The Knoxville Police Department won’t be making “courtesy notifications” to University of Tennessee coaches and administrators anymore.
That’s according to Police Chief David Rausch in a statement released on Friday to the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
The announcement comes on the heels of the news that Vols head coach Butch Jones was alerted beforehand by police that former football players A.J. Johnson and Michael Williams were being investigated for an alleged rape in 2014.
Rausch classified the early notification as “professional courtesy” calls and noted that those type of calls were commonplace during investigations of alleged crimes involving student-athletes at Tennessee.
“After reviewing our long-standing practice of courtesy notifications to the University of Tennessee administration of incidents involving UT students, it is clear that no investigations were compromised or improper information provided,” Rausch said in the statement.
“But in the interest of transparency and to alleviate any appearance of conflict of interest, we have changed the previous practice, to ensure that investigators focus without hindrance on finding the facts and bringing justice to victims of crime.
“Going forward, in any incident involving a student at the University, KPD will make formal notification only to UT law enforcement, as required by state law and as part of our ongoing interdepartmental cooperation.”
In a prior statement, Tennessee assistant district attorney Sean McDermott has said that those type of calls could be illegal since sharing sensitive information that doesn’t advance a criminal investigation isn’t permitted.
Johnson and Williams’ trials for aggravated rape and aiding and abetting aggravated rape are on hold due to the approval of a pretrial appeal.
Born and raised in Gainesville, Talal joined SDS in 2015 after spending 2 years in Bristol as an ESPN researcher. Previously, Talal worked at The Gainesville Sun.
