Depending on who you ask, Sheriff Tim Hutchison is either the best sheriff Knox County's ever had or a paranoid, power-hungry tyrant. Which image will voters see when they head to the polls in August?
by Joe Tarr
It was May 1998, and Brenda Lindsay-McDaniel was working the late-night shift as a judicial commissioner at the Knox County jail on Hill Avenue.
A detective from the Knox County Sheriff's Department came to her office and asked her to sign a warrant for theft. Judicial commissioners aren't judges, but it's their job to sign warrants and set bail and make sure the right person is arrested and that no one's rights are violated.
The detective was unusually quiet that night.
"Normally, [the deputies] would be excited and tell you what was going on. He was not very forthcoming," Lindsay-McDaniel remembers. "All he said was, 'possession of stolen property.' I said, 'Well, let's put a few more details on the warrant.' He said, 'Just sign the warrant.'"
Lindsay-McDaniel wondered if maybe the detective felt she was questioning his job performance, so she tried to explain that the warrant needed more details—how the information was known, what evidence there was—to stand up in court. But he refused to give any and insisted she sign.
"I said, 'We have a problem here because I'm not signing.'" The detective stormed out of her office. A few minutes later, Keith Lyon, then one of the right-hand men to Sheriff Tim Hutchison, called Lindsay-McDaniel on the phone. "He said, 'Brenda, you need to sign the warrant.' In the background I could hear the sheriff say, 'Tell that bitch to sign the goddamn warrant.'"
Lindsay-McDaniel again explained that it needed more information to stand up in court. Lyon said they'd go to a judge to get it signed. She said, fine, thinking that was the end of it.
Five minutes later, another sheriff's employee—one with whom Lindsay-McDaniel was friendly—showed up at her office. He told her she needed to sign the warrant. He kept prefacing everything he said with, "These are not my words...."
Then he said something that alarmed her: "If the sheriff told me to shoot somebody I would do it."
"What do you say to something like that? I didn't know what to say," Lindsay-McDaniel says. "It was very clearly a threat to me. They weren't his words, but it was really clear it was a threat. I said, 'So are you going to shoot me?' He said, 'That's all I'm going to say.'
"I was feeling kind of unnerved. If the order came down to be shot, I was going to be shot."
She called a detective at the Knoxville Police Department and told him what had happened. He offered to come over, but she said that wasn't necessary. She only had a request: "If something weird happens to me and I end up dead, I want you to go out of county to have it prosecuted."
She made him promise.
Later, the judge whom the sheriff's deputies visited at home to sign the warrant called.
"He said, 'I threw you to the wolves. It's a political thing.' He said, 'I'll dismiss it when it comes up to court.' He said, 'You've got an election coming up, you don't need to be doing this.'"
The warrant that so badly needed to be signed, she says, was a ploy to get the Sheriff's Department on television during an election year (and not even a particularly close election). The bad guys would walk, but they'd help the sheriff with his campaign.
Lindsay-McDaniel's tale is a fantastic one, and like many stories about Tim Hutchison, it's difficult to know what about it is truth, speculation, myth and bombast. The story is all the more alarming because Lindsay-McDaniel certainly has credibility—besides her years as a judicial commissioner, she now works as a child-support referee.
Was that really Tim Hutchison in the background calling her a bitch? Did he really order his men to serve a warrant he knew wouldn't hold up just to get his picture on TV? Are even judges afraid to cross him? And most incredibly, are there men working for him willing to kill at his word?
Sitting in his office four years later, the sheriff scoffs at the implications in Lindsay-McDaniel's story. "No one in this agency is going to pressure anyone else," Hutchison says. "Do you believe one of my officers would [threaten to shoot someone]? How many of our officers have had to quit or have been prosecuted over wrongdoing? Then compare that to the other [police] agencies. I'm proud of the officers here."
Whatever the truth is, the sheriff has made a career out of being an enigma. In Knox County politics, he's a larger-than-life figure, hoisted above the political machinery by a mixture of awe, fear and secrecy.
He is a polarizing figure. His many supporters swear that Hutchison is one of the best sheriffs this county has ever seen—that he's grown his department into a world-class law enforcement agency.
But there are also a large number of people who have aligned themselves against the sheriff: defense attorneys troubled by lack of access given to their clients and treatment of jail prisoners; many journalists exasperated by the sheriff's unwillingness to disclose public information and his sporadic deceptions; and the "12-white-men" Republican oligarchy of Knoxville that has struggled with Hutchison for political power. Others are simply bothered by what they perceive as the sheriff's refusal to be held accountable for his and his department's actions and his apparent love of power and control.
The sheriff and his supporters claim that the criticism is nothing more than political sour grapes. They see the hand of Mayor Victor Ashe, Hutchison's perceived nemesis, behind the ongoing controversies. But Hutchison has done a number of questionable or troubling things in his 12 years in office. Reports by independent auditors and the state comptroller have found that he's improperly used and accounted for drug seizure money. Officers in his department have sworn out warrants on people who didn't exist and lied to the media. Jail guards have been found abusing inmates. Hutchison has had a number of questionable associations, like his close friendship with former Medical Examiner Randy Pedigo.
To date, none of those things have mattered all that much to a majority of voters. Whatever his merits or faults as a lawman and person, one thing is certain—Tim Hutchison is a master politician, one who is either capable of pulling lots of strings or making people think that he is. And a lot of people like him.
This August may be his fiercest campaign yet, as Democrat Jim Andrews challenges him by returning to many of the same issues his opponents have attacked him with over the years. There are those who say Hutchison's time is up—people are tired of him. But pundits and prognosticators have predicted Hutchison's fall before. They've always been wrong.
Beginnings
Timothy Ray Hutchison didn't seem like the kind of guy who would become such a force in Knox County politics.
A 1970 graduate of West High School, Hutchison has college credits, but does not have a degree. He operated Hutchison Construction Company from 1972 to 1974. But 1974 was a bad year for the construction business. So Hutchison looked for a way to make some extra money. "It was wet one year, raining a lot. Construction came to a halt," he says. "I never wanted to be a policeman."
But he adds, the job "fits my personality."
He started as a process server but quickly worked his way up to jailer and then deputy. In 1979, he joined the Metro Auto Theft Division, a joint division operated by the Sheriff's Department and Knoxville Police Department.
He rated above average in his work as a deputy, although supervisors noted that he didn't do so well communicating or relating to other officers.
There is one reprimand in his record. In April 1983, there was an altercation between Hutchison, then a lieutenant, and patrolman Mike Dalton. Dalton apparently pushed Hutchison. But then-Sheriff Joe Fowler thought that Hutchison had provoked the patrolman. "I certainly do not condone Officer Dalton's actions," he wrote in his reprimand to Hutchison. "I do, however, want to point out to you that I do not feel you utilized appropriate supervisory skills in this instance.... In the future, when discussing matters of the type brought to the attention of Officer Dalton, you should insure that it is not discussed in the presence of other officers so as to cause embarrassment. Furthermore, demeaning terminology such as referring to a fellow officer as 'boy' is inflammatory and should be avoided."
Hutchison appealed the reprimand, taking his case to the Merit Board. However, records of the hearings have been lost, and today it is uncertain what the outcome was.
There are plenty of commendations in Hutchison's file as well, and letters from citizens and businessmen whom he helped as a patrolman and officer.
A New Sheriff in Town
When Hutchison ran for sheriff in 1990, he was something of a darkhorse. There was nothing particularly controversial about his candidacy, but the conventional wisdom suggested Fowler—a two-term incumbent and former city police chief who enjoyed the support of Mayor Ashe—would easily win re-election.
Hutchison says he ran because he was concerned about the direction the department was heading. "Eighty-five percent of the [population] growth for many years was out in the county, not in the city. At the same time, our department was beginning to shrink," he says. (The 1990 Law Enforcement Plan, a joint report by the KPD and sheriff's office, shows the department was growing, in the size of its budget and the number of officers, although the size of the force was not keeping pace with the population.)
"I ran on a platform that I'd be a progressive sheriff and get back to the job of patrolling neighborhoods," Hutchison adds.
In a deposition earlier this year, Hutchison said that two people were influential in getting him elected that first time: then-Medical Examiner Randall Pedigo and Sherry Smith, whose family once owned the old Knoxville Journal.
Pedigo testified that he helped Hutchison raise around $50,000 for his campaign, money that came mainly from doctor friends. (After Hutchison was elected, County Commission transferred Pedigo's budget from the Health Department to the Sheriff's Department.)
In that first campaign, Hutchison attacked the
63-year-old Fowler as being too old for the job and said he lacked leadership in jail administration.
Both candidates said they supported forming a combined city-county police force, with an outsider appointed to run it. "I like appointed a little better, because you can put some qualifications on it," Hutchison said during one forum. "A lot of sheriffs in East Tennessee are farmers, and that's all they know." Hutchison also wanted 20 to 30 percent of new recruits to be minorities and wanted to increase the size of the force.
One of Hutchison's primary opponents accused him of being a Fowler pawn and predicted Fowler would name Hutchison a captain after the election. But Hutchison easily won the primary and surprised many by beating Fowler by about 5,000 votes in the general election. He showed well in the county's west neighborhoods, which had traditionally been Fowler strongholds. Those neighborhoods, along with every other one outside the city limits, have remained a solid power base for him.
Departmental Changes
Before Hutchison took office in 1990, the Sheriff's Department was much different than it is today. For some, he's taken the department into the 21st century in terms of staff and technology.
Others see him building a small empire that is uncooperative with other agencies.
Here are some changes the department has seen:
 In 1989, there were 398 employees, including 177 who were sworn deputies. Of those sworn employees, 84 were patrol officers and 36 detectives.
Today there are 900 employees, of which 135 are patrol officers. The additional force has been used to beef up patrols—moving from four shifts of 15 men to five shifts with 20 to 25 men on each. As promised during his first campaign, Hutchison opened precincts in Farragut and Halls. The number of detectives has remained at 36. The warrants division has jumped from 17 to about 50 employees, while court officers have remained steady at around 45.
With 900 employees, the department dwarfs the national average for counties with 250,000 to 500,000 residents—whose sheriffs' departments have an average 377 employees. (Knox County has about 382,000 residents.) In 1999, the Knox
Sheriff's Department was the fourth largest law enforcement agency in the state, after the Memphis Police Department, the Nashville Metro Police, and the Shelby County Sheriff Office.
The annual budget in 1989 was slightly under $10 million. Today, the budget is almost $40 million. Budget comparisons between the years are difficult to make, because the county has changed its budget format. However, the biggest increase by far is in the jail division. In 1989, the county spent $3.4 million maintaining the jail. That year, the state ordered Knox County to address a whole range of problems, including overcrowding, lack of exercise and training facilities, and poor facilities overall. In dealing with this, the county built a 676-bed detention center on Maloneyville Road. As a result of that and other changes, the jail budget has spiraled to more than $22 million. Predictably, the staff at the jail has also grown, from 153 jail employees to about 500. More than half the sworn employees work in the jail.
One of the most publicized areas of growth has been in the special divisions, including the dogs, horses, boats and helicopters. In particular, the fleet of six helicopters has been attacked by Hutchison's critics. Asked why the county needs six helicopters, Hutchison says: "So we will always have one available. The helicopters were free, donated by the Department of Defense.
"Is six too many? Not when they're free. I couldn't justify buying six. But the maintenance contract is the same for one as it is for six."
In an interview, Hutchison claimed the county spent about $60,000 a year of tax money on the helicopters and another $60,000 to $70,000 of drug seizure money. But he's been inconsistent, quoting different amounts in various forums.
The Knox County Sheriff's Office is the least trained of the 11 Tennessee police agencies surveyed by the Justice Department. New recruits were required to have 160 hours of classroom training and 200 in the field—the lowest in the state. By contrast, Knoxville Police Department recruits got 880 hours of classroom training and 640 hours in the field, which is the second highest in the state.
Neither is the staff particularly well paid, by state standards. As of 1997, the entry-level salary at the sheriff's office was $21,072, third lowest in the state. A sergeant's annual salary was the lowest in the state, at $22,097. The KPD entry-level was $23,281, and $29,803 for sergeants. (The entry level salary at the Sheriff's Department has now climbed to $23,649, but the old figures are interesting for comparison.) Hutchison, however, had the highest salary of any chief in the state, at $92,670. But that's not his doing—police chiefs' and sheriffs' salaries are set by the state, using a formula that takes into account population served, department size and years on the job.
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