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Police and Fire; air and standards

Phil Keith and Ed Cureton have given the city of Knoxville strong leadership in law enforcement and fire services for many years, rising through the ranks to the top of their professions here. The chiefs are retiring from the Knoxville Police and Fire Departments—Cureton for the second time—as of this coming August, and their replacements will be named by Mayor Bill Haslam.

It won’t be an easy task for the mayor, who is professionalizing the search as much as seems reasonably possible. It will still be inevitably a political decision, in some respects, but we can hope the mayor is as judicious as he was in appointing his other department heads and as his predecessor, Victor Ashe, was in his appointments to high city positions.

Haslam is starting the process toward selecting a police chief, having announced this week the formation of an advisory committee to recommend qualifications, review nominations and applications and provide counsel to the mayor on the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates. Community meetings will also be held on three occasions in late June and July to allow for general public comment on the chief’s post. Dates, times and locations for those sessions are to be announced later.

The advisory committee, chaired by City Law Director Morris Kizer, is made up of people with diverse backgrounds and ranges of experience. It includes District Attorney General Randy Nichols, Rudy Bradley and Jeff Davis, both retired KPD superior officers, Carl McCarter, representing the Fraternal Order of Police, Par Medley, former Knox County Commissioner, Sue Atchley, a community volunteer, Beth Schwartz, Rabbi at Temple Beth El, and Phyllis Nichols, president of the Knoxville Area Urban League.

The mayor describes the process as nationwide in scope. It will advertise the position in law enforcement publications and websites, beginning next week; applications will be closed July 8, and Haslam says his goal is to have a police chief appointed by Aug. 1.

A similar search for a new fire chief is expected to be initiated soon. It is certain to be subject to political influences as well, as the city’s fire department has been even more of a political animal than has the police force. We are confident, however, that Mayor Haslam can handle that job as well, since he shows continued reliance on a variety of good advisors.

If the police chief’s selection process can turn up a new chief with Keith’s credentials, commitments to even-handed law enforcement and justice, and abilities—in or out of the city department—we should consider ourselves lucky.

Keith has been singularly effective in securing the best equipment and training for our police officers and providing them with procedures and programs that are exemplary in the national law enforcement picture. He’s used his background as a grant writer within the department to its utmost in gaining federal assistance.

He really has prepared his department well for 21st century law enforcement, and he’s done it in ways that haven’t cost the Knoxville taxpayer a fortune.

And, like Ed Cureton at the fire department, he has been a nice guy throughout his years of public service.

Let Us Breathe

No one is more aware of the air pollution problems in Knoxville and its region than we are, but it’s gratifying to see that the New York Times has sent out its emissaries to examine the growing debate over the newest federal EPA strategy for improving air quality in the nation’s national parks, including our neighboring Great Smoky Mountains.

The Times produced a Memorial Day story on the latest proposals, which the Bush administration’s EPA says will strengthen, and environmentalist groups howl will gut, the existing rules and mandates to reduce power plant pollution of the air, which adversely affects the park’s views, its trees and soil, and its watershed.

We’re glad to see that people elsewhere are beginning to notice that the smoke in the Smokies is not entirely natural. It wasn’t known by the native Americans who named it as the Great Acidic Ozone-Loaded Mountain Range, after all.

June 3, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 23 © 2004 Metro Pulse