be unsubstantiated based on Welles’ Tennessee driver’s license and voter registration, and Welles signed a statement attesting he is a Tennessee resident.
Sewell said the investigation into Murphy’s residency would have been similar to Welles’.
“It is a little difficult, because we don’t have any guidance in the city code or the charter or in our policies, like in our employee information guide, there’s nothing that really says what constitutes residency,” he said.
In the Chattanooga area, it’s common for residents to live on either side of the Tennessee-Georgia state line.
But the city prohibits its employees from living outside Tennessee, based on its own code. Officers are also told explicitly when applying for jobs that they must live in the state, current and former officers told the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Murphy’s employment contract, signed in March 2022 and renewed a year later, also includes that requirement.
“It’s an equity thing,” Dierenfeldt, the UTC criminal justice professor, said. “It’s either standard operating procedure or it’s not. This can’t be a situation where we decide on a case-by-case basis depending on rank. That’s an issue for any agency, or any workplace — you can’t have different rules for different people.”
However, Dierenfeldt said, the expected tenure for a police chief in the United States is around six years. And, as Murphy said, she still has family living in Atlanta.
“Why would I expect someone to move their entire family, to displace, set up roots, if there’s a chance that they might not be here after three years, and it’s almost a guarantee they’re not going to be here after six?” Dierenfeldt said.
The chief before Murphy, David Roddy, served four years in that role. Before Roddy, former chief Fred Fletcher held the post for three years.
Murphy’s initial contract allows for up to four one-year terms. It’s next up for renewal Thursday and had not been renewed as of last week, the department spokesperson said. Though Murphy’s original appointment was approved by the City Council, her contract can be renewed simply by an agreement between her and the mayor, according to its terms.
Murphy’s salary is $177,726.70, according to city records from November.
Residency restrictions
Under Chattanooga’s residency requirement, a city employee could live hours away in Tennessee, but not 20 minutes over the Georgia border.
In 2015, the city changed the nature of the requirement — from requiring employees to be eligible to vote in Tennessee to simply requiring them to be residents, with no definition of what that means.
In 2021, Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill that stopped cities and counties from barring people who live out of state from working as first responders, including police. But that bill had one exception: Hamilton County.
Local Sens. Todd Gardenhire and Bo Watson asked for the county to be exempted. They said it conflicted with a court order in Chattanooga following a 1989 court case that targeted discrimination, eliminated voting rights for nonresident property owners and formed the basis of its current government.
That means Chattanooga’s requirement can stand, while other agencies like the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office can hire people living in Georgia or Alabama.
This year, Gardenhire is sponsoring a bill that would end residency requirements like Chattanooga’s.
“Residency restrictions used to be standard fare in policing,” Dierenfeldt said. “It was virtually unheard of that you would even live outside your jurisdiction.”
Requiring police officers to live where they work means they’ll likely be more invested in the community and its future, Dierenfeldt said.
In recent years, better remote communication has made it easier for officers to live further away, Dierenfeldt said. The pandemic also made it more accepted, he said, though law enforcement can’t fully move to remote work like other industries.
“I chose a profession that requires dedication to the community,” Murphy said in her email, “and that’s how I’ve conducted myself as chief.”
Staff writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Rosana Hughes contributed to this article.
Credit: Chattanooga Times Free Press
Credit: Chattanooga Times Free Press
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