Andy Jackson, Sheriff's Lieutenant, Reprimanded For Firing Gun To Stop Pooping Turkey

WKRN, Nashville News, Nashville Weather and Sports

A Tennessee cop fired a gun to stop a turkey from pooping on a police car, but now he's the one who's ankle-deep in doo-doo.

Lt. Andy Jackson, a sheriff in Maury County, Tenn., found the hard way that shooting a gun to scare a turkey isn't proper police procedure, and was reprimanded by his superior officers for using his firearm outside his training.

The birdbrained controversy began June 29 when Jackson saw a turkey defecating on a department car around 7:30 a.m. He said that after other methods of getting the turkey to trot away, he fired his sidearm into the air as a warning shot.

He said the area where he fired the gun is a wooded area bordering a river that is remote and unoccupied.

"I felt it was very safe," he told WKRN-TV. "I fired in that direction [towards the woods]."

Chief Deputy Nathan Johns said Jackson was reprimanded for a simple reason: “We don’t train to use our firearm to scare animals off of vehicles,” Johns told the Columbia Daily Herald.

The turkey was unavailable for comment.

Jackson's turkey shoot came to light after a sheriff's detective working under him reported the incident on Facebook.

The officer, Terry Chandler, was reassigned at his own request shortly after the incident and later resigned. George said no punitive actions were taken against Chandler.

"He did not accept criticism well, and he didn't like his lieutenant [Jackson]," Sheriff Enoch George said, according to UPI.com. "There were some things that happened the morning before the complaint about the shooting. I won't get into what kind of things, but he had been talked to by his lieutenant."