Charges dismissed in mosque urination

Charges were dismissed Monday for a Chattanooga man accused of urinating on a local mosque, according to court records.

Sawyer Byers, 28, was arrested in early March and charged with vandalism and indecent exposure after reports he urinated on the doorstep of Chattanooga’s Islamic Center on Cemetery Avenue in late February.

According to a police report, Byers said he did not know the building was a mosque when he urinated there.

Hammad El-Ameen, imam at the center’s Masjid Muhammad, reported the incident to police after seeing it captured on the center’s doorbell camera. The center has had more disturbances since the opening of Shady’s Corner, a bar on the same block, in 2023, El-Ameen previously said.

El-Ameen went to a hearing in Byers’ case Monday and was pulled out of the courtroom by a prosecutor.

Assistant District Attorney Kevin Loper then told him that Byers’ case was being dismissed after he completed 42 hours of community service with a veterans’ organization, El-Ameen said by phone.

“We were hoping that he would be penalized under the charges he was charged with,” El-Ameen said Tuesday.

Loper told him the case was eligible for dismissal because Byers did not have a previous criminal record and had agreed to community service, El-Ameen said.

According to El-Ameen, Loper said Byers had asked about doing his community service at the mosque, but Loper reportedly said he discouraged him because it could be a hostile situation, El-Ameen said.

“I would have said, ‘You’re welcome, please, come. You should come to the place you victimized. We have work for you to do,’” El-Ameen said. “That would have been more just than going to a veterans’ administration somewhere where we don’t even know if he did it or not.”

Loper also reportedly told the imam that Byers said he wanted to apologize, but El-Ameen said that hasn’t happened. The imam said he thought the District Attorney’s Office was catering more to Byers, the defendant in the case, than himself and the Islamic Center as the victims.

“Kevin Loper represented Sawyer Byers yesterday,” ElAmeen said. “He definitely was not representing us at all.”

Requests for comment from the District Attorney’s Office, made by phone and email, went unreturned Tuesday. Byers did not return a phone call for comment.

Another man was also seen on video kicking one of the building’s windows, El-Ameen said. El-Ameen said Loper told him there was not enough probable cause to charge him.

After Byers was charged, the Council on American-Islamic Relations called for authorities to investigate the incident as a potential hate crime.

“Dismissing the charges against the suspect so quickly and easily is an apparent example of a double standard at play whenever Muslims or their institutions are targeted,” council spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper said in a release Tuesday. “It also sets a dangerous precedent for future incidents. We urge law enforcement authorities to take this violation of house of worship seriously and act accordingly. We urge federal officials to look into this case.”