Rural/Metro: Naw, it's all good. Heh

Rural/Metro fired back at its critics late Thursday, issuing a statement in response to Knox County's July 1 letter, asking the company to explain some potential problems. (I have a brief thought after all this.)

Its spokesperson said: "I can tell you that Rural/Metro will have more to say regarding this matter in light of events late this afternoon, and will likely be reaching out to media tomorrow (today) to lend additional perspective.

Key messages for the public to know: 

• Rural/Metro has served Knox County for some 30 years and is in 100% compliance with its Knox County contract.
• Much of the information in the original letter from Knox County was erroneous, the most egregious of which was that Rural Metro engaged “use of Mutual Aid approximately 78 percent of the time from January—March 2015,” when in actuality, the use of mutual aid, during that time period, was less than one percent.

The company had a more detailed response in a file it sent us. Read it RIGHT SMACK HERE.

Rural/Metro added: Despite the troubling inaccuracies in the original letter from Knox County, Knox County has yet to redact any of the false information, opting not to do so in late-day media interviews and via its own press release late this afternoon, following meetings with Rural/Metro in which it was made clear the problems with the memo.

One of the issues the county had was tied to June response times. It should be noted that Rural/Metro does not address that in its file (RIGHT SMACK HERE) other than to say that officials had not reviewed them or signed off on them. That's often code for "oops."