Authority should come with title of Knoxville’s community safety director | Opinion

“In other words, I have no responsibilities here whatsoever,” said Navy Lt. Sam Weinberg, a character in the movie “A Few Good Men,” about his courtroom role as a military lawyer alongside Lt. Daniel Kaffee, played by Tom Cruise.

Substitute “authority” for “responsibilities” and it could be said by LaKenya Middlebrook, the city of Knoxville’s first director of community safety. She has the title but appears to have no directorial responsibilities whatsoever.

But if you’re going to have the title, you ought to have the authority — as well as the responsibility.

A surge in violent crime

Knoxville, like many American cities, is in a crime surge. In January, a News Sentinel headline declared: " 'A serious uptick in violence:' Knoxville saw record homicide numbers in 2020.” In 2021, the city is on a pace to break that unfortunate mark.

In the aftermath of the May 25, 2020, killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, “progressive” cities and activists campaigned to defund the police, reduce criminal penalties and broad-brush police generally as racist. The result, as USA TODAY opinion contributor Jason Johnson explained, didn’t lessen, but heightened, the crime problem.

“Why violent crime surged after police across America retreated: Even the most dedicated officers who now face a greater risk of being sued, fired or prosecuted for doing their job feel pressure to pull back,” was the headline on a column by Johnson in April. He wrote, “Data shows a precipitous decline in law enforcement activity from last June through this February. We found that across the 10 major cities we studied, deadly violence rose as engaged policing fell.”

Following Knoxville protests over Floyd’s death, Mayor Indya Kincannon said at a City Council meeting, "From these expressions of anger, frustration, sadness and solidarity, one thing is clear, the time for change is now, for the end of racism, and the end of police brutality."

How Knoxville police officers felt about the mayor’s sentiments is an individual matter.

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$1 million but no specific plan

But with the spike in homicides, particularly the deaths of Austin-East Magnet High School students, the city had to do something. Among other programs and projects, in February, $1 million was allocated for violence prevention — with no specific plan at the time of passage on how the money would be spent or explanation of how the figure was decided on.

In April, Knoxville contracted with Cities United. The organization's mission statement says, “Cities United supports a national network of mayors committed to creating safe, healthy, and hopeful communities by reducing the epidemic of homicides and shootings among young Black men and boys 14-24 by 50% by 2025.”

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By early August, citing too-slow violence prevention progress, the mayor announced a scaling back of Cities United’s contract, saying more would be done within city government. At the end of August, Middlebrook’s position was announced.

The definition of "oversee" is to “supervise in an official capacity.” But officially, Middlebrook doesn’t seem to be supervising anything over the departments most responsible for public safety.

Questions and some answers

I sent four questions to the city of Knoxville seeking clarification of her role and responsibilities. The first dealt with her qualifications. The rest were:

1. What is the extent of her authority over the police and fire departments? Will the police and fire chiefs report to her, or will they continue to report to the mayor?

2. If the purpose is to better coordinate, what were the failures in coordination to this point that motivated the creation of a new cabinet-level position?

3. To what degree does this show the mayor’s lack of confidence in the departments’ abilities to coordinate effectively with each other to fulfill a mayoral priority?

The response:

"LaKenya Middlebrook will be reporting directly to the Mayor and will not have any “authority” over KPD or KFD. (Just to be clear --- this position is not a duplication of the former Public Safety Director at the City).

"Both Chief Sharp and Chief Thomas will continue to report directly to the Mayor and their duties do not change. As Chief Thomas has said --- this position is another resource or tool --- to help keep our community safe.

"The intent of this position is to add additional coordination and collaboration --- as we bring together new programs and initiatives in our City --- that often cross multiple departments."

But the quotation marks around “authority” still left open the question: If the director decides something needs to be done in the police and fire departments to promote public safety but she has no authority, what does she direct?

In times of crisis or danger, public pressure builds, and elected officials invariably must do something, or at least be seen doing something. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it’s just for show.

The city’s announcement of Middlebrook’s role said she, “will oversee and coordinate all aspects of community safety, increasing collaboration between the Mayor, her leadership team, KPD, KFD and other community partners who are on the ground to address public safety issues in Knoxville.”

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The statement somewhat begs the question about what collaboration issues exist, particularly between the mayor, her leadership team, KPD and KFD. However, that’s secondary to what it is she’s supposed to be doing, because clearly, it’s not “overseeing” all aspects of community safety — unless overseeing in this case means looking at something from above.

But when it comes to directing community safety, the city’s primary public safety organizations, it seems Knoxville’s director of community safety and Lt. Sam Weinberg have something in common.

George Korda is a political analyst for WATE-TV, hosts “State Your Case” from noon to 2 p.m. Sundays on WOKI-FM Newstalk 98.7 and is president of Korda Communications, a public relations and communications consulting firm.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Authority should come with title of community safety director