A Knox County deputy asked a lieutenant during a sheriff’s office raid whether her body camera should be on. After asking, she turned off the camera that had been recording for 27 minutes.
We published in today’s newspaper, beginning on page 10A, an important piece of accountability journalism by investigative reporter Tyler Whetstone. The report reveals that a second appointee of Knox County Sheriff Tom Spangler is conducting law enforcement, including carrying a weapon during a raid, without state-required training.
Capt. Eric Edlin is the Spangler appointee at the center of the report. In addition to lacking the proper certification to participate in armed raids, Edlin has twice been the target of orders of protection filed by women who allege he threatened to kill them, Whetstone reported.
The state already is investigating Spangler appointee Jerry Glenn following Whetstone’s report in January focusing on Glenn’s armed participation, also without proper training, in the same raid. (Glenn, who had no experience in law enforcement when Spangler appointed him, is married to Spangler spokeswoman Kimberly Glenn. The Glenns donated $5,000 to Spangler’s 2018 campaign for sheriff.)
I’ve written before about our sharp focus on policing accountability, and it’s worth repeating again the principle behind it.
We give police the power to take our freedom and to take our lives, and with that great power comes great obligation to follow the law scrupulously and to welcome scrutiny and oversight.
It falls on the people – on you and me – to exercise oversight over sheriff’s offices because, unlike police chiefs, sheriffs answer to no one.
Glenn Jacobs can’t tell Tom Spangler what to do.
The County Commission can’t, either.
Only you can, and it’s critical you know information like we’ve reported recently about how well the Knox County Sheriff’s Office polices itself.
We can’t do this important work without you. Whetstone put tremendous effort into this reporting. It’s time-consuming, especially when the sheriff’s office repeatedly tries to obscure information or simply does not answer questions.
You’ll notice in this piece, and in other accountability journalism pieces we publish, that we often list the questions we posed to public officials that went unanswered. Many outlets vaguely describe how sources didn’t comment on topics, but I’ve never seen any other outlet routinely publish, in full, lists of unanswered questions.
This is our commitment to transparency. We want you to see for yourself the specifics of the questions we asked so you can judge for yourself how we’re seeking information and how the people who serve you are refusing to meet even the most basic standards of transparency.
Policing agencies have a long history of reluctance to explain how and what they do, and it’s getting worse. Legislators eager to associate themselves with “law and order” credentials are making it harder for regular people – again, you and me, the taxpayers who empower the agencies – to exercise rightful oversight of how law enforcement operates.
In May, for instance, Gov. Bill Lee signed legislation that disbanded police watchdog panels in Memphis and Nashville and limits some of the powers of Knoxville’s Police Advisory and Review Committee, an already relatively weak oversight panel.
This ought to be profoundly unsettling for all Americans. Asking how police conduct themselves and exercising civilian oversight over police is one of the foundational concepts of the United States of America.
The U.S. Constitution had no chance of ratification until the Bill of Rights was added, and those constitutional amendments are squarely focused on limiting law enforcement power. Five of the 10 specifically protect citizens from overreach by law enforcement (the Fourth through Eight Amendments detail the protections you are entitled to in the criminal justice system).
There’s a tendency by some to interpret any call for accountability in policing as an attack on police, but that’s misguided. Demanding accountability in policing is a pure exercise in asserting your rights as an American. Our newsroom knows this, and as an entity whose rights are enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, we would be derelict if we were not dogged in seeking to reveal when policing is not in line with the law and the expectations of a free people.
We give police the power to take our freedom and to take our lives, and with that great power comes great obligation to follow the law scrupulously and to welcome scrutiny and oversight.
We take seriously our obligation to make sure we’re committed to exercising that oversight, and we thank you for your support of strong local journalism.
Joel Christopher is the executive editor. Email: joel.christopher@knoxnews.com.