Knoxville police create unit to try to stop shooting deaths

KNOXVILLE — Knoxville Police Chief Eve Thomas gets a phone call every time someone is shot to death in the city. She’s received 22 of those calls this year. Four came the week of May 17.

“It’s horrible every time. Everybody’s got a parent. You’ve got family,” she told Knox News, adding that she’s the mother of a 22-year-old and a 19-year-old. “That’s really the first thing that goes through my mind, is those officers are having to make notification to that family that they’ve lost a loved one, and that is hard. That is really hard. I’ve done it more times than I care to do.

“But that family’s life is changed forever.”

Knoxville is in the midst of one of its most violent periods in modern history. Last year, the city saw 37 homicides, its highest annual figure on record, according to FBI statistics that date back to 1985.

This year is on pace to be even worse: The city has already recorded 22 killings, a number that includes the fatal shooting by a Knoxville Police Department officer of 17-yearold Anthony Thompson Jr. in a bathroom at Austin-East Magnet High School in April.

All of this year’s homicides are shootings, and an alarming number have involved teenagers on both sides of the gun. Five teens, including Thompson, have been killed, and three — including one as young as 14 — face serious charges in those cases. Prosecutors found the police shooting of Thompson to be legally justifiable.

As summer approaches, city officials are trying different things in a bid to curb the violence. New efforts include the creation of a Knoxville Police Department unit dedicated to what Thomas described as proactive community policing, as well as a city program to fund job opportunities for at-risk youth from June through September.

‘NOT TIED TO THE RADIO’

In February, two Austin-East students were shot to death four days apart. Authorities say two boys, ages 14 and 16, opened fire on Stanley Freeman Jr., 16, as he left the high school on Feb. 12, and both are in custody. Four days later, 16-year-old Janaria Muhammad was shot outside her family’s home on Selma Avenue in a case that remains unsolved.

The Knoxville Police Department responded by requiring all patrol officers to work overtime, Thomas said in a recent interview. They worked 12-hour shifts for five weeks. While the officers on day and night shifts continued to respond to 911 calls, the officers on the evening shift “focused on deterrence,” she said.

The efforts largely focused on the city’s east side, where much of this year’s violence has occurred. Thomas said officers conducted traffic stops and walked the neighborhood to foster conversations with community members. When officers don’t have to respond to calls, she said, they have more time to investigate a tip that a shooting might occur, for example, or knock on doors to assist with an investigation.

The chief felt those five weeks were successful — but not sustainable. “It’s hard to work overtime all the time,” she said. “You start having crashes, you start having bad decisions. I don’t need that. None of us need that. So we just can’t do that all the time.”

The police department ended 12-hour shifts but created a new patrol unit called the Community Engagement Response Team. Officers interviewed in late March for positions in the unit, which is meant to continue that kind of proactive work. It’s composed of 10 officers and two sergeants and is overseen by Lt. Josh Shaffer.

“They’re not on the street answering calls for service,” Thomas said. “They’re actually just chasing leads, hotspots, things where we may get a tip in that there’s going to be a shooting and this guy has a gun. He may be a known felon that has a gun that we may be able to do something with. They can do that immediately without saying, ‘Uh, I got a 911 call that deals with a shoplifter.’ They’re not tied to the radio in that way.”

Knoxville’s Charlene Roberts knows the pain of getting a call about the death of a loved one. In January, she lost her son, Kevin, and in 2019, she lost her daughter, Jessie, who was killed by a stray bullet while waiting in a Krystal’s drive-thru line.

She’s glad to see police take a proactive approach after two years with no answers in her daughter’s death.

“We need more officers who can follow up on leads and do searches. They need to be able to focus on the violence going on alone. CrimeStoppers isn’t enough,” she said. “This sounds like a great thing. I hope the route they are going is going to lead to justice for more people.”

Imani Shula, a criminal justice reform activist, said the department needs to focus on two things: building trust and protecting the vulnerable.

“You have one side of the community that doesn’t trust them because they are police. And then you have another side of the community that doesn’t trust them to do their job and follow up,” she said. “I hope attention will also be given to families who need protection that face retaliation — that’s my concern with this.”

NEW JOB PROGRAM BEGINS IN JUNE

Thomas said she believes there are too many guns on the streets, and that too many are falling into the hands of young people “who really don’t understand them and don’t understand the finality of death.”

“We’ve got to keep — and some folks here are working on this — we’ve got to keep kids here from getting into that arena, that gang/drug arena,” she said.

Kathy Mack, community engagement manager at the city of Knoxville’s Office of Community Empowerment, hopes a new city program will help with that. The Summer Youth Violence Prevention Pilot will kick off in June and pays for jobs for at-risk youth, ages 12 to 21, through September, Mack said.

Mack, former director of the YWCA Phyllis Wheatley Center in East Knoxville, said the program was created after city officials met with community members to discuss the roots of youth involvement in crime.

“One of the things we heard loud and clear, and some of this ties to the pandemic: Young people need things to do. They need places to be. They need opportunities to earn money,” she said. “We wanted to be able to provide this opportunity in the summer. School is out, and students won’t be in those structured settings, so we’re trying to segue that structure into the summer and support the work community organizations and groups are doing.”

Organizations can apply to participate in the program. Mack’s office is using a onepage application in an attempt to streamline the process. A community review committee will meet June 8 to review the applications and decide which organizations will be approved.

Organizations will then receive money from the city to pay teens beginning in mid-June. Eighty percent of that money will go to the youth as a stipend, while the remainder will go to the organization, Mack said. The program is funded by $200,000 of the $1 million approved for violence prevention efforts by the City Council in February.

Summer youth job programs have grown increasingly popular in U.S. cities in recent years. Some studies, including ones conducted in Boston and Chicago, have found they can be effective to reduce crime and incarceration.