The stories that Millersville conspiracy cop tells about himself

With the Millersville Police Department now the focus of a TBI investigation, NewsChannel 5 Investigates has uncovered new questions about the stories that conspiracy cop Shawn Taylor tells about himself.

Those new questions include the stories that Taylor tells about the jobs he has held in the past, stories about retaliation he claims to have faced and stories that raise more questions about whether Taylor should have a gun and a badge.

As the assistant police chief tells it, he has been on to a vast international conspiracy involving some of the country's most powerful politicians.

"We are getting closer and closer and closer to taking the deep state down," he declares in one podcast video.

It's a discovery that, he has claimed, has continually put a target on his back.

"Every time that I will go to an agency and start digging, they will always as soon as I start showing them everything, they shut me down."

Which is why the Millersville assistant police chief says he has had trouble keeping a job.

"You don't become a gypsy cop going from agency to agency. You just, you don't do it. It's bad. But it was to the point that that's what was forced on me."

But our NewsChannel 5 investigation discovered that Shawn Taylor has left a trail of questions throughout his career.

His Facebook page claims he once worked at the Williamson County Sheriff's Department.

The agency says it has no record of him.

Screengrab from Facebook

On one job application, Taylor claimed he worked at the Hickman County Sheriff's Department as "deputy sheriff" and "chief jail administrator."

Hickman County officials say he was "only a correctional officer."

Taylor claims to have had a near-spotless disciplinary history.

"I mean, literally, I was wrote up one time in my entire 25-year career and given a two-day suspension for a pursuit that went from location to downtown Nashville because it got caught on Sky 5 traffic — and it ended up being some boys that had carjacked some people."

In fact, records show Taylor nearly got fired from the Columbia Police Department in 2009, following a complaint by a woman he was pursuing while he was married.

The woman claimed he "continued to call and send her text messages" over her objections, even calling her an "n....r lover" because she was friends with an African-American officer.

Investigators concluded he was guilty of harassment, stalking and criminal trespassing.

Graphic by Bryan Staples/WTVF

Taylor initially denied the allegations, then he worked out a deal for a 10-day suspension.

"It's no secret I was no angel when I was younger, and I'm not going to hide for it. My God, my Lord Jesus Christ, he knows what I've done," Taylor said in a recent interview with right-wing podcasters.

"I've admitted to anything that I have done that was wrong — and that's it because that's what a man does."

But it's not just a question of what Shawn Taylor has done in the past. We also uncovered questions about the bizarre stories he continues to tell about how he has become a victim of sinister forces who, in his mind, would do whatever it takes to stop his investigations.

Taylor has refused to answer any of our questions about his wild conspiracy theories, but one of his favorites stems from a few months when he worked for a tiny police department in Saltillo, Tennessee — just across the Tennessee River in West Tennessee.

"Literally had somebody show up to my house, warn me. Literally, a week later to the day, I was involved in a head-on collision."

There, Taylor claims he got so close to the truth about the conspiracies he had been investigating that, as he describes it, someone decided to take him out.

"I was literally warned several times and, within a week of being warned one time, I was hit head-on in a car crash and survived that."

But NewsChannel 5 Investigates dug up the accident report from that crash, and it showed that, instead of being a deliberate hit, the other driver "ran a stop sign" and "both vehicles swerved to avoid each other" before colliding.

And Taylor did not show any show any signs of incapacitating injuries, according to the report.

Graphic created by Bryan Staples/WTVF

Yet, as he tells it: "And it took me out for about a year, year and a half."

Again, we got his personnel file, and it shows that, several months after the crash, Taylor suddenly left a note with his badge and keys.

The note said his "grandmother was ill."

Taylor had given "no notice of his desire to quit and would not respond to calls or emails."

Then in fall 2022, Taylor's story took another strange turn as he claimed his life was in danger from the conspiracies he had figured out.

"Oh, brother. Let me tell you," he told a QAnon podcaster. " I've had a white van sitting in my cul-de-sac two days in a row. That's no joke."

A few months later, before he was hired at Millersville, Taylor reported that someone had shot up his house.

According to a police report, Taylor suggested he may have been targeted because he "has proven that numerous high-ranking politicians and judges in the area are linked to money laundering and narcotics delivering and sale."

He showed pictures of the damage done to his house by what he described as 9 millimeter bullets.

"I mean, it was an attempt to scare. It was an attempt to say, hey, you need to shut up."

Back with his QAnon podcast buddies, Taylor said the TBI was called in and he gave an agent permission to search his property for evidence.

But, he claimed the agent went rogue and began searching without him present.

"I said you can pack your stuff and leave. So, basically, I put her in time out, right? She turns to me and said, 'Well, I want to see who you are going to get to solve this.'"

Which feeds back into his bizarre conspiracy theories.

"You can't trust the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. I have people that I've talked about on the shows that are former Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. We know where it goes."

There were no witnesses, apparently no one caught it on home security cameras and whoever fired the shots did not leave behind any shell casings that might have been used to help investigators tie it to a specific gun.

The TBI says Shawn Taylor's complaint about the shooting at his house remains under investigation.

Will it turn out to be a real threat — or just another of his conspiracies?

Neither Taylor nor Millersville police responded to NewsChannel 5's questions.

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