As you might imagine, I keep a pretty good eye on drug dealing arrests and prosecutions in our community ever since drug dealers killed my teenager 18 months ago.
With the latest revelations in the Judge Baumgartner drugs and human trafficking scandal over the past week, there has been a new flurry of interest in local media (a good thing that I wholeheartedly welcome) around the illegal drug abuse epidemic raging in Knox County.
This means that I am seeing and hearing Knox County Sheriff Jimmy “JJ” Jones quoted and interviewed with some frequency regarding just how hard his agency (KCSO) is working to get drug dealers off the streets.
Because I know how aggressively indifferent Sheriff Jones was to doing anything at all to stop the ongoing drug dealing of Yolanda Harper, Randall Houser and Laurie Pelot Gooch when his agency had every opportunity to do so, I have been wondering as I’ve seen and heard Sheriff Jones in the media recently how often KCSO actually arrests and charges anyone specifically for criminal drug activity. Examples of those types of cases would include people charged with drug dealing, conspiracy to distribute, possession with intent of resale, drug distribution resulting in someone’s overdose death, operating drug-involved premises in violation of “nuisance” laws, and so on. These are the specific kinds of arrests and charges that indicate a particular law enforcement agency is actually targeting and going after the sources of the drugs in its jurisdiction.
So I did some digging to try to find the answer to that question. I started with KCSO’s own website, where they have a section listing all of the news of KCSO activity that Sheriff Jones himself, along with his Public Information Officer Martha Dooley believe to be most important. This chronological listing on the KCSO site goes back a couple of months at a time, and it indicates that KCSO apparently has not made one single arrest of note specific to criminal drug activity during approximately the entire last quarter of 2011.
Not one. (Although I bet there will be some listed within a few hours of me publishing this blog post.)
So then I headed over to our local newspaper’s website to see what it might reveal about KCSO’s record with regard to criminal drug activity.
To be as fair to KCSO as possible, I searched multiple ways to be sure I pulled up all relevant results
I started with
The next search I tried on the newspaper site was “Knox County Sheriff’s Office narcotics”. I went back more than six months and again, no KCSO arrests of anyone specific to criminal drug distribution or dealing. Now with this search I did find multiple stories about the issues of drug addiction and drug dealing in which the Sheriff or one of his investigators talked about the work they put into arresting dealers, and I also found stories about how KCSO was closing my son’s case because they had no case against anyone for anything, including drug dealing. But nope, no news of actual arrests or charges by KCSO against drug dealers.
So then I searched back for at least 6 months using different search terms including:
- “KCSO pills” (No KCSO arrests or charges)
-“Knox County Sheriff’s Office intent to distribute” (Nada)
- “KCSO overdose” (No KCSO arrests or charges against drug dealers listed, but multiple stories found in which Sheriff Jones or his employees are quoted offering their views on why the dealers who distributed the drugs that killed my son couldn’t be arrested for anything, and further making the outrageous claim that it’s pretty much impossible to successfully investigate and prosecute dealers who kill people).
I tried searching a few other ways as well but continued to be unable to find one single mention of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office specifically arresting or charging one single person with any type of criminal drug activity for at least the past six months.
Now it’s possible that KCSO is arresting and charging dealers, shutting down drug houses and raiding pill mills right and left, but Sheriff Jones is just too modest to let the media know what a great job he’s doing battling the worst and most rapidly escalating public safety emergency in Knox County’s entire history. Maybe that’s the case. And for all I know, KCSO will very soon be announcing the mother of all drug investigations resulting in multiple arrests. Also, I’m sure there is more routine KCSO activity each day in which warrants are issued and arrests are made for things like previous drug offenders who have violated probation, or when a KCSO cruiser pulls someone over for speeding and finds some pot or a smaller number of Rx pills in the car.
However, in general, I think that the record I’ve presented here speaks for itself; where is the strategic, carefully executed law enforcement investigatory work resulting in noteworthy arrests and charges? Where are the drug raids, the multi-dealer round-ups, theshutdowns of drug houses in neighborhoods, and businesses fronting for dealing operations? Where are the arrests of dealers connected to the multiple overdose deaths in our county each and every month? Those are the types of law enforcement tactics and successes that we need to be seeing.
But we’re not.
Knox County Sheriff Jimmy “JJ” Jones is not meeting his responsibility to protect this community, even as he has the unmitigated gall to appear at legislative luncheons and neighborhood crime forums and to give media interviews in which he arrogantly blathers about his agency’s tough stance against the drug dealers killing our kids and destroying the fabric of this County.
I have to say that I sure wish that local journalists would stop simply taking Sheriff Jones at his word when he says things – anything. Instead, verify the accuracy of what he says before publishing it or broadcasting it. Knox County is being torn to shreds by criminal drug activity. It’s time for our top law enforcement leader to start walking the walk instead of just offering meaningless talk, and we are counting on journalists to dig deeper, ask probing questions, and to hold our public officials accountable.
As a final note, I want to be very clear that I have huge admiration and respect for law enforcement pros. I know that the great majority of KCSO employees and officers are dedicated, hardworking and talented. But just as our community as a whole needs and deserves a higher caliber of law enforcement leadership, so do the men and women of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office.
If you live in Knox County, TN, I hope you will share what I’ve written here with your friends, family, neighbors and coworkers. The next election for the seat of Knox County Sheriff will be here before we know it.
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Awesome research skills! Pretty embarrasing for the KCSO.
Katie,
Could you maybe do a comparison with the number of drug related arrests made by KPD or with a neighboring county (Sevier, for example)?
Also, in my community, a daily arrest list is posted on my police department’s website. It remains an active link for two weeks. Does KCSO or KPD provide the same information? (I think I can guess that KCSO does not).
See example here:
http://www.police.nashville.gov/dailyarrest/index.asp
Good work. Keep it up.
They do have a 24 hour arrest list.
http://www.knoxsheriff.org/24hrlist/index.php
Who wants to volunteer to archive this info?
Love your work.
I find this shocking as in nearly every article I read addressing the nationwide prescription pill epidemic, TN is mentioned as having a severe problem, statewide.
I would also find it interesting to see the comparison between neighboring counties.
I do not live in your state, but I will be genuinely hoping the voters there do the right thing and protect their families by choosing a sheriff willing to do exactly that.
I think it is necessary that the TBI look into the whole mess going on in Knox County in regards to drug activity. From the sheriff to the judicial system, a thorough investigation is in order.
http://raidsonline.com/?address=Knox%20County%2CTN
I am trying to search on the online RAIDS GIS database for drug arrests in Knox County, and using a date range of 1/1/10 through today and checking the box for Drug / Narcotics Violation, I’m not seeing ANY arrests. I thought perhaps the geographical area was too large to see detail, so I tried checking several other boxes, and many, many crime incidents (showing as dots on the map) appeared. Just none for drugs. What the heck is up with that? Are they not reporting them? Are they really not making any? Am I just making a mistake?
There’s a link directly to the 24 hour arrest list in the sentence that says ” more routine KCSO activity each day in which warrants are issued and arrests are made”
You can also look at Knox County inmate records: http://www.knoxsheriff.org/inmate/index.php.
Unbelievable that you are doing all this work but doing it well and professionally. Keep up the excellent work (and hopefully getting this lying, slime-ball out of office for good.)
I also found it interesting that he is on the Board of Directors for the Metropolitan Drug Commission. So are Gill and Nichols. What exactly do they do there?
I suspect they sit around and congratulate themselves on what a good job they are doing.
Slogging through the KCSO crap with waders on as nothing more than a concerned citizen would be excruciating. Slogging through it as the mother of a crime victim must be devastating. I’m sorry, and thank you for continuing to fight the good fight, for Henry and for all of us here in TN.
Hugs from over yonder,
Claire
Well done.
Katie…so very well stated. Sherrif “JJ” Jones is a JOKE of a leader. I admire you and your articulate wisdom. It is beyond imagination how severe the drug epidemic has become in this world, let alone here in Knoxville. I know more than a Mother should. By first hand experience, I share your concern and sorrow. “JJ”Jones obviously has never been exposed to this on any personal level at all.
Quick question, and all ye trollers out there, please don’t mistake this as an attack. I’m a data guy, and one thing I do as a matter of course is to eliminate other possibilities when the data shows something significant.
In this case, I’m wondering about jurisdictional issues. Specifically, how does larger scale drug distribution get handled versus the smaller scale stuff you mention above (i.e. pills in a car at a traffic stop). Does the TBI tend to be the ones who lead those sorts of actions? And how does the Sherrif’s department interact with the city cops on this? Here in Mecklenburg County, I believe the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police department (metro city cops) handle this more than the Mecklenburg County sherrif. As I said, I’m a data guy, and when something of significance comes up, I tend to play devil’s advocate and try to disprove myself.
I think those are legitimate questions to ask, and adjacent issues to what I was raising when I suggested comparison data from KPD and a neighboring county. The data actually has to come from KCSO before it can be used to draw conclusions, since the paper may not be reporting every arrest.
In my precinct, I can request a meeting with the commander, and he will sit down with me and go over figures. (I realize it is unlikely that JJ will sit down with Katie any time soon). Every week, he has the most recent stats showing all arrests and what type of arrests we made. He also has reports on all incidents of violent crime, whether an arrest has been made or not. In fact, he can tell me how many calls were made to 911 and how many traffic stops were made. This data is readily available (not necessarily online, although year end reports are published) to citizens in my community. All we have to do is ask.
I think this gets to the issue of transparency with KCSO versus KPD. The is a matter of public record and should not be difficult to obtain. No one’s privacy is violated if I know that three arrests for burglary were made in the neighborhood or a grow house was located three miles away. In order to be an informed citizen, I need that data. It shows me that law enforcement in my area are doing what they are supposed to and it helps make me aware of potential dangers.
I live in Memphis (so we’ve got a laundry list of other issues ) but I do recall at least two major drug busts in the last month or two. I’m not sure if it was the county or the city. But it is possible to do that kind of work in Tennessee. The kind of work, it see,s, they should be doing out east.
The TBI arrest chart broken down by crime is at http://www.tennesseecrimeonline.com/tibrspublic2005/View/dispview.aspx?ReportId=23. It says there were over 40,000 drug/narcotic violation arrests
And of those 40,000 STATEWIDE arrests for drug violations, 276 were made by KCSO. Really? the 3rd most populous county only accounted for 0.6% of the statewide drug arrests? To look at it another way, Knox County comprises 6.0% of the state’s population … but only 0.6% of the drug arrests.
Those numbers just don’t jive … not even with a broken calculator.