Left: Texts between Tanner Abbott and fellow officer where Abbott boasted of punching a detainee “3 times” (via Justice Department). Right: Tanner Abbott booking photo (via Woodford County Detention Center).
A former sheriff’s deputy in Kentucky who prosecutors say targeted people smaller and weaker than himself before he punched or assaulted them during routine traffic stops has been sentenced to a little over nine years in prison, according to a statement from the U.S. Justice Department.
A jury found Tanner M. Abbott of Danville, once a deputy at the Boyle County Sheriff’s Office, guilty of multiple charges including four counts of violating constitutional rights, a single charge of conspiracy and a single charge of falsifying records. Abbott, 31, was fired in 2021 after posting the identity of a confidential informant on Facebook upon discovering that person had criticized him on social media. He had first joined the sheriff’s office in 2017 after working as a pizza delivery driver, according to court records.
A series of formal complaints about Abbott’s conduct while he wore a badge prompted what would be a two-year-long investigation by the FBI and Kentucky State Police. He would not face charges until 2023. He was tried and convicted by a jury in March.
“Instead of protecting and serving the community, the defendant was physically abusing people — even bragging about the injuries he caused,” U.S. Attorney Carlton Shier said on June 21. “That is not law enforcement; that is brazen criminal conduct. The community deserved better. Fortunately, he now has a criminal sentence that he deserves.”
In a sentencing memorandum filed by federal prosecutors in May, extensive details about the violent episodes were unraveled.
During the arrest of one person identified only as W.W., the victim said that he had fully planned on cooperating with police when Abbott pulled him over but he grew “agitated” when Abbott “unnecessarily squeezed his testicles.”
Video evidence confirmed W.W. was peaceful during the arrest but as soon as he turned his head to say something to Abbott after his testicles were squeezed, Abbott punched him in the face. Investigators said they found the video and description of what happened to W.W. credible because several of Abbott’s colleagues also confirmed that Abbott frequently conducted “excessively intrusive” searches on male suspects’ groins as “a way of asserting dominance, particularly when those suspects were ‘mouthy’ or disrespectful.”
Investigators said they learned that multiple other men Abbott had arrested had lodged complaints about his excessive touching of their genitals.
Along those lines, a text message entered into evidence at trial showed an officer writing to Abbott: “You all but stroked his [genitals] the other day, Tanner.”
Abbott replied: “He liked it.”
Prosecutors said that unlike other incidents that were clearly premeditated, the incident with W.W. was not.
But the “cover-up was carefully orchestrated, with Abbott electing to launder his own falsehoods through another officer, thereby drawing a colleague into his criminality,” prosecutors wrote in May. Investigators said they also learned that Abbott pressured a colleague to charge W.W. with a felony for “aggressive advancement” on a law enforcement officer though he knew that had never occurred.
“Only some minor degree of scruples on [Officer] Hopper’s part prevented this miscarriage of justice from being born out,” prosecutors urged a judge ahead of sentencing. Hopper was not identified by his first name in court records but in the allegations against Abbott, prosecutors said Hopper was present for at least one of the incidents involving a victim and that he testified about his experience working alongside Abbott.
Abbott also covertly recorded video footage on his cellphone of a man walking into the sheriff’s office to complain about being sexually assaulted by him, officials said. That video was shared by Abbott with another deputy and in accompanying text messages, Abbott mocked the victim.
To bolster the prosecution’s claims that Abbott had a long history of using excessive force, at trial prosecutors explained how in April 2020, for example, Abbott told a colleague via text that he had “‘beat[en] the f— out of”” a suspect who was being pursued by police during a car chase.
“The apparent pride and glee that cellphone evidence shows he took in causing injury — boasting about the severity of injuries he caused, on multiple occasions, to both his colleagues and his then-fiancée — can only be described as sadism,” prosecutors wrote this May.
Much more evidence was not admitted at trial, though prosecutors said they wanted the judge to be aware of the allegations ahead of sentencing.
Prosecutors said that in November 2020, Abbott sent a booking photo to two colleagues that showed a suspect with “conspicuous” bruising and cuts near his eyes and nose. As one responding officer said it looked like the suspect “fell & hit a couple of a stairs going down” and another officer blatantly said it looked as if Abbott had punched the suspect twice, Abbott corrected him.
“3 times,” he allegedly wrote in November 2020.
He also texted his girlfriend at the time in January 2021 about a “brief scuffle” and then, unsolicited, sent her a “grisly photograph” of the suspect he “scuffled” with lying in a hospital bed.
The victim was bleeding “profusely” from several open wounds on his “heavily swollen face and vomiting into a bag,” prosecutors wrote last month.
There were several disturbing allegations about rampant sexual misconduct, too.
Over the two years that investigators surveyed Abbott, prosecutors said they heard from several individuals that Abbott used his power to obtain sexual favors. Prosecutors conceded that none of these allegations were established at trial beyond a reasonable doubt and most did not rise to the level of a federal criminal offense but when weighing his character, prosecutors again asked the court to consider what they had learned.
“Multiple women who had first met Abbott in his official capacity told investigators he later solicited explicit photos from them, and his work cellphone contained explicit images and video of women whom the government was not able to identify,” prosecutors wrote.
One alleged exchange came after Abbott bragged to a fellow officer about seeing a woman’s breasts at a traffic stop.
When asked how, investigators claim Abbott replied simply: “We stopped her.”
At least two other women lodged formal complaints with the sheriff’s office alleging Abbott touched them inappropriately during searches. A third woman told the FBI that Abbott arrested her for drug possession, then forced her to perform oral sex on him and told her she wouldn’t go to jail if she complied.
“However, despite her understanding Abbott would drop the charges if she gave him oral sex, she told the FBI that Abbott later had a different deputy sheriff arrest her on the earlier possession charges after Abbott tried and failed to pressure her into informing on other individuals,” prosecutors wrote last month.
Abbott was allegedly disciplined in 2019 after he was found “heavily intoxicated” in the passenger seat of his squad car while his girlfriend drove, the sentencing memorandum states. A year later, prosecutors allege he was reprimanded for entering a private home late at night without announcing his presence. He was searching for a hit-and-run suspect, they said.
In 2021, he was “unofficially reprimanded,” this time because joined a high-speed police chase while he was supposed to be transporting a person for psychiatric evaluation at a local hospital. His girlfriend was also in the police car during this incident.
Despite this, he was not fired until prosecutors said his superiors discovered that Abbott had publicly identified a confidential informant on Facebook after that informant posted a critical comment about him online.
In calling for a sentence of anywhere from 151 to 188 months — or roughly 12 to 15 years — prosecutors said Abbott’s behavior was so disturbing that his own biological mother filed a complaint with the sheriff’s office about him and posted about his “brutality” online, court records allege.
Investigators said that “as a direct result of her criticism,” Abbott started targeting his mother for narcotics enforcement activity and then arrested her on narcotics charges in September 2021. Though there was no information to suggest that her arrest was illegal but investigators said evidence culled from Abbott’s phone made it clear that he targeted his mother for arrest because of what she said about him online.
Shortly before he was fired, prosecutors said they learned that Abbott had targeted a local gas station owner too after the owner shouted at him about obstructing a gas station entrance during a traffic stop.
A fellow Boyle County officer allegedly told investigators that after that ordeal that Abbott tried to have him buy synthetic marijuana from the gas station owner for an undercover bust. Abbott allegedly hoped to pin drug trafficking charges on the business owner, the colleague said.
At trial, Abbott testified on his own behalf and claimed that he was motivated to become a police officer in part thanks to the “satisfaction he experienced after tackling a handcuffed, shackled female detainee after intervening in a perceived escape attempt while working as a pizza delivery driver.”
Prosecutors said nearly all of Abbott’s victims were weaker than him and that this was a purposeful choice. One of his victims wore a leg brace and had a disability. Two other victims were teenagers.
“Taken in the context of his crimes, that alarming admission about his first time using force on someone in handcuffs leads to a clear inference that he enjoys hurting people,” prosecutors wrote.
In his defense and while seeking leniency ahead of sentencing, Abbott argued that he only ever used appropriate police methods. He contested the seriousness of the injuries to some of his victims as well, his sentencing memorandum shows.
When seeking 12 to 15 years for Abbott, prosecutors said the sentence must be stiff because Abbott’s conduct “sows fear, hatred and distrust of officers even as police leaders expend tremendous effort to build establish legitimacy and fight the scourges of violence and drugs in our crime-plagued neighborhoods.”
“The defendant repeatedly used lawless violence to punish petty slights to his ego and authority. He used his badge of office to lend a veneer of legitimacy to what would otherwise be the crudest form of personal-score settling,” they wrote.
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