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TOP JOBS

By CINDY MALLETTE
Staff Writer

The investigation against former City Council candidate Larry Meckley is over, and police say they won’t bring any charges of making terroristic threats to city officials against him.

Meckley, who was barred from stepping into City Hall until the investigation concluded, is allowed to come back, said Don Martin, Tyler Police Department spokesman.

Meckley ran against District 6 City Councilman Charles Alworth in May and lost after taking only 16 percent of the votes. He’d run for mayor in 2006 and lost that race, too, by a similar margin.

Five days after the May 10 election, Meckley sent three letters to Councilman Nathaniel Moran, Alworth and City Manager Bob Turner expressing extreme grief over a joke Alworth and former Mayor Joey Seeber made at his expense shortly after Election Day.

During the May 14 City Council meeting, Seeber and Alworth laughed about the margin by which each man defeated Meckley in their respective races, but they did not mention Meckley by name. Even so, Meckley cited an article he read in the Tyler Paper that mentioned the joke in his e-mails to the city officials.

“I read in the newspaper that you made fun of a Vietnam veteran during a city council meeting. The veteran wasn’t even there to defend himself. That is the most pathetic ... cowardly, yellow-bellied conduct I have ever heard,” he wrote in his e-mail to Alworth.

Police Chief Gary Swindle said in May that it was Meckley’s e-mails to Turner and Moran that sparked alarm and spurred the investigation. In his e-mail to Turner, Meckley says the city manager would be “responsible for my actions from this time forward.” He wrote to Moran that the joke exchanged between Alworth and Seeber “is what causes school kids to take guns to school and shoot people.”

Over and over, Meckley expressed the pain he felt as a result of the joke and demanded a public apology.

The investigation lasted from May until last week, when the police department wrapped up the last of its interviews. Martin said investigators talked with all three e-mail recipients, but had to wait some time for Alworth to return from an overseas trip.

Based on their investigation, Martin said, there wasn’t enough evidence to bring charges against Meckley.

“We looked into what he said, and everything, but the police department’s stance was that there wasn’t enough there for prosecution,” he said.

Turner said he will be contacting Meckley in the near future to let him know the results of the investigation.

“I have been advised by the police chief that they have concluded their investigation of the matter and will not be moving forward with any action,” Turner said. ”I am currently drafting a communication to Mr. Meckley advising him of the outcome.”

Meckley could not be reached Thursday for a response. He has maintained his innocence the entire time, saying that the city unfairly targeted him because they see him as a nuisance.

“They misunderstood everything. ... They’re terrible people down there, and it’s just terrible what they do to citizens,” he said in May. “They made fun of me at the ... City Council meeting. I thought that was improper, and I was just e-mailing them expressing what they did was wrong.”

Meckley emphasized at the outset that his e-mails were only designed to show his intent to continue speaking out against the council at its semi-monthly meetings.

“What I’m saying is I’m going to keep expressing my concerns. That’s my history. That’s all I’ve ever done.”