Two former Memphis Police Department officers have officially lost their law-enforcement certifications after the Tennessee Peace Officer Standards & Training Commission voted Tuesday to decertify them. The move affects Dennis Parker and Nigel Bond and means neither man can work as a sworn officer in Tennessee. The commission took the action during a public session in Nashville, where staff laid out personnel files and investigative findings for commissioners before the votes.
Bond resigned from MPD “in lieu of termination” on Aug. 8, 2025, after failing a drug and alcohol screening that the department attributed to alcohol use, according to Action News 5. The department told reporters he was already on a “second chance letter,” a return-to-duty agreement, following a positive marijuana test in 2022.
State Board Moves After Backlog Exposed
The decertifications land in the middle of a broader push by the POST board to whittle down a backlog of cases that came to light through local watchdog reporting. The Institute for Public Service Reporting found dozens of unresolved decertification requests dating back to 2019, and The Daily Memphian has tracked several recent formal decertifications involving former MPD officers. Advocates say the recent string of votes suggests state regulators are feeling mounting pressure to answer calls for tighter accountability.
Findings Against Dennis Parker
Parker’s personnel file shows he was arrested in Little Rock on April 10, 2025, on DUI and child endangerment charges, and MPD says he did not alert his supervisors about the arrest or about the suspension of his driver’s license. Investigators also reported that Parker failed to update his residency information, leaving him living more than two hours from his assigned station, and that an inventory check turned up a rusted duty weapon. Those findings were presented to the POST Commission as part of the case for revoking his certification, according to Action News 5.
What Decertification Actually Does
When POST decertifies an officer, the state pulls that person’s peace-officer certification and blocks them from serving as a sworn law-enforcement officer anywhere in Tennessee. The Daily Memphian reports that recent POST decisions have included several lifetime removals from the state rolls, while watchdog coverage has questioned how consistently and how quickly such cases are handled. With Tuesday’s votes, the files on Bond and Parker are effectively closed on the administrative side unless they choose to pursue any procedural options the commission allows.
Local watchdogs have been pressing for quicker, clearer consequences for officer misconduct, and these latest decertifications add to a growing list of high-profile disciplinary actions in the Mid-South. Any additional records or public statements from MPD or the POST Commission could shed more light on the internal reviews that led up to the board’s decisions.
