Letter: KPD Chief thanks community

David Rausch

Letter to the Knoxville Community,

Thank you to all of you who have called, sent letters, emails, messages, personal contact and dropped off food in support of the women and men of the Knoxville Police Department.

The outpouring of support has been tremendous and humbling. We strive every day to assure that we provide fair, equal, and Constitutional policing for our community. The sanctity of life is our primary focus.

We attempt to be engaged from the officer on the street to the Chief’s Office with all in our neighborhoods. These efforts are to assure that tragic events that have happened over the past week in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Falcon Heights, Minnesota, Johnson City, Tennessee, and Dallas, Texas do not happen here.

We have had a number of calls wanting to hold events for our employees at KPD at various locations throughout the city. We really do appreciate this show of support and desire to show our officers you are there for them.

The challenge of having events is that it pulls officers away from their duties when they are on the job and away from their families when they are at home.

We have found the best way to show officers how you feel is to tell them publicly when you see them. Others like our Chaplains Corps and the Cookie Crusaders have provided goody bags to the officers as they are leaving their roll calls.

If you would like to arrange to do something like this, please contact my office and our team can coordinate with you. There have been offers of financial support as well, and we ask you to consider donating to the Knoxville Public Safety Foundation, a foundation that supports the needs of local first responders, that can be contacted at www.publicsafetyfoundation.org

These are challenging times and those of us in law enforcement service in the City of Knoxville remain committed to assuring the safety of all in our community.

Thank you again to all of you who have been so very kind and considerate of those in blue serving you.

Humbly,
David Rausch
Chief of Police