Black Officers Experienced Discrimination at Tennessee Police Department

Several Black officers representing the Knoxville Police Department staff have reportedly felt discriminated against, according to an external review of the department.

The review, conducted by consulting firm 21CP Solutions, discovered these findings that comprised almost all 15 Black officers in the department.

According to the review, the officers not only felt discriminated against but also believed that the promotional process was not particularly fair.

Knoxville Police Department Chief Paul Noel commissioned the external review after taking over the department in June.

21CP Solutions specializes in improving policing and opened the survey for two weeks at the beginning of August.

The review reportedly relied on roughly 360 sworn officers and about 100 nonsworn personnel to respond to the anonymous survey.

According to the report, department leadership had attempted to conceal an officer’s racist comments and deter a Black officer from making a complaint about the incident last year.

This conclusion comes after years of allegations of racist behavior within the department, reported by the Knoxville News Sentinel.

“If you are a Black officer, you have to work five times harder, and officers will always second-guess you,” one anonymous officer stated in the report.

 Another officer said, “When applying for posted positions and training, if more than one Black officer applied for a job that has multiple open slots, only one Black officer would get selected, and the other one would be told to wait until the next posting.”

Only about a third of the department’s 15 Black sworn officers said they felt they have a voice within the organization, according to the review.

Twelve stated they felt discriminated against within the organization because of their ethnicity.

Regarding de-escalating problems internally, the report showed that Black officers were also the least likely to say they felt there was a clear process for handling such issues within the department.