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Whitewashing 101
Did you happen to see story headlined "Police relations with blacks better since poll" at the bottom of the News-Sentinel's June 4 front page?
There was, not surprisingly, more to the story than made it into the paper. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics surveyed residents in 12 cities about their perceptions of crime and local police. Turns out, the Knoxville Police Department had the lowest satisfaction rate among black residents in any of the 12 cities, which also included New York, D.C., Kansas City, and Los Angeles. In Knoxville, 37 percent of black residents were unhappy with their police. But the Sentinel, apparently determined to make it an upbeat story rather than the somewhat shocking news it was, used interviews with exactly three official sources (whose opinions evidently count more than those of the hundreds of residents in the survey) to conclude that things have gotten a lot better in the past year.
Meanwhile, it left out that Knoxville also had the largest black-white perception gap among the cities surveyed—91 percent of whites in Knoxville were happy with the KPD; only Madison and San Diego PDs got higher marks from white residents.
The survey was part of a Justice Department pilot program to get specific crime statistics for individual cities and is supposed to be expanded over the next few years to include more cities. It'll be interesting to see if federal follow-up surveys actually bear out the blithe and totally unsupported assurances in the N-S headline.
Oh, and by the way, guess which of the 12 police departments scored the lowest marks from citizens (both black and white) for its "community policing" efforts? Yep, Knoxville.
Court Sense
One of the best stories swapped last weekend at the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony had to come when General Sessions Judge Brenda Waggoner told Pat Head Summitt why she ended up going to law school instead of pursuing a career in basketball.
It happened in 1976 when Pat Head was preparing to try out for the Olympic team. Waggoner, who had played college basketball and been an assistant coach at Memphis State, was teaching and coaching at Powell Middle School because her grandfather, Sheriff Bernard Waggoner, had told her not to go to law school on account of there were only four woman lawyers in Knoxville, and none of them made any money.
Head needed to practice against good players, so Waggoner, who had a key to the school gym, would round up the best high school boys players and any college boys she could find for Sunday scrimmages. Sometimes she would join them.
"Pat was really, really good," Waggoner says. "Great rebounder, good 'D', intense hustle...But this one day, I was just super. I was slashing from the inside, hitting from the outside, making rebounds, getting assists. I knew I had done great. And from the time I was a kid, I had really wanted to be in the Olympics.
"So I said, 'Hey Pat, how do you think I did?'
"She said 'You did all right.'
"I said 'But didn't I do really good?'
"She said 'Yes.'
"I said do you think I could try out for the Olympics?
"She said 'Yes.'
"I asked her, 'Do you think I could make it?"
"She said 'Yes.'
"Man, I was excited, until she finished the sentence, deadpan as could be:"
"'...For Ecuador.'"
So last weekend, Waggoner reminded Summitt of that story, and finished it by telling her, "Pat, you compelled me to go to law school."
Summitt laughed.
Them's Good Eatin'
The Tennessee Journal, a weekly newsletter for the state's political junkies, added a new category of "Possum Burgers" to its annual legislative awards. The Journal said: "Receiving this prestigious award is Sen. Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville) whose bill letting citizens take home and eat road kill made the state a laughingstock for weeks on late-night television."
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